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S i d e b a r
Sura 9:29
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This Rock
Volume 19, Number 4
 April 2008 
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Fight those who believe not in Allah nor the Last Day, nor hold that forbidden which hath been forbidden by Allah and His Messenger, nor acknowledge the religion of Truth [even if they are] of the People of the Book [i.e., Jews and Christians], until they pay the jizya [tax] with willing submission and accept that they are subdued.
This call has been interpreted in very different ways by Islamic legal experts. Not surprisingly, an attempt at some form of codification was made as well. Aside from sura 9:29, the primary source was the so-called Treaty (or Pact) of Umar, a supposed agreement reached between Caliph Umar I (r. 634-644) and the Christians of Syria. The authenticity of the Pact is doubted by many modern scholars who see it as a likely product of later legal experts who attached Umar’s name to provide an air of authority. The influence of the earlier Byzantine Theodosian Code of 438 and Justinian’s Code of 529 is apparent, and some experts even suggest that another source of inspiration could be the laws of the Sassanid Persian Empire which had extensive minority populations, including Nestorian and Monophysite Christians and Jews.
Comparisons have been made between the establishment of the dhimma and the conditions under which Jews lived in Christendom or those of the non-Christian minorities under the Byzantines. The famed Orientalist Bernard Lewis and others have contended that conditions were in some ways better for Jews and Christians in Islamic countries compared to those for similar minorities in Christian lands. Such a claim, however, is offset by two historical realities. First, the Christian populations remained the majority religious group for centuries after the Arab conquests. The situation was thus not directly parallel to Europe where heretical groups and the Jewish communities were longstanding minorities. Second, the steady decline in the Christian populations in the Islamic world testifies to the harsh social, economic, political, and religious pressures under which they lived. The Jewish minorities, meanwhile, remained remarkably resilient, having endured a minority status with legal disabilities under the Romans and then the Byzantines for many centuries even before the Islamic armies gained supremacy in the East.
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