May i have a copy of these so called 'Historical Records'? It has been raining heavily these past 2 days and i am running out of dry towels.
https://pressbooks.bccampus.ca/anci.../the-rashidun-and-the-early-muslim-conquests/
And more
https://www.iis.ac.uk/academic-article/muslim-jews-and-christians-relations-and-interactions
The Early Centuries of Muslim History
The period of the first caliphs and the subsequent era of the
Umayyads was a time in which Muslims, Jews, and Christians negotiated the new power arrangements. The parameters of
Dhimmi status were developed, and both head and land taxes were paid to the Muslim caliphs through representatives and not individually. For the Jews, the Resh Geluta or Exilarch was from the Rabbinic branch of Judaism, it became the dominant form, generally displacing other groups. Also, because Muslims expanded to include most of the world’s Jews in their polity, Rabbinic Judaism was able to develop its institutions within the context of the Islamic
Umma. For the newly forming Islamic state, the loyalty of the Exilarch, and, by extension, the Jews, added legitimacy to Muslim claims to legitimate rule over its various non-Muslim populations. The interaction between Jews and Muslims thus produced profound effects on both Judaism and Islam.
Christians acted as physicians, architects, clerks, and advisors in the courts of the early caliphs. Greek and Coptic were the administrative languages for several centuries before Arabic became established enough to be the general medium of public discourse. Even the occasional uprisings against Muslim rule, as the Coptic uprisings of the early ninth century and the Jewish revolts against the Umayyads a century earlier, were local, over specific grievances, and not anti-Islamic as such. In fact, the Jewish revolt against the Umayyads, driven, it seems, by messianic visions, was sympathetic to early
Shia views and attempts to overthrow the last Umayyad
caliph.
The first two Islamic centuries was a time of translating Christian and Jewish scripture into Arabic, along with a vast body of commentary, particularly on biblical figures. Qur’anic
tafsir (commentaries) became the repository of much Jewish and Christian tradition concerning such figures as Abraham, Moses, Solomon, Jesus, and others. The beginnings of Islamic theological speculation were stimulated by translations of Hellenistic thought from Aramaic, Coptic, Greek, and Syriac. One of the effects of this trend was to produce tension between those inclined toward greater cosmopolitanism of the intellectual and cultural heritage of Hellenism and those who felt that Islamic society should be centered only on the Qur’an and traditions from Muhammad, presaging the debates about the inclusion or exclusion of outside ideas. The resulting balance between religious and scientific learning became such a part of Islamic societies that even in periods of political fragmentation, Jews and Christians contributed along with Muslims to the intellectual and cultural life of the Islamic communities.
The Medieval Period
In the western Islamic lands of the Iberian Peninsula and North Africa, Jews, Christians, and Muslims combined in a society that is often described by later historians with the adjective “golden.” The areas of poetry, music, art, architecture, theology, exegesis, law, philosophy, medicine, pharmacology, and mysticism were shared among all the inhabitants of the Islamic courts and city-states at the same time that Muslim armies were locked in a losing struggle with the Christian armies of the
Reconquista. In the eastern Mediterranean, similar symbiotic societies could be found. The universities of
al-Azhar in Cairo and Cordoba in Spain, both founded in the tenth century, followed the older model of the
Bayt al-Hikma in Baghdad, as places of shared learning among scholars from the three traditions. Both the concept of these types of institutions of learning, as well as the learning itself they produced, had profound influence on European institutions of higher education and European scientific advancement. Within the intellectual circles of the Islamic world, Jews contributed and participated in this civilization through contact with Muslim philosophers and theologians, just as Muslims had from contact with Christians earlier. In the areas of commerce, world trade was dominated by trading associations made up of Muslims, Jews, and Christians from Islamic lands.