CHAPTER ONE
Tombstones
Markers of Social and Religious Change, 650â800
Twenty or so years after the death of the prophet Muáž„ammad in 632, âAbd al-Raáž„mÄn ibn Khayr passed away. His name does not appear in the annals of history and, but for an extraordinary record of his death, memory of his existence would have been altogether lost. His tombstone, once hailed as âthe oldest known monument in the Islamic world,â entreats the reader to ask for Godâs forgiveness:
In the name of God, the Merciful, the Compassionate, this grave belongs to âAbd al-Raáž„mÄn ibn Khayr al-កajrÄ«.
Forgive him, O God, and make him enter [Paradise] by your mercy, and let us go with him.
Seek forgiveness for him whenever this inscription is read, and say âAmen!â
This inscription was written in JumÄdÄ II of the year 31 [January or February of the year 652 CE].1
One overly enthusiastic skeptic has questioned the antiquity of this tombstone by suggestingâmistakenlyâthat âeven if the date intended were 131 AH, it would still be the earliest tombstone in Arabic.â2 Actually, several tombstones bear dates prior to 131 AH (749 CE), and there is no good reason to doubt the date of 31 AH, written in stone.3 The important objection to consider concerns not the date of âAbd al-Raáž„mÄnâs tombstone, but its categorization as an âIslamicâ monument. If the objective is to say something meaningful about the making of Islam, we must wonder how justifiable it is to label this tombstone âIslamic.â It refers to AllÄh explicitly and to the HijrÄ« calendar implicitly, but contains no reference to the prophet Muáž„ammad and no allusion to Muslim scripture. It records the death of a believer in Allah, but otherwise lacks a distinctively Islamic identity. Its plea for divine forgiveness in the afterlife was commonplace in Jewish and Christian tombstones from late antiquity, and it is by no means clear that the inscriberâs intention was to produce a uniquely Islamicârather than, more generally, a monotheisticâmemorial.4
Islamic markers, such as prayers for the prophet Muáž„ammad and quotations from the QurâÄn, emerged in epitaphs in the period between 690 and 720, and it was only by the 790s, as this chapter will show, that a formulaic pattern became established, including a standardized confession of faith. These changes in the tombstone record reflect a gradual process of Islamization. To witness such a process unfolding is an exciting matter for a historian, especially due to the scarcity of datable documents from the first two centuries of the Islamic era. This process of religious change, though widely rooted, became controversial in some circles. Upholders of tradition, pietistic ideologues from the eighth century, began actively to oppose the popular practice of inscribing tombstones. Despite the fact that the epitaphs contained pious religious sentiments, traditionists decried the practice as a blameworthy innovation that violated the customs of Medina, the city in Arabia where God had revealed the new religion to the prophet Muáž„ammad.
In this chapter, changes in the tombstone record from the first two centuries of Islam will be examined alongside the traditionist literature directed against tombstones. Analyzing this record, which historians of early Islam have largely overlooked, is in and of itself worthwhile for several reasons.5 First, tombstones hint at the changing role of the QurâÄn in the religion of early Islam. QurâÄnic quotations are first attested on tombstone inscriptions from the first quarter of the eighth century; by the end of that century, tombstones begin to display fairly elaborate quotations. They reveal a facet of an emerging ritual, that of reciting scripture in a ceremony of intercession for the dead. This is a practice about which early Islamic literature has remarkably little to say. Given how limited our knowledge is about the emergence of a QurâÄnic liturgy in the formative period of Islam, this documentary evidence is significant.
Second, dated tombstone inscriptions provide an independent record of religious trends, suggesting an alternative standard for periodization to the chronology followed by historians of the early Islamic polity. In the context of political narrative, it makes sense to adopt the year 750, when the âAbbasids overthrew the Marwanid dynasty from power, as a revolutionary turning point. But this date has no significance in the tombstone record, which suggests that key changes in the practice of Islam occurred at other times, irrespectively of political developments, around the years 691, 721, and 795. Before proceeding with this alternative chronology, a caveat on the limitations of the evidence must be considered. Dated tombstone inscriptions from this early period come primarily from the lands of Egypt. In recent years, epigraphists have begun collecting inscriptions from various other sites in the eastern Mediterranean world and from the Arabian peninsula, but so far, most of their discoveries date from a later period, beginning circa 850.6 As a result, the tombstones to be analyzed reflect primarily changes in the practice of Islam in early Islamic Egypt. In this connection, it is also worth stating the obvious: this history is based on tombstones already discovered. New discoveries may alter in ways minor or significant the chronology to be developed below.
Beyond these two contributions, an examination of the epitaphs in conjunction with the relevant traditionist literature will offer the opportunity to see how traditionists reacted to an emerging popular practice. It could be argued that tombstones and tombstone inscriptions, if prohibitively expensive for the poor and relatively incomprehensible to the illiterate, were part of elite rather than of popular practice. But âpopularâ in this chapter simply refers to practices that were relatively widespread in social and geographic terms. Traditionists did not uniformly oppose such practices; they readily approved of usages that followed or seemed to follow their prescriptions. Yet they despised any deviation from the customs they sanctioned and, in the name of tradition, decried new practices as contemptible innovations. Accordingly, the focus at the end of this chapter will be on the emergence of a productive tension between traditionism and a popular Muslim practice. This tension led not only to the development of the reactive mentality that came in part to characterize traditionist Islam, but also, and perhaps more importantly, to the formation of an alternative religiosity.7
Commemorating the Muslim Fathers
Before proceeding with the process of Islamization as it unfolded in view of dated epitaphs, let us first characterize early Muslim tombstones in light of non-Muslim ones. This examination will serve to highlight a significant social transition toward the commemoration of individuals and their paternal kin. Seventh-and eighth-century Muslims rarely emerge from their tombstones with an individual profile. We learn from these documents the name of a certain Muslim, his or her sex and parentage, and often, the date of death. Occasionally, we can determine the social and economic status of the deceased, when his or her âlast nameâ (i.e., nisba) denotes a professional occupation. But the essential questions that might occur to us about the age reached before death and the cause of death, the main accomplishments of the person, surviving spouses or children, desires fulfilled or unfulfilled, are typically left unanswered, as in âAbd al-Raáž„mÄnâs tombstone. Sometimes, a medieval tombstone will boast a geometric design, witticism, or charming poem.8 By contrast, the earliest Islamic tombstones express a religion both austere and iconoclastic. Principally, what Muslims cared to commemorate in these monuments was their own personal, confessional affiliation to Islam.
In terms of kinship, early Muslim tombstones record patrilineal descent. We learn the names of fathers, grandfathers, and even great-grandfathersârarely do we learn of mothers, grandmothers, or other relations.9 The seventh-century tombstone of âAbd al-Raáž„mÄn ibn Khayr displays only one patrilineal link. (Ibn means âson of.â) Late eighth-century tombstones frequently memorialize three and even four generations of male links, as in the cases of RabÄ«âa ibn Maslama ibn កunÄáča al-áčąadafÄ« (d. 795) and of IbrÄhÄ«m ibn HishÄm ibn Bakr ibn AbÄ« âUthmÄn (d. 799).10 By emphasizing paternal descent to such a degree, early Muslims distinguished themselves from Jews, from Christians, and from pre-Islamic Arabs.
To illustrate the significance of this commemoration of male ancestors, let us examine selectively several non-Muslim tombstones, beginning with the epitaphs of three Jews who died before the rise of Islam. The tombstone of Arsinoé, a Hellenized Jewish woman, identifies her as the daughter of Theodosios, yet also records that she died at age twenty, that she married, and that she left no descendants. Theophila commissioned the epitaph of her husband, Dosas, dead at age eighteen. The tombstone of Machaon, son of Sabbathaios, tells us the boy died at age five, and that his mother, Philoumene, has become depressed.11 All three monuments memorialize various kinds of family ties, stressing bonds between husband and wife, father and daughter, or mother and son.
Christian Coptic tombstones similarly display ties to various members of the family, n...