Religious Change in Southern Jordan in the Byzantine and Islamic Periods

“Religious Change in Southern Jordan in the Byzantine and Islamic Periods” An ACOR Public Lecture by Dr. Robert Schick About the Lecture: In the first centuries AD, everybody in the area of Jordan south of the Wadi Mujib were devotees of some Nabataean or Roman religion or another. Christians first appear in the early fourth century and grew in numbers as the pagans largely disappeared by the early fifth century. The Christians formed the overwhelming majority of the population throughout the fifth, sixth and early seventh centuries and continued to thrive for a few generations after the Muslim Conquests of the 630s. As the Muslim population grew and became the majority, the Christians declined and largely faded from view by the ninth and tenth centuries, leaving a Christian population attested in only a few places in the Crusader period. After the Crusades, the Christians dwindled into the minority population found today. This talk seeks to investigate this two-fold change in religious affil