c. 570 Mohammed born in Arabia
578 Tiberius
580 onwards: Slavs invading Greece
582 Maurice
590 Gregory the Great pope
593 Gregory deals with the Lombards
597 Augustine arrives at Canterbury : see Bede, Ecclesiastical History I 23-34 and 2. 1-3, bringing a letter to Ethelbert from Pope Gregory I
602 Phocas usurps, kills Maurice and family
603 onwards Persian (Sasanian) invasions of eastern provinces
610 Heraclius overthrows Phocas
614 Persians besiege and capture Jerusalem ; True Cross taken to Ctesiphon
617 Persians take Alexandria (grain supply lost)
619-29 Persians occupy Egypt
622 The Hegira : Mohammed moves from Mecca to Medina
626 Persians and Avars besiege Constantinople
628 Persians defeated
630 Heraclius restores True Cross to Jerusalem, returns in triumph to Constantinople
632 Mohammed dies
635 Arabs take Damascus
636 Battle of River Yarmuk: Byzantines defeated
638 Jerusalem surrendered to the Arabs by the Patriarch
At about this time the plague starts to recede
641-68 Constans II
642 Arabs take Egypt
647 Arabs defeat exarch of Africa at Sbeitla (Tunisia)
649 Arabs take Cyprus
651-4 Arabs attack and take Rhodes
645 Arabs take Kos
674-8, 717 Arabs besiege Constantinople
711 Arabs cross the Straits of Gibraltar and begin conquest of Spain
The History of Theophylact Simocatta : an English translation with introduction and notes by Michael and Mary Whitby (Oxford, 1988)
Life of
John the
Almsgiver in E. Dawes and N.H.Baynes trans.,Three
Byzantine Saints
, (London 1948, reissued as a paperback in 1977, 1996
The
Akathistos
Hymn, trans. C. Trypanis, The Penguin Book of Greek Verse
Andrew Palmer et al., The seventh century in the West-Syrian
chronicles
(Liverpool, 1993)
G. Greatrex and S. Lieu, The Roman eastern frontier and the
Persian
Wars. Part 2 AD 363-630 a sourcebook (London, 2002)
Robert G. Hoyland, Seeing Islam as others saw it : a survey and evaluation of Christian, Jewish and Zoroastrian writings on early Islam (Princeton, 1997)
Judith Herrin, The Formation of Christendom (London 1988)
J. F. Haldon, Byzantium in the 7th century: the transformation of a culture (Cambridge 1990)
R. J. Schork, Sacred song from the Byzantine pulpit: Romanos the Melodist, Gainesville, 1995)
F.E. Peters ed, The Arabs and Arabia on the eve of Islam. (Aldershot, 1999)
L. Conrad, 'The Arabs', in The Cambridge Ancient History, Vol. 14 Late antiquity: Empire and successors, A.D. 425-600 edd. A. Cameron, B. Ward-Perkins, M. Whitby (Cambridge, 2000), ch. 22c.
G. Greatrex, ‘Roman identity in the sixth century’ in S. Mitchell and G. Greatrex (edd.) Ethnicity and Culture in Late Antiquity (Swansea, 2000)
Peter Brown, The Rise of Western Christendom. Triumph and Diversity 200-1000 AD (Oxford, Blackwell Publishers, 2001)
G. J. Reinink ed., The Reign of Heraclius (610-641: Crisis and Confrontation (Groningen, 2002)
Walter E. Kaegi, Heraclius : emperor of Byzantium (Cambridge University Press, 2003) for reviews see BMCR, The Medieval Review
Fred Donner, 'The background to Islam', in The Cambridge Companion to the Age of Justinian, ed. M. Maas (Cambridge 2005),510-534
Did Mediterranean-wide trade come to a drastic end with the barbarian invasions of the 5th c., or only with the Arab invasions of the 7thc.?
· H. Pirenne, Mahomed and Charlemagne (1939) (= 'the Pirenne thesis')
· On this see Richard Hodges and David Whitehouse, Mohammed, Charlemagne and the Origins of Europe. Archaeology and the Pirenne Thesis (London, 1983)
· C.R. Whittaker, 'Late Roman trade and traders', in Peter Garnsey, Keith Hopkins, C.R. Whittaker, eds., Trade in the Ancient Economy (1983), 163 ff.
· Andrea Carandini, 'Pottery and the African Economy', in same vol., 145-62
· More difficult: Chris Wickham, 'Marx, Sherlock Holmes and the Late Roman Economy', review article, Journal of Roman Studies 78 (1988))
· M. Hendy, Studies in the Byzantine Monetary Economy, A.D. 300-1450 (Cambridge 1985)
J. Banaji, Agrarian Change in Late Antiquity: Gold, Labour and Aristocratic Dominance (Oxford, 2001)
P. Sarris, ‘The origins of the manorial economy: new insights from Late Antiquity’, English Historical Review 119 (2004)
id. Economy and society in the age of Justinian
(Cambridge, 2006)
For the archaeology see Umm el-Jimal
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Revised March 18, 2010
