Islam in Palestine

Sunni Islam is a major religion in Palestine, being the religion of the majority of the Palestinian population. Muslims comprise 85% of the population of the West Bank, when including Israeli settlers,^[1] and 99% of the population of the Gaza Strip.^[2] The largest denomination among Palestinian Muslims are Sunnis, comprising 98–99% of the total Muslim population.

In the 7th century, the Arab Rashiduns conquered the Levant; they were later succeeded by other Arabic-speaking Muslim dynasties, including the Umayyads, Abbasids and the Fatimids.^[3] Over time, much of the existing population of Palestine adopted Arab culture and language, and converted to Islam. Although minor in size, the sedentarization of Arabs is also thought to have played a role in accelerating the Islamization process.^[4]^[5]^[6]^[7] Changes in social structure and the weakening of the local Christian authorities caused by the process of deurbanization under Islamic rule are also seen as a major factor.^[8] Some scholars suggest that by the arrival of the Crusaders, Palestine was already overwhelmingly Muslim,^[9]^[10] while others claim that it was only after the Crusades that Christianity lost its majority, and that the process of mass Islamization took place much later, perhaps during the Mamluk period.^[4]^[11]

^ West Bank. CIA Factbook
^ Gaza Strip. CIA Factbook
^ Gil, Moshe (1997). A History of Palestine, 634-1099. Ethel Briodo. Cambridge. ISBN 0-521-59984-9. OCLC 59601193.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
^ ^a ^b Levy-Rubin, Milka (2000). "New Evidence Relating to the Process of Islamization in Palestine in the Early Muslim Period: The Case of Samaria". Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient. 43 (3): 257–276. doi:10.1163/156852000511303. ISSN 0022-4995. JSTOR 3632444.
^ Ellenblum, Ronnie (2010). Frankish Rural Settlement in the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-511-58534-0. OCLC 958547332. From the data given above it can be concluded that the Muslim population of Central Samaria, during the early Muslim period, was not an autochthonous population which had converted to Christianity. They arrived there either by way of migration or as a result of a process of sedentarization of the nomads who had filled the vacuum created by the departing Samaritans at the end of the Byzantine period [...] To sum up: in the only rural region in Palestine in which, according to all the written and archeological sources, the process of Islamization was completed already in the twelfth century, there occurred events consistent with the model propounded by Levtzion and Vryonis: the region was abandoned by its original sedentary population and the subsequent vacuum was apparently filled by nomads who, at a later stage, gradually became sedentarized
^ 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);.
^ Ehrlich, Michael (2022). The Islamization of the Holy Land, 634-1800. Arc Humanity Press. p. 33. ISBN 978-1-64189-222-3. OCLC 1310046222.
^ Ira M. Lapidus, A History of Islamic Societies, (1988) Cambridge University Press 3rd.ed.2014 p.156
^ Mark A. Tessler, A History of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, Indiana University Press, 1994, ISBN 0-253-20873-4, M1 Google Print, p. 70.
^ Ira M. Lapidus, Islamic Societies to the Nineteenth Century: A Global History, Cambridge University Press, 2012, p. 201.

Cite error: There are <ref group=note> tags on this page, but the references will not show without a {{reflist|group=note}} template (see the help page).

[West_Bank-1] West Bank. CIA Factbook

[Gaza_Strip-2] Gaza Strip. CIA Factbook

[4] Gil, Moshe (1997). A History of Palestine, 634-1099. Ethel Briodo. Cambridge. ISBN 0-521-59984-9. OCLC 59601193.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)

[:22-5] Levy-Rubin, Milka (2000). "New Evidence Relating to the Process of Islamization in Palestine in the Early Muslim Period: The Case of Samaria". Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient. 43 (3): 257–276. doi:10.1163/156852000511303. ISSN 0022-4995. JSTOR 3632444.

[6] Ellenblum, Ronnie (2010). Frankish Rural Settlement in the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-511-58534-0. OCLC 958547332. From the data given above it can be concluded that the Muslim population of Central Samaria, during the early Muslim period, was not an autochthonous population which had converted to Christianity. They arrived there either by way of migration or as a result of a process of sedentarization of the nomads who had filled the vacuum created by the departing Samaritans at the end of the Byzantine period [...] To sum up: in the only rural region in Palestine in which, according to all the written and archeological sources, the process of Islamization was completed already in the twelfth century, there occurred events consistent with the model propounded by Levtzion and Vryonis: the region was abandoned by its original sedentary population and the subsequent vacuum was apparently filled by nomads who, at a later stage, gradually became sedentarized

[7] 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."

[:32-8] Gideon Avni, The Byzantine-Islamic Transition in Palestine: An Archaeological Approach, Oxford University Press 2014 pp.312–324, 329 (theory of imported population unsubstantiated);.

[:7-9] Ehrlich, Michael (2022). The Islamization of the Holy Land, 634-1800. Arc Humanity Press. p. 33. ISBN 978-1-64189-222-3. OCLC 1310046222.

[10] Ira M. Lapidus, A History of Islamic Societies, (1988) Cambridge University Press 3rd.ed.2014 p.156

[Tessler3-11] Mark A. Tessler, A History of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, Indiana University Press, 1994, ISBN 0-253-20873-4, M1 Google Print, p. 70.

[12] Ira M. Lapidus, Islamic Societies to the Nineteenth Century: A Global History, Cambridge University Press, 2012, p. 201.

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