Muhammad and the Empires of Faith by Dr. Sean W. Anthony

Author:Dr. Sean W. Anthony
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780520340411
Publisher: University of California Press

Heraclius Foresees the Kingdom of the Circumcised

The Zuhrī-account from Maʿmar begins by stating that “Heraclius was a seer who peered into the stars [kāna hirqal ḥazzāʾan yanẓuru fī l-nujūm],” and says also that “he wrote to a fellow seer who also looked into the stars [kataba ilā naẓīrin lahu ḥazzāʾin ayḍan yanẓuru fī l-nujūm].”36 This characterization of Heraclius features in most of the other versions of al-Zuhrī’s account as well. An Arabist’s eye is drawn to the peculiar term ḥazzāʾ used by the account to describe Heraclius and his fellow stargazer. Though a small detail, this word also provides us with the first clue that a non-Muslim account perhaps lies underneath the story. The word ḥazzāʾ is an Arabic hapax that occurs only in the cluster of traditions that transmit this account. Although obscure and difficult words are no rarity in the ḥadīth corpus, the word ḥazzāʾ in particular appears to be an Aramaicism, related to ḥazzāyā, a word meaning “seer” or, more broadly, “one who receives visions” and “one who contemplates’’ (e.g., a sight, such as the stars).37 The word ḥazzāʾ thus provides us with an important clue and raises the question: Why would the account portray Heraclius as an astronomer at all? The short answer is that al-Zuhrī’s claim that the emperor Heraclius was a practitioner of astrology reflects, at least to some extent, real historical knowledge about the emperor—knowledge conveyed to him by a well-informed source—but to appreciate the significance of this point requires further elaboration. As noted above, the legend is set during Heraclius’s stay in Syria in the wake of his victory in the Persian-Roman War and his retrieval of the relic of the True Cross. In his version of the story, Ibn Isḥāq even makes this context explicit, and this setting is critical to the narrative idiom of both accounts: it simultaneously presents Heraclius at the height of his powers and on the brink of his greatest loss.

With Heraclius’s decisive victory over the Persians in 628 C.E., the emperor exploited the victory as a chance to reinvigorate his empire’s triumphalist ideology. Heraclius began to promote the idea that with Christian Byzantium’s defeat of Sasanid Persia, a new Golden Age had dawned, an age of tranquil prosperity that would prepare humankind for the Day of Judgment under the aegis of the Rome. The universalizing drive behind the Heraclian triumphalism manifested itself in many spheres of imperial propaganda. Kevin van Bladel has, for example, provided a compelling account of how pro-Heraclian propaganda portrayed the emperor as a new Alexander in the Syriac Alexander Legend and how the far reach of this propaganda even left its impact, not just on early Islamic kerygma, but also on the very text of the Qurʾan.38 However, al-Zuhrī’s depiction of Heraclius as a stargazer draws on another strand of Heraclian propaganda. As part of his imperial renewal, Heraclius also oversaw a reordering of the calendrical observance of Christian ritual and, concomitantly, the very tabulation of historical time. These calendrical reforms involved

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