Jund Filasṭīn (, "the military district of Palestine") was one of the military districts of the Umayyad and Abbasid province of Bilad al-Sham (Levant), organized soon after the Muslim conquest of the Levant in the . Jund Filastin, which encompassed most of Palaestina Prima and Palaestina Tertia, included the newly established city of Ramla as its capital and eleven administrative districts (kura), each ruled from a central town.
History Muslim conquest The Muslim conquest of Syria Palaestina is difficult to reconstruct, according to the historian Dominique Sourdel. It is generally agreed that the Qurayshite commander Amr ibn al-As was sent to conquer the area by Caliph Abu Bakr, likely in 633 CE. Amr traversed the Red Sea coast of the Hejaz (western Arabia), reached the port town of Ayla at the head of the Gulf of Aqaba, then crossed into the Negev Desert or further west into the Sinai Peninsula. He then arrived to the villages of Dathin and Badan near Gaza, where he entered negotiations with the Byzantine garrison commander. The talks collapsed and the Muslims bested the Byzantines in the subsequent clash at Dathin in February or March 634. At this stage of the conquest Amr's troops encamped at Ghamr al-Arabat in the middle of the Araba Valley between the Dead Sea and the Gulf of Aqaba. The town of Gaza was left alone, with Amr's primary objective at the time being the subjugation of the Arab tribes in the vicinity.
After the Muslim armies led by Khalid ibn al-Walid captured Bosra in the Hauran in May 634 they crossed the Jordan River to reinforce Amr as he faced a large Byzantine army. In the ensuing Battle of Ajnadayn, fought at a site southwest of Jerusalem in July or August, the Muslims under Amr's overall command routed the Byzantines. In the aftermath of Ajnadayn, Amr captured the towns of Sebastia, Nablus, Lydda, Yibna, Amwas, Bayt Jibrin and Jaffa. Most of these towns fell after minor resistance, hence the scant information available about them in the sources.
Following the decisive Muslim victory against the Byzantines at the Battle of Yarmouk (), fought along the Yarmouk tributary of the Jordan River east of Palestine, Amr besieged Jerusalem, which held out until the arrival of Caliph Umar, to whom Jerusalem's leaders surrendered in . The coastal towns of Gaza, Ascalon and Caesarea had continued to hold out. The commander Alqama ibn Mujazziz may have been sent against Byzantine forces in Gaza several times during and after Ajnadayn. Amr launched his conquest of Egypt from Jerusalem . Caesarea was besieged for a lengthy period and captured most likely by Mu'awiya ibn Abi Sufyan in 639, 640 or 641. Not long after, Mu'awiya captured Ascalon, completing the conquest of Palestine, most of which had been undertaken by Amr.
Filastin became one of the four original junds (military districts) of al-Sham (Islamic Syria) established by Caliph Umar. In effect, the Muslims maintained the preexisting administrative organization of the Byzantine district of Palaestina Prima.
Umayyad period Umayyad rule (661–750) was a relatively prosperous period for Filastin and the Umayyad caliphs invested considerably in the district's development. According to Sourdel, "Palestine was particularly honoured in the Umayyad period". The first Umayyad caliph, Mu'awiya, who held overall authority over Syria, including Palestine, from the time of Caliph Uthman (), was first recognized as caliph in a ceremony in Jerusalem.
The Umayyad caliph Abd al-Malik () built and repaired roads connecting the Umayyad capital at Damascus with Palestine and roads connecting Jerusalem to its eastern and western hinterlands, as evidenced by seven milestones found throughout the region, the oldest of which dates to May 692 and the latest to September 704. The milestones, all containing inscriptions crediting Abd al-Malik for the road works, were found, from north to south, in or near Fiq, Samakh, St. George's Monastery of Wadi Qelt, Khan al-Hathrura, Bab al-Wad and Abu Ghosh. The milestone found in Samakh dates to 692, the two milestones at Fiq both date to 704 and the remaining milestones are undated. The fragment of an eighth milestone, likely produced soon after Abd al-Malik's death, was found at Ein Hemed, immediately west of Abu Ghosh. The road project formed part of Abd al-Malik's centralization drive, special attention being paid to Palestine due to its critical position as a transit zone between Syria and Egypt and Jerusalem's religious centrality to the caliph.
In 685/86 or 688, Abd al-Malik began the construction of the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem. Its dedication inscription mentions the year , which most scholars agree is the completion date of the building. It is the earliest archaeologically attested religious structure to be built by a Muslim ruler and the building's inscriptions contain the earliest epigraphic proclamations of Islam and of Muhammad. He is also credited with constructing the adjacent Dome of the Chain, expanding the boundaries of the Temple Mount (Haram al-Sharif) to include the Foundation Stone around which the Dome of the Rock was built and building two gates of the Temple Mount (possibly the Mercy Gate and the Prophet's Gate).
Abd al-Malik appointed his son Sulayman as governor of Jund Filastin and he served through the reign of Abd al-Malik's successor, his other son al-Walid I (). Sulayman founded the city of Ramla during this period and it became the administrative capital of Jund Filastin until the Crusades, though Jerusalem remained the religious focal point of the region. Al-Walid continued his father's works on the Temple Mount, founding the al-Aqsa Mosque, and was the likely patron of the unfinished administrative and residential structures located along the southern and eastern walls of the Temple Mount. While Sulayman also built in Jerusalem, patronizing the construction of a bathhouse, he focused his attention on Ramla, building a palace, the White Mosque, and an aqueduct; from early on, Ramla commercially superseded its twin city of Lydda and developed into a market town for the agricultural output of its countryside and hub for weaving, dyeing, and pottery, and later for religious scholarship. In Jericho, Sulayman built arches, mills and gardens, but these were destroyed by floods during a later period. Sulayman succeeded al-Walid I but unlike his predecessors who ruled from Damascus, Sulayman ruled from his seat in Palestine where he had his support base.
Abbasid period On the other hand, a change in the Syrian policy during the Abbasid period resulted in an overall decline in the region. The Levant was now further from the seat of authority as the capital relocated from Damascus to Baghdad. The new policy preferred Iraq over the Levant due to suspicion of the local Muslim population's loyalty, as they strongly identified with the Abbasid's rivals, the former Umayyad dynasty. Moreover, the Abbasids promoted trade with eastern lands such as Tang China and the Kingdoms of India. This led to neglect, political unrest, and occasionally local rebellions, one of which is the Al-Mubarqa. A process of urban decline is believed to have been accelerated by the 749 earthquake, which increased the number of Jews, Christians, and Samaritans who migrated to diaspora settlements while also leaving behind others who stayed in the devastated towns and impoverished villages until they embraced Islam.
Geography At its greatest extent, Filastin extended from Rafah in the south to Lajjun in the north, and from the Mediterranean coast well to the east of the southern part of the Jordan River. The mountains of Edom, and the town of Zoar (Sughar) at the southeastern end of the Dead Sea were included in the district. However, the Galilee was excluded, being part of Jund al-Urdunn in the north. Filastin roughly comprised the regions of Samaria, Judea, and the adjacent Mediterranean coastal plain from Mount Carmel in the north to Gaza in the south.
According to al-Baladhuri, the main towns of Filastin, following its conquest by the Rashidun Caliphate, were, from south to north, Rafah, Gaza, Bayt Jibrin, Yibna, Amwas, Lydda, Jaffa, Nablus, Sebastia, and Caesarea. Under Byzantine rule the port city of Caesarea was the territory's capital, a natural choice as it eased communications with the capital Constantinople. After the Muslim conquest, the administrative focus shifted to the interior. Amwas was referred to as a qasaba in the early Islamic sources; the term could refer to a central town, but most likely meant a fortified camp in the case of Amwas. It served as the principal military camp of the Muslim troops, where spoils were divided and stipends paid, until it was abandoned by the troops in 639 due to the plague of Amwas. From about 640 Ludd and/or Jerusalem have been determined as the capital or political-religious center of Filastin, according to modern historians.
After the caliph Sulayman ibn Abd al-Malik founded the city of Ramla next to Ludd, he designated it the capital, and most of Ludd's inhabitants were forced to settle there. In the 9th century, during Abbasid rule, Jund Filastin was the most fertile of Syria's districts, and contained at least twenty mosques, despite its small size.
After the Fatimids conquered the district from the Abbasids, Jerusalem eventually became the capital, and the principal towns were Ascalon, Ramla, Gaza, Arsuf, Caesarea, Jaffa, Jericho, Nablus, Bayt Jibrin, and Amman. The district persisted in some form until the Seljuk invasions and the Crusades of the late 11th century.
Population
At the time of the Muslim conquest, Filastin had been inhabited mainly by Aramaic-speaking Miaphysite Christian peasants. Samaria, in the northern part of the district, had a large Samaritan population.
Arabization and Islamization Two separate gradual demographic processes—cultural Arabization and religious Islamization—were initiated after the Islamic conquest. It is believed that the settlements of Arabians, both before and after the Muslim conquest contributed at least partially to the pace of Arabization and Islamization.Chris Wickham, Framing the Early Middle Ages; Europe and the Mediterranean, 400–900, Oxford University press 2005. p. 130. "In Syria and Palestine, where there were already Arabs before the conquest, settlement was also permitted in the old urban centres and elsewhere, presumably privileging the political centres of the provinces."Gideon Avni, The Byzantine-Islamic Transition in Palestine: An Archaeological Approach, Oxford University Press 2014 pp. 312–324, 329 (theory of imported population unsubstantiated);. The principal Arabian tribes which inhabited Filastin and formed its army were the Lakhm, Judham, Kinana, Khath'am, Khuza'a, and Azd Sarat. However, the inhabitants of Palestine did not become predominantly Muslim and Arab in identity until several centuries after the conquest with full Arabization achieved by the 9th century, and mass-Islamization not until the Mamluk period.
Jews