Middle East Media and Book Reviews Online Volume 1, Issue 1 | Page 27

2/2/2016

Middle East Media and Book Reviews Online

Non-Muslims in the Early Islamic Empire: From Surrender to Coexistence
By: Milka Levy-Rubin
Non-Muslims in the Early Islamic Empire: From Surrender to Coexistence. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011.
267 pp., $90.00 (£55.00). ISBN 978-1107004337.
Volume: 1 Issue: 1
April 2013
Review by
Robert J. Haug, PhD
University of Cincinnati
Cincinnati, OH
In Non-Muslims in the Early Islamic Empire: From Surrender to Coexistence, Milka Levy-Rubin brings a new approach to the study of the Shurūt
Umar (Conditions of Umar) and the status of the dhimmīs under the early caliphate. She does this by focusing on questions of their Sitz im Leben
and their sources of inspiration, looking for “the longue durée process that stood behind the formation of the status of non-Muslims under Muslim
rule” (p. 2). By focusing on both “the origins and on the process of the formation of the status” (p. 2) rather than on the final product of the Shurūt
Umar, Levy-Rubin is able to look beyond the Islamic milieu of the Shurūt Umar and focus instead on the precedents set by both the Byzantine and
Sasanian Empires and the paths these traditions may have taken into Muslim law and society. Levy-Rubin organized the book in a way that breaks
down the development of the Shurūt Umar and other regulations related to non-Muslims, and then demonstrates that the component parts of these
regulations were present in the pre-Islamic worlds of the Byzantines and Sasanians.
Chapter 1 focuses on the authenticity of the sur