The jihad ideology

From AH 70-110, Arabic graffiti started (and ended) talking up the Jihad In God's Way. Lindstedt's LAMINE-3 piece, made possible by more findings of said graffiti, attempts an ideologic profile. 'Tis a good followup to Longworth's inasmuch as it details the Arabic thought which succeeded the mostly-penitential Basic Class. Lindstedt sees Blankinship's Jihad State at work.

I do not see (and Lindstedt does not assert) that all the graffiti as mention these themes were, in of themselves, violent. Several of them ask that the inscriber's good deeds count as righteous-struggle. Where graffiti talk of God's sabîl they are often near Jerusalem pp. 212-13, so on pilgrimage-routes (Lindstedt and I agree also that Mecca existed where it is now, by the AH 70s: pp. 207-8). Thus, some inscribers hoped their death during hajj, if it happened, should count sufficient for Witness.

Violence did exist. In the Hisma pp. 213-14 one Sa'id son of Dhakwan mawla of Mu'awiya begged God "for the honour of being killed (sharaf al-qatl) in Thy Path". Then one Ibn Talut (his father presumably a follower of the Baqára) asked God for the same sharaf. We also have one who believes in "His apostles and scriptures" requesting the same pp. 210-11.

I see here (and here Lindstedt might agree) that AH 70-110 was a window in which jihad was ascendant as the ideology of most Muslims. Even if they found violence personally distasteful, they conceded it tasteful to God; so tried to match their nonviolent deeds with Divine Will. After that the régime dialed all this back, so that personal jihad became the minority opinion of pro-Umayyad diehards like Awza'i and Thawri, and in the Spanish/Moorish far west (until it withered there too).

How about before AH 70? There was certainly some Arab violence then; the Arabs weren't exactly invited into Egypt. Most suwar which detail jihad and (violent) qital, I think, precede the Dome of the Rock's arcade, if for no other reason than that the Dome quotes early sura 3 and the end of sura 4. Still. It challenges theories of general acceptance of suras 3 and 4, that the jihad isn't noted. West-Syrians (at least) heard "Allah rabb" and Q. 112 and other such battle-cries but not this one. Might we be missing something in some cave in southeast Anatolia? It may be that the resurgent Byzantines will hack it away in the AD 900s.

Some of those struggles were internal, as the Zubayrids fought the Umayyads and the Mukhtar. Here too I wonder why the "fitna" is not noted in graffiti; we have suwar concerning this concept, as well, looking to sura 8 here. It may be, again, that we have not found such yet.