Early Islamic identity was forged in rivalry with Christian Rome

Evidence

In a sense, early Islam defined itself against Christian faith and power. The earliest Muslim religious monuments, the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem and the great Umayyad mosque in Damascus, were consciously built to vie with the Church of the Resurrection in Jerusalem and the great Christian churches of Syria. The inscriptions inside the Dome and on the gold coins, struck by the Caliphs in deliberate defiance of what had until then been a Roman prerogative, announce the rejection of Christian errors and the supersession of Roman power by the bearers of the new Islamic order. In medieval Muslim writings, the Byz­ antine Empire is the “House of War” par excellence, against which the final and greatest jiha¯d must be waged. These were no simple heathens to be instructed and absorbed, but the supreme rivals, and they are treated with the suspicion— and respect—appropriate to that status. — Bernard Lewis, From Babel to Dragomans, 655

Categorization

• XREF: Lewis’s account of Islam defining itself against Byzantium parallels the Said cluster’s theme that self-definition against a proximate other drives knowledge production in both directions. — connects to: Muslims recognized Byzantine Christians as fellow Romans and rivals; Islam conquered most of the Christian Roman Empire in its first century; Earliest Christian chroniclers saw Arab conquerors as political, not religious, foes
• ADDENDUM: The register of rivalry-with-respect toward a peer power complicates the power-deficit picture in ‘On Sacrifice’ and could inform how the Islamic-West representational cluster treats mutual recognition.