Aman in the Byzantine customary law of war

I propose to examine the evidence for the adoption of aman ('safe conduct,guarantee of safety') by the byzantine state as part of its customary law of war in its relations with islamic states between ca. 632-1453. the manuals of fiqh al-jihad dwell in considerable detail on aman in terms of which persons are competent to offer it and how it is to be administered. the manuals seldom give historical examples. it will be the object of my paper to examine aspects of the law of aman as treated in two early manuals of fiqh al-jihad,shaybanis siyar and al-qayrawanis kitab al-jihad,then to investigate the practice of granting aman as reported in the history of yahya b. sa'id al-antaki where there is substantial evidence for it in his accounts of military operations conducted on the frontiers of the byzantine state. he provides evidence that the commanders of muslim forces on occasion asked aman (in the sense of 'safe conduct') from byzantine commanders as well in the same sense as understood in islamic law. the most interesting feature of muslim-christian warfare is the occasions when byzantine commanders granted conditions identical with aman at the capitulation of muslim fortresses (viz. safe conduct to all who wanted to depart to a place of safety). the practice originated not later than the expedition of constantine v against malatya-melitene (eighth c.). the structural similarity between these phenomena and those reported in yahya's history suggests that the conventions associated with aman were well understood by byzantine military commanders,and that it had become an object of regular feature of the customary law of war in the tenth-eleventh c. i will make use of the arabic text and french translations prepared in the editions of i. kratchkovsky,a. a. vasiliev,f. micheau and g. troupeau = po18 (1924),23 (1932) and 47 (1997).