“Superiority is due to us, and the king should come from among us”<b>: The Arab Conquests and Conflicts of the Early Umayyad Era in a 7th-Century Syriac Universal History of Yoḥannān bar Penkāyē</b>

Abstract The last few decades have seen considerable interest in non-Muslim sources that contain material on the earliest stage of Islam. This paper examines one such witness, The Book of the Main Points by Yoḥannān bar Penkāyē, a 7th-century Syriac universal history, that provides an account of the Arab conquests, the first decades of the Umayyad caliphate, with a special focus on the events of the Second Fitna. The paper includes a commentary on selected passages from the History concerning the conquests and early Muslim rule, a comparative study of Syriac Christian sources on the Second Fitna, and a lexico-historical sketch of the phenomenon of the šurṭa (slaves and prisoners of war) fighting on the side of al-Muḫtār during the Second Fitna.