Byzantium’s Official Attitude towards Islam as imagined by Abu Sufyan: The Impact of the Imaginary on Self-Perception and Perception of the Other

Abstract

This study explores the official attitude towards Islam as imagined by Abu Sufyan, the Umayyad leader of the Quraysh tribe of Mecca. Abu Sufyan reportedly took advantage of being the envoy sent by the Prophet Mohammed, the founder of Islam, to the Byzantine Emperor Heraclius, to spread an account that he met with the latter in Constantinople and that the two of them had discussed Islam and the Muslim prophet. This paper disputes this widely held perception and argues that the ostensible meeting between Abu Sufyan and Heraclius likely did not occur. Instead, the author argues that Abu Sufyan concocted the tale for his own ends and within a specific historic and cultural context, in a bid to enhance his own image within the Muslim community rather than promote the religion of Islam. What Abu Sufyan’s account did contribute to however, whether he intended it to or otherwise was the formation of early Arab-Islamic conceptions of the Byzantine world which could serve both to justify coexistence with the Byzantines as well as to enhance the self-image of the rising Arab-Islamic civilization.