Download PDF | Irfan Shahid, Byzantium And The Arabs In The Fourth Century, Dumbarton Oaks ( 2008)
658 Pages
Preface
B efore their historic assault on Byzantium in the seventh century, the Arabs had had seven centuries of close relations with both Rome on the Tiber and Rome on the Bosphorus. The history of Arab-Roman relations in these seven centuries awaits and deserves a satisfactory treatment if only because it is the necessary prolegomenon for understanding the extraordinary events of the seventh century, when it was not the Persians, who lived in the military consciousness of the Romans as their principal antagonists in the East, but the Arabs who succeeded in dismembering the Oriental and African provinces of Byzantium and ushering in a new era in the history of the Mediterranean region and southwestern Asia.
These seven centuries are clearly divisible into two periods each of which is a genuine historical period and not one bounded by two conventional dates. The first is the Roman period of four centuries which elapsed from the Settlement of Pompey in 63 B.C. to the reign of Diocletian, A.D. 284-305; the second is the Byzantine periodt of three centuries from the reign of Constantine in the fourth to that of Heraclius in the seventh. 1 The first period, the Roman period of four centuries, has been treated by the present writer in an interpretative essay2 written as a prolegomenon to the study of the Byzantine period. The present book, Byzantium and the Arabs in the Fourth Century, is the first in a series of three volumes which treats the Byzantine period of three centuries and which might be entitled "Byzantium and the Arabs before the Rise of Islam." The first volume begins with the reign of Constantine and ends with that of Theodosius the Great; the second volume deals with the fifth century from the reign of Arcadius to that of Anastasius and is entitled Byzantium and the Arabs in the Fifth Century; the third volume deals mainly with the sixth century and partly with the seventh from the reign of Anastasius to that of Phocas or Heraclius and is entitled Byzantium and the Arabs in the Sixth Century.3
These three volumes are an intensive and detailed treatment of Arab-Byzantine relations in these centuries. In addition to being a history of these three centuries, they are intended to be a prolegomenon to the study of the rise of Islam and the Arab Conquests in the seventh century. For this they are chronologically closer than Rome and the Arabs, which provides the remoter Roman background. 2 The Arabs who figure in this book are not the Arabs who had become Roman citizens in the Roman period nor those independent Arabs who lived in the Peninsula beyond the Roman frontier, but the groups that are termed foederati, the allies of Byzantium, who represent the new relationship that obtained between Byzantium and the Arabs after the end of the Roman period. Byzantium knew three such groups of foederati in the course of these three centuries: the Tanukhids of the fourth century, the Salil).ids of the fifth, and the Ghassanids of the sixth. Thus the three centuries are divisible into three periods, each roughly coinciding with one century during which flourished a dominant Arab group, the Tanukhids, the Salil).ids, and the Ghassanids respectively. The material on these three centuries cannot be presented clearly except in this way and in three separate volumes, since each of these three centuries witnessed the rise of a new dominant group of Arab foederati and it is only when the history of each of these dynasties and dominant federate groups is presented separately that their respective identities can be discovered.
Thus the result is a diachronous treatment of three centuries of Arab-Byzantine relations which should enable the student of this period to view the succession of these three dominant federate groups not as Saracens, a general and vague term, but as Tanukhids, Salil).ids, and Ghassanids, three Arab groups each possessed of its own identity. The present book is the history of the first century of this Byzantine period, treating the history of the Tanukhids, the federates of Byzantium in the fourth century. The region where federate Arab history unfolded itself is the Byzantine administrative division known as the Diocese of Oriens. 4 The book is thus an ethno-regional history, that of the federate Arabs in the Diocese of Oriens. This is important to bear in mind. As has already been said, this series of books on Arab-Byzantine relations in pre-Islamic times is a prolegomenon to the Arab Conquests, and it is in this very region, Oriens,5 that the decisive battles of Islam against Byzantium took place; and so a study of the Arab element in the same region is obviously of much relevance to the study of the events of the seventh century. In that century, the Muslim Arabs attacked a region in which the Arabs were represented by two elements: the visible federate presence and the tangible layer of Arab Rhomaioi-a substrate that had been formed in the Roman period. The two elements interacted in preIslamic times and became a factor to be taken into account in the study of the Arab Conquests.
Thus, in Arab terms, Oriens is an intelligible unit of study from the point of view of historical and political geography. Although it is Oriens and its federate Arabs that are the subject and main theme of this book, the treatment does not neglect other groups, and, indeed, it does place the fortunes and history of the foederati within the international context of the various political entities and communities of the Near East, namely, Sasanid Persia and its Arab clients, the Lakhmids of J::Iira, the Arabs of the Arabian Peninsula, J::Iimyar and Najran of South Arabia, and, across the Red Sea, Ethiopia. Nevertheless, it is sharply focused on the foederati. These were the shield of Byzantium against the Arabs of the Peninsula in the fourth and the following two centuries, and this tutelary shield functioned well in these three centuries. But when the Peninsular Arabs appeared in the seventh century as Muslims, the shield broke and crumbled. That it did so and did not ward them off is part of the answer to the large historical question of the Arab victory over Byzantium in the seventh century. Hence the importance of the history of these foederati, on which these three volumes, BAFOC, BAFIC, and BASIC, focus and which they try to illuminate.
These federate Arabs were soldiers in Byzantium's army of the Orient, and this explains the emphasis on their military history, especially as the book is partly a prolegomenon to the Arab Conquests of the seventh century. Yet the cultural life of the foederati is not neglected, and its most important facet relates to their involvement in Christianity and in ecclesiastical history. Thus the roles of the foederati are placed in the context in which they belong, the world of the Byzantine imperium and of the ecclesia, in the Diocese of Oriens and in the Patriarchate of Antioch, both of which roles are practically unknown to the historians of this period. And it is noteworthy that important matters pertaining to Arabic culture can be examined better when not the Arab Rhomaioi but these foederati are involved. Thus the book is a cultural as well as a political and military history of these federate Arabs in the fourth century.
The case for the appearance of this volume as the first in a series of three on Byzantium and the Arabs before '"he rise of Islam needs no pleading. These are the three lost or forgotten centuries in the history of Arab-Byzantine relations, as the following historiographical sketch will abundantly show. Of these three centuries only the sixth may be said to have been subjected to a scientific investigation. Noldeke's Ghassanischen Fiirsten is truly an epoch-making work in the history of the Arabs before the rise of Islam and of the Arab-Byzantine relationship. 6 But although it is philology at its best, the work is really a series of notes and footnotes rather than a history, and, what is more, it is a history of an Arab dynasty or kingdom rather than a historical study of Arab-Byzantine relations. Noldeke wrote as an Orientalist, not a Byzantinist; the Byzantine profile of Ghassanid history owes its appearance in his work to the fact that he had to depend on reliable Byzantine sources for working out the chronological framework of Ghassanid history, but he was not primarily interested in the Byzantine profile of Arab history. A. A. Vasiliev was, and he is, therefore, the father of Byzantino-arabica; his pioneering work was carried on by a first-rate Arabist, Marius Canard. Both of them were interested in the Islamic period of Byzantino-arabica, but, regrettably, Vasiliev started with the late period of the ninth and tenth centuries rather than with the seventh, the century of the rise of Islam and the Arab Conquests. However, toward the end of his life, he apparently developed interest in the pre-Islamic period and realized its importance to the Arab Conquests of the seventh century. 7 But the result of this interest was slight and was worked out posthumously by his colleague Canard. 8 N. Pigulevskaia dealt with many aspects of Near Eastern history in pre-Islamic times in various articles and volumes, the most relevant of which are two: Byzanz au/ den Wegen nach Indien and The Arabs on the Frontiers of Byzantium and Iran in the IV-VI Centuries.9
Strictly speaking, neither work is Byzantino-arabica. The former is the better, much better, of the two; the latter is unfortunately a superficial compilation in which the prolific authoress did not do justice to herself or to the subject. The most relevant part of it treating the fourth century is especially inadequate. 10 Thus the ideal for writing the history of Byzantium and the Arabs before the rise of Islam is to combine the method of the German Arabist Noldeke 11 in treating the Arab profile with the conception of the Byzantinist Vasiliev in presenting the finished result as a contribution to the history of Byzantium. This is the principle that has guided the writing of Byzantium and the Arabs in the Fourth Century. With the exception of a perfunctory and unsatisfactory treatment by Pigulevskaia, the fourth century in Arab-Byzantine relations has had no historians. Its two most important documents, the Namara inscription and the literary accounts of Mavia, have so far been in the hands of the epigraphist and the ecclesiastical historian respectively. It is therefore hoped that this book on the fourth century will fill this vacuum by illuminating the first of the three forgotten centuries in the history of Arab-Byzantine relations and in such a way as to enable the general historian to have a better perception of the place of the Arabs in this century. 12 And it should, together with the two subsequent volumes BAFIC and BASIC, serve as a prolegomenon for the study of the Arab Conquests, which opened the Islamic period in ArabByzantine relations. 13 4 W. W. Tarn's work on Alexander the Great 14 in two parts has partly inspired the format of this book, which was to have been published in two volumes: volume one containing the synthesis and exposition; volume two devoted to the sources, to analyses, to topical studies, and to the extraction of the data from the various sources. Owing to the prohibitive cost of publication in these hard times, the plan of publishing the work in two volumes had to be abandoned, but the format has survived in the structure of the present book, the single volume that it is. The first three parts answer to volume twoas originally planned, while Part Four answers to volume one. Part One deals with the Greek and Latin sources, Part Two with the Oriental. The sources had to be divided in this fashion in order to present to the reader a lucid account of them and of the problems which each of the two sets of sources presents. 15 Part Three consists of a series of topical studies not dependent on one set of sources to the exclusion of the other. Part Four represents the synthesis, necessary in a work of this kind, full of details, specialized studies, and appendices, which interrupt the sequence of the presentation. In addition to the customary section on the sources in the introductory part of this book, three more have been included: "The Problems and Major Themes," "Byzantium and the Arabs before the Rise of Islam," and "The Fourth Century." The case for the first is explained in the opening paragraph of that secion; the second has been included because BAFOC opens a series of three books on the pre-Islamic period in its entirety; hence a survey of these three centuries from the reign of Constantine to that of Heraclius becomes necessary; the third section on the fourth century is written as a synoptic view which will conduce to a better comprehension of Parts I-III that follow, consisting as they do of so many chapters that range over a wide variety of topics.
DECEMBER 1981 WASHINGTON, D.C. "On this, see the section on the sources.
Acknowledgments
As this book has been in the making for a number of years, many are the organizations and individuals to whom it owes its completion. First and foremost must come Dumbarton Oaks. It is there that I have undertaken all my researches on Byzantino-arabica, those that have been included in this book and those that have appeared in print on the fifth and sixth centuries. The first chapters of this book were written at Dumbarton Oaks when I was in residence in the first term of the academic year 1975-76, and it was also there during 1979-80 that the manuscript was almost completed. In the second term of the academic year 1975-76, I was a member of the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, at its School of Historical Studies, where I worked on this book in those ideal surroundings. In addition to support from Dumbarton Oaks and the Institute for Advanced Study, I received grants that enabled me to continue working on my manuscript and to be free from teaching duties in the summers of the period 1976---79. One grant was awarded by the Joint Committee on the Near and Middle East of the Social Science Research Council of the American Council of Learned Societies, and the Social Science Research Council and I used this grant for two consecutive summers, 1976 and 1977. The Center for Contemporary Arab Studies at Georgetown University awarded me a grant for the summer of 1978, as did Georgetown University for the summer of 1979. To all these institutions and organizations I am deeply grateful. Research on this book was conducted at three libraries in Washington, D.C.
The first place must be given to the Dumbarton Oaks Library, the unrivaled resources of which are familiar to all those who have been privileged to use it. I should like to thank the Librarian, Irene Vaslef, and her staff for their help and unfailing courtesy. The second library is the Woodstock Theological Center Library, Georgetown University, where I enjoyed the invaluable help of its Head Librarian, Father H. Bertels, S.J., and its Assistant Librarian, Father W. Sheehan, C.S.B. The third is the Joseph Mark Lauinger Library, also at Georgetown University, especially valuable for its collection of Arabic sources, and I should like to thank its Arabic Materials Specialist, B. Bickett, and the Assistant Reference Librarian, C. Colwell, for answering my many quenes. The manuscript of this book was read in whole or in part by five readers. The first to read the part based on the Greek and Latin sources was Professor Glen W. Bowersock during the period 1976-78; Professor Franz Rosenthal read the part based on the Oriental sources and Ahmad Shboul read the section on Hisham al-KalbI. For the comments of all three scholars and the two anonymous readers I am very grateful. In addition to the constructive comments of the readers of the manuscript, those of various colleagues have also been valuable. These colleagues belong to the Dumbarton Oaks community of scholars, whether living permanently in the Washington area or coming as transient visitors. I should like to single out Peter Topping, Alexander Kazhdan, John Callahan, Nicolas Oikonomides, Lennart Ryden, Evangelos Chrysos, Kenneth Hoium, Speros Vryonis, Walter Kaegi, Averil Cameron, Sidney Griffith, Jelisaveta Allen, Michael McCormick, John Duffy, and Thomas S. Parker. Maps, however sketchy and skeletal, are essential for a better comprehension of this book, since some of the localities are little known to the general reader or altogether unknown. I am, therefore, particularly grateful to John Wilson, Assistant for Drafting and Reproduction, Dumbarton Oaks, St. Sophia Project, for giving generously of his time and skillfully executing the task of drawing the eight maps. . The precious Arabic inscription that has flooded with light the history of Arab-Byzantine relations in the fourth century appears as the frontispiece in this volume in order to give the reader, guiltless of Arabic and Semitic epigraphy, a visual impression of this most important document.
It was through the good offices of Mlle C. Metzger, Conservateur, Departement des Antiquites Grecques et Romaines, and of M. A. J. Decaudin, Documentaliste, Departement des Antiquites Orientales, Musee du Louvre, that I was able to obtain a photograph of the Namara inscription. I should like to thank both of them for the photograph and the latter for permission to reproduce it. I am grateful to the Senior Research Associate of Dumbarton Oaks and Advisor for Byzantine Publications, Peter Topping, for his counsel and judgment in seeing this work through the various stages of its metamorphosis from manuscript to printed book. My thanks go also to Glenn Ruby, Publishing Manager, for technical aspects of the production of this book. Three administrators of Georgetown University have in the material sense greatly facilitated work on the manuscript by providing funds for research assistance and typing: the Provost, the Reverend Father J. Donald Freeze, S.J., Dr. James Alatis and Dr. Jose Hernandez, Dean and Associate Dean of the School of Languages and Linguistics respectively. My warm thanks go to them and to those who have typed the manuscript: Josette Selim, our departmental secretary who typed most of the manuscript, and Frances Nordbye. I am also grateful to Frances Kianka for preparing the Bibliography and the Index. My wife, Mary, deserves special thanks in this connection for having worked long and hard on various aspects of the manuscript including typing and the correction of typographical errors.
The strongest impetus in the material sense to the publication of this book has come, however, from Mr. H. Sabbagh and the Diana Tamari Sabbagh Foundation. Mr. Sabbagh is a philanthropist, well known for his many benefactions, and I should like to thank him warmly for the personal interest he has taken in my work. The Diana Tamari Sabbagh Foundation has repeatedly extended its patronage to scholarship and learning, and I wish to record in these acknowledgments my profound gratitude to the Board of Trustees and its Chairman, Mr. A. Shoman, for their liberality in awarding me a grant which has made possible the speedy publication of this book. As these acknowledgments began with Dumbarton Oaks, so must they end, this time addressed to the scholar who is its Director, Giles Constable. Byzantium and the Arabs in the Fourth Century with the major themes which it treats and the problems which it raises has naturally attracted the attention of a distinguished medievalist with far-ranging historical sympathies. I am deeply sensible of his encouragement and his responsiveness to my researches.
Introduction
I. THE SOURCES
The sources of Byzantium and the Arabs in the Fourth Century are divisible into two major sets: the Graeco-Roman and the Oriental. Most readers will be familiar with one or the other of these two sets, so different from each other. But since this book is addressed to both the Arabist and the Byzantinist, since its arguments draw on both sets of sources, and since its conclusions are welded from data extracted from the two sets, the customary chapter on the sources assumes even greater importance. Of the two sets, it is the Oriental sources that need and deserve special attention because of their nature, their limitations, and the problems that they present to the historian who is using them for writing the history of Arab-Byzantine relations.
The Greek and Latin sources, on the other hand, are well known to the Byzantinist and the medievalist and they have been intensively studied. However, a few words on them in the _c::ontext of this book are desirable in order to demonstrate better their relation to the Oriental sources. 1 The Greek and Latin Sources These sources are many and belong to various orders of historical writing. From this variety, three authors stand out as the major sources for the history of Arab-Byzantine relations in the fourth century, namely, the secular Latin historian Ammianus Marcellinus, the Greek ecclesiastical historian Sozomen, and the biblical scholar St. Jerome. In addition to a minute analysis of their relevant works for the extraction of data, a chapter has been devoted to each of these three writers as a contribution both to historiography and to the theme of the image of the Arabs in the fourth century. Of the three, Ammianus receives the most detailed treatment.'
The Greek and Latin sources for the history of Arab-Byzantine relations in the fourth century are extremely good. Many of them are primary and contemporary and they are relatively abundant compared to those on the fifth century. Besides, they illuminate all the reigns from Constantine to Theodosius I with the exception of that of Constantius which, however, they do indirectly. They leave many gaps in the reigns of each of these emperors, but they provide enough material for the thread of continuity to be traced and for making the diachronous treatment of Arab-Byzantine relations in the fourth century possible. Through this diachronous treatment, the historical evolution of the various institutions of the Arab foederati admits of being studied. The data which these sources provide are mostly on military and political history, and thus the position of the Arabs as foederati of Byzantium emerges clearly in the wars and politics of fourth-century Byzantium. These sources illuminate two other areas, namely, the extent of the Arab federate presence in the Diocese of Oriens and the ecclesiastical history of the Arab foederati. The Greek and Latin sources are the backbone of this book; but for them, and especially the sound chronological framework which they provide, no intelligible history of Arab-Byzantine relations in the fourth century would have been possible. It is for this reason that the analyses start with them, and the reader is advised to read the analyses, composed of two sections, the GraecoRoman and the Oriental, in this order. It is only in this way that the part on the Arabic sources can be profitably read by the Byzantinist and even by the Arabist as well. The Oriental Sources Of the various Oriental sources for the fourth century, the Arabic are the most important. 2 The Syriac and Sabaic come next. These Arabic sources are divisible into two sets, the epigraphic and the literary. The first is represented by the Namara inscription, the most important Arabic document for the Arab-Byzantine relationship in the fourth century. Indeed, without it, it is almost impossible to reconstruct this relationship during the reign of Constantine, the terminus a quo of this relationship in the fourth century and the subsequent centuries of the Byzantine period in its entirety. The second set, the literary sources, were written in later Islamic times. They are reliable sources such as TabarI, BalagurI, and Mas'udI. Most, if not all, of what they have to say on the federate and other Arabs of the fourth century derives from the work of Hisham al-KalbI. A special section has, therefore, been devoted to this chief Muslim historian of pre-Islamic Arabia
and the writer of a monograph on the federate Taniikhids of the fourth century. These Islamic sources are literary, historical, geographical, and genealogical. 3 In view of the fact that these Arabic literary sources are late, it is necessary to discuss them, especially for the guidance of non-Arabists. These are sources that were written not in the fourth century but in later Islamic times. However, until and unless more pre-Islamic inscriptions are found, they will remain the only extant sources for the extraction of data of a special type on the Arab foederati of the fourth century, and so they cannot be ignored. Those unfamiliar with the problems of Arabic historiography may understandably raise questions about the use of Islamic sources for writing the history of the pre-Islamic Arab foederati. They should remember, however, that although late, these sources depend on a long isnad, or chain of authorities, which goes back to the distant past, 4 and sometimes they depend on written sources which themselves go back to early times, some possibly pre-Islamic, or close to it. So the floruit of the Islamic historians should not constitute too much of a problem. The section on Hishiim shows that that literary Muslim historian depended on pre-Islamic epigraphy for gathering data on the Lakhmids of J::lira. l The Greek and Latin sources are specific in the data which they provide, especially on matters of chronology, but they are not so in other areas that pertain to the Arab-Byzantine relationship. The Arabs, for instance, all appear as Saracens, and it is the Arabic sources that give specificity to this general designation. It is they that describe the tribal affiliations of the various Arab groups in Oriens in the fourth century, a matter of considerable importance to understanding the history of these federate groups. Again, in the Greek and Latin sources, hardly any mention is made of the locations in which these foederati were settled. The Arabic sources contribute something specific to solving this problem too. 6
In addition to specificity in such areas as tribal affiliations and toponymy, there are other dimensions of the Arab-Byzantine relationship which the Arabic sources illuminate, namely, cultural matters. With the exception of Sozomen, who provides the precious data on the composition of Arabic poetry in the fourth century, it is only these Arabic sources that provide this type of cultural information, and this is illustrated in the chapters that deal with the foederati and Christianity, their involvement with Arabic poetry, and the problem of an Arabic Bible and liturgy in the fourth century. Finally, it is the Arabic sources (and also the Syriac), not the Greek and Latin, that describe the fortunes of the fourth-century Arab foederati, the Taniikhids, in subsequent pre-Islamic centuries and in the Islamic period, a matter of considerable importance to the Arab-Byzantine relationship in Islamic as well as pre-Islamic times. The Two Sets of Sources The two sets of sources may now be viewed synoptically. Unrelated as they may seem and hailing from two entirely different worlds, they are now related in this context in which they speak of the same century and contribute data on the same Arab foederati: ( 1) The Greek and Latin sources take precedence over the Arabic in the establishment of the fundamental framework for the reconstruction of the history of Arab-Byzantine relations in the fourth century. This is why the first part of the series of analyses draws on them. The Arabic sources, especially the literary, are chronologically posterior to the Greek and Latin sources, and this is why they have been relegated to the second position. (2) In the data which they provide on the Arab foederati of the fourth century, the two sets of sources are complementary to each other, and the one is absolutely essential to the other. This should be clear from a perusal of the various chapters on the two sets of sources. Each explores dimensions of Arab-Byzantine relations that are different from the other; sometimes data from one set fills in the picture or the frame left vacant by the other with specific details. The two sets are also complementary in the process of drawing conclusions on certain problems. For instance, the cognomen of Constantine, Arabicus, attested in a Latin inscription, receives considerable illumination from the Arabic Namara inscription. The same may be said of the chapter on the Bible and the liturgy, in which conclusions cannot be drawn without laying under contribution data from both sets of sources. 2 It remains to discuss the method and technique employed in the utilization of the Oriental sources as the second of the two sets of sources on which this book is based. It is partly a matter of apprising the reader, when he is a non-Arabist, of the methodology worked out by the German Arabist and Father of Byzantino-arabica in the pre-Islamic period, Theodor Noldeke, of the application of his critical method to the Oriental sources that treat the fourth century, and of the modifications that have been introduced by the present writer into Noldeke's technique. In his famous monograph on the Ghassanids, 7 Noldeke turned his back on the methodology employed by his predecessor Caussin de Perceval, 8 who depended uncritically on the Arabic sources for reconstructing the history of the Arabs before the rise of Islam, including that of Arab-Byzantine relations. "The serious aspersions he cast on the genealogical tables and the chronological sequences of the Arab historians-on which Caussin de Perceval had leaned so heavily, but which carried no conviction for Noldeke's critical acumenundermined the groundwork on which his predecessor had rested his structure and thus caused it to collapse. In so doing, Noldeke transferred the emphasis from the Arabic to the Greek and Syriac sources, and thus revolutionised the methodology of reconstructing the history of Ghassan. "9 Thus Noldeke depended on the Greek and Latin sources for reconstructing the Arab-Byzantine past in pre-Islamic times and then, and only then, turned to the Oriental sources for more data, relying on the Syriac rather than on the Arabic sources for the history of the Ghassanids, at least in certain areas. The Syriac sources took precedence over the Arabic because they were written much before the Arabic ones. When Noldeke utilized the latter, he depended more on contemporary Arabic poetry than on the later Islamic historians, whose reconstructions of the distant Ghassanid past did not always pass his tests. Noldeke's methodology has guided all those who have written on preIslamic Arabica for almost a century, including the present writer in his various articles on Byzantino-arabica, and it is this methodology that has basically guided the writing of this book. But in view of the fact that Noldeke wrote almost a century ago, it is only natural that certain modifications should be introduced into his method. The problems of the fourth century are not identical with those of the sixth; the fortunes of the Taniikhids are different from those of the Ghassanids; and the sources of these two centuries present different problems. Furthermore, advances have been made in both Byzantine and Arab history in this long period and new sources have been discovered. All this calls for some modifications of Noldeke's technique.
Observations on these modifications may be divided into two parts: (A) observations of a general nature, and (B) specific ones that pertain to the fourth century. A These observations relate principally to the status of the Arabic sources vis-a-vis the Greek and Latin and also the Syriac. Although Noldeke's conclusions remain valid, namely, that precedence should be given to the Greek and Latin sources in certain areas, e.g., in chronology, the Arabic sources that happened not to be valuable for his purpose 10 in reconstructing the history of the Ghassanid dynasty turn out on closer examination to be not so unreliable for other periods. These sources have been examined for Byzantino-arabica in the fifth century, for the SalIJ:iids, and they turned out to be worthy of more consideration, much more than Noldeke had been willing to concede. Some tests have been applied for establishing the reliability of the Arabic accounts, u and two large questions have been raised, namely, "How to use the Arabic sources?" and secondly, "What to expect from them?" In an article on the SalIJ:iids, the present writer has concluded in answering the first question that the Arabic sources "contain much that is valuable and historical." The task of the student of these sources is "how to isolate the solid spots in them, by-pass the soft ones, resolve contradictions in them that are only apparent, and apply certain tests to establish their authenticity, thus penetrating eventually to the kernel of historical truth which they undoubtedly contain. "12 In answer to the second question, the same article has shown "that while the sources may not answer questions of one order or category they can and do answer questions of another order which in the last analysis may be even more important than the first. "13 B The following departures from Noldeke's technique specifically pertain to writing the history of Byzantino-arabica in the fourth century: 1. For the fourth century, the Arabic sources are more important than the Syriac, on which Noldeke depended heavily for writing on the sixth. 14 The latter have only limited usefulness, which consists mainly in the light these sources throw indirectly on the question of the involvement of the Arab
foederati in Christianity and of the later fortunes of the Tanukhids, in Islamic times. 15 2. Arabic epigraphy was hardly an important source for Noldeke when he reconstructed Ghassanid history in the sixth century. But for the fourth century it is a major source. It is the Arabic Namara inscription that is the main source for the history of the Arab-Byzantine relationship in the reign of Constantine. Without it, it would have been impossible to make sense of that relationship for the reign of Constantine, which, moreover, happens to be the first reign and the terminus a quo for the Arab-Byzantine relationship in its entirety. That is why this inscription is discussed not in the context of its proper set of sources-the Arabic-but in that of the Greek and Latin, the sources from which were extracted the data for writing a diachronous history of Arab-Byzantine relations in the reign of each of the emperors of the fourth century from Constantine to Theodosius. 3. The value of the Arabic literary sources for the history of the fourth century has already been commented upon. 16 They had not been very helpful to Noldeke in his reconstruction of Ghassanid history in the sixth century or what he was looking for in that history. But they are valuable for the history of the Tanukhids both in the fourth century and after. Thus the Arabic sources, both epigraphic and literary, are basic for writing the history of Arab-Byzantine relations in the fourth century; they are the most important of all the Oriental sources. And this importance is likely to be enhanced with the lapse of time. The world of Arabian archeology, as well as that of the Arabic manuscripts, is opening up, and this is sure to yield some crucial data for reconstructing the history of the Arabs before the rise of Islam and that of the Arab-Byzantine relationship. One set of Oriental sources made available by Arabian archeology is now assuming crucial importance, namely, the Sabaic inscriptions from the distant Arabian South. These inscriptions have shed a bright light on the obscure Peninsular phase in the history of two of Byzantium's Arab foederati-the Tanukhids of the fourth century and the Ghassanids of the sixth. 17 Thus they represent a new set of sources for reconstructing the history of Arab-Byzantine relations in pre-Islamic times. 18
II. THE PROBLEMS AND THE MAJOR THEMES The range of problems and themes that this book both treats and relates to is extensive. Their synoptic presentation is, therefore, desirable as conducive to a better comprehension of Arab-Byzantine relations in the fourth century and to a further probing of these problems in the light of new evidence that may turn up. Many of these problems persist in the fifth and the sixth centuries, and so their identification in this book on the fourth century lays a foundation for a diachronous treatment which will reveal their evolution and thus enable the history of Arab-Byzantine relations in pre-Islamic times to be written along genetic lines. These problems and themes may be divided into three main groups. 1 First are those that pertain to the fourth century itself, and a list of them may be found in the table of contents. 19 They may be grouped around a few major themes, which may be presented as follows: (1) Political, military, and economic: (a) Byzantium and the Eastern Question; (b) Byzantium and the Barbarians; a study of the process of Byzantinization; (c) the place and function of the Arab foederati in the Byzantine army and their contribution to the defense of Oriens and the Limes Orienta/is. (2) Cultural: (a) the involvement of the Arabs in Christianity and the ramifications of this involvement: the rise of an Arab Church in the fourth century within the Patriarchate of Antioch; the Arabic liturgy and the light it sheds on the search for the Arabic Bible in pre-Islamic times; (b) the composition of Arabic poetry in Oriens in the fourth century; (c) the image of the Arabs in the mirror of Byzantine historiography. Finally, a major problem and a vexed question that involves the Arabs is that of heresies and national movements and their relation to the fall of the Roman Empire, a view associated with the name of the Oxford historian E. L. Woodward. 2 Of the many groups of barbarians who tried to breach the Roman Wall, only two succeeded-the Germans in the West and the Arabs in the East. The history of the German breakthrough in the West has been studied by generation after generation of scholars, but the same cannot be said of the Arab breakthrough in the East. To make a contribution to this understudied area is one of the goals of this and the following volumes in this series, BAFOC, BAF IC, and BASIC, in which are presented the fortunes of the other group of barbarians that are involved in the empire's fall. This book should, therefore, be of special interest to the scholar who deals with the German profile of Byzantine history. The study of the history of the two peoples in this comparative context is mutually illuminative, whether the study is conducted synchronously for the fourth century or diachronously for the fifth and the seventh centuries when the Germans and the Arabs effect their historic breakthroughs respectively. For the concerns of this book, the comparative approach is especially fruitful for the study of the federate experiment as applied to these two peoples: ( 1) The history of the Visigoths who broke through the Danube line in the fourth century has been the subject of much research. The investigation of the history of the Arab foederati in Oriens in the same century has revealed the existence of another group of foederati similar to the Visigoths with whom these may be compared and contrasted for examining the conclusions that have been drawn on the Visigoths regarding such aspects of their federate history as their legal status, the terms of the foedus, and their settlement within the limes on Roman soil. (2) The Byzantine experiment with the Germans did not last long. After the major breakthrough at Adrianople in A.D. 378 in the fourth century, these brought about the collapse of the empire in the West in the following century. By contrast, the experiment with the Arabs lasted much longer, for three centuries, before the breakthrough of the Peninsular Arabs took place in the seventh century. Hence the importance of this experiment, this federate experiment with the Arabs, as one that endured so long, maturing in the sixth century and thus admitting of a close examination and evaluation. Thus the Arab problem in the East balances the German problem in the West through the historic roles of these peoples as two hammers that hewed down the imperial fabric of Mediterranean Rome. The fortunes of the two peoples are linked together within this historical framework and through their complementary roles in the work of destruction. But they are also linked in the subsequent work of reconstruction-the erection of the new imperial structures that each built on the old Roman soil: the Sacrum Imperium and the Islamic Caliphate. Thus the fruitfulness of the comparative approach extends beyond the limits of late antiquity. 3 The seventh century is a watershed in the history of Byzantium, and its character as such is due to the rise of Islam and the Arab Conquests. On the one hand, the century witnessed the establishment of Arab ascendancy in the Near East and half of the Mediterranean region; on the other, it witnessed the amputation and loss to the Arabs of the Afro-Asian provinces and the conversion of Byzantium from an empire almost coterminous with the Mediterranean basin into a Balkan-Anatolian state. Thus, in addition to being a recovery of the past, the past of these three centuries, research on the fourth and the two following centuries acquires a new significance derivative from that of the seventh, since these three centuries emerge as the period of the gathering storm in Arabia, the period that witnessed the silent growth of a number of factors that finally went into the making of the great historic movement of Arab expansion and conquest in the seventh century. In this larger sense, research on Byzantium and the Arabs in the fourth and subsequent centuries before the rise of Islam becomes crucially related to the problem of the fall of the Byzantine Empire. 20 The third group of major historical problems that the theme "Byzantium and the Arabs before the Rise of Islam" is related to pertains to the seventh century and may be specified as follows: ( 1) The first is the rise of Islam in the second decade of the seventh century in Mecca in a region that had experienced a strong Byzantine presence in }::Iijaz, a large part of which had been the Provincia Arabia. J::Iijaz or Western Arabia, rather than Arabia in its entirety, is the true "Cradle of Islam." (2) The second is the Arab Conquests, the offensives which the Arabs mounted against Byzantine Oriens in the fourth decade of the same century and which resulted in the final loss of that diocese to the Muslim Arabs. A partial solution to the problem of the Arab victory is provided by the investigation of the history of the Arab foederati of Byzantium and the failure of their protective shield to withstand the Muslim Arab onslaught. (3) Less known is the relevance of "Byzantium and the Arabs before the Rise of Islam" to Umayyad history, to the history of the mettlesome Arab state which wrestled with Byzantium in the seventh and eighth centuries, indeed was interlocked with it in a life-and-death struggle. The Umayyad state was in many important ways "Byzantium post Byzantium." Its rise, decline, and fall was intimately related to the history of the ajnad, the army corps in Umayyad Oriens/Sham, a considerable portion of whom had been former Byzantine foederati. These constituted the sinews of the Umayyad thrust against Byzantium, and in so doing they lived on for another century asajnad after the collapse of the system to which they had belonged as foederati at the decisive battle of the Yarmiik in A.D. 636. Thus they formed part of the persistent heritage in the structure of the Umayyad state and represented one of the strong strands of continuity between Byzantine Oriens and Umayyad Sham. The extraordinary, even dramatic, events of the seventh century and the surprises with which that century abounds both for Arabia and for Byzantium become intelligible once the history of these three centuries has been elucidated. They are the background of Islam and the Arab Conquests and "Byzantium and the Arabs before the Rise of Islam" is the prolegomenon, logically and chronologically, to "Byzantium and the Arabs in the Seventh Century." The problems of this century will be better comprehended after the relevant features of their background in the three preceding centuries have been investigated and after the roots of the historical process which culminated in the seventh century have been traced to this pre-Islamic period. This investigation by itself will not solve the problems of the seventh century, but it is indispensable to their solution. "Byzantium and the Arabs in the Seventh Century" can be most adequately studied only as the third part of a trilogy whose first part is "Rome and the Arabs from the Settlement of Pompey to the Reign of Diocletian" and whose second part is "Byzantium and the Arabs before the Rise of Islam, from the Reign of Constantine to that of Heraclius." III. BYZANTIUM AND THE ARABS BEFORE THE RISE OF ISLAM The period from the reign of Constantine to that of Heraclius is a genuine historical era and not a conventional one bounded by two arbitrary dates. 21 And it is such not only in the history of Byzantium, a fact which needs no laboring, but also in the history of the Near East, represented by the neighboring powers that are involved in the Arab-Byzantine relationship, namely, the Persians, the Abyssinians, and the Sabaeans. 22 In the history of Persia, this period was opened by the reign of Shapiir II, who revived the Sasanid claims to the pars orientalis and the hopes for the fulfillment of the Achaemenid dream. In the history of Abyssinia, it was opened by the reign of 'Ezana, the Constantine of Abyssinia, who adopted
Christianity as the state religion and inaugurated a pro-Byzantine policy that continued for centuries. In the history of Arabia, it was opened by the reign of Shammar Yuhar'ish, the Sabaean king who about A.D. 300 united for the first time in their long history all the kingdoms of the Arabian South. The period was brought to an end by the Arab Conquests during the reign of Heraclius, which thus represents the terminus ad quern. In the history of Arab-Byzantine relations, these three centuries are flanked by four earlier centuries, from the first B.C. to the third A.D., and by four later centuries from the seventh to the eleventh. They form a middle period between the earlier Roman one that extended from the Settlement of Pompey to the reign of Diocletian and the later Islamic one that ·extended from the seventh to the eleventh century. The Roman period witnessed powerful Arab kingdoms, which had risen as independent political entities even before Rome extended its rule to the eastern Mediterranean, and whose best representative was the Palmyra of Odenathus and Zenobia in the third century. The Islamic period began in the seventh century with the lightning conquests of Muslim arms, which established the political and military supremacy of the Arabs in the Near East and completely reversed their relation to Byzantium from vassals to conquerors. It is not only for the sake of political and military history that this periodization has been made. The Arabs had eleven centuries or so of cultural relations with Rome on the Tiber and Rome on the Bosphorus and an even longer period of relations with Hellenism, whether directly through the Macedonians or through the mediation of Rome. The history of these cultural relations as one theme becomes comprehensible once the natural divisions of this long history have been recognized and characterized. The process of cultural exchange and assimilation in each period responds to the rhythms and contours of political life and history. The setting of this period within this long historical perspective of eleven centuries, between the military ascendancy of Palmyra in the third century and the Muslim supremacy in the seventh, clearly reveals its character as a period of eclipse in Arab history. A curious conjunction of events and circumstances contributed to the eclipse of the Arabs in these three centuries: the rise of the Sabaean wall in the southwest, of the new system of frontier defense in the Byzantine northwest, of the Sasanid power buttressed by a powerful Arab frontier state in the northeast, all placed a term on the expansion of the Arabs in three directions. The Arabs were truly immured. The veritable hell on earth to the southeast known as the Empty Quarter had always been an impenetrable natural barrier. As a result of these constrictions on their political and military selfexpression in this period, the Arabs led what might be termed a satellitic existence. They were surrounded by powerful political entities in whose shadow
they moved. In the northeast, there was Sasanid Persia; in the northwest, Byzantium; in the southwest, J::limyar. The Arabs became the clients of these three powers; such were Kinda for J::limyar, Lakhm for Persia, and Tanukh, SaHJ:i, and Ghassan for Byzantium. Furthermore, the Arabs were drawn into the wars of the great powers of this period, the Sasanid-Byzantine conflict in the north and a parallel conflict in the south between }::limyar and Ethiopia, which after the conversion of 'Ezana became politically aligned with Byzantium, just as J::limyar generally speaking was aligned with Persia. Just as the Arabs in this period led a satellitic political existence, so they did in the cultural sphere as well. These three centuries were a period of cultural domestication for the Arabs as they revolved in the orbits of the three powers that surrounded them, Byzantium, Persia, and J::limyar. And the most important borrowed cultural constituent in the life and history of the Arabs in these centuries was Christianity, which was most powerfully mediated by Byzantium. In fact, Christianity gave Arab history in these three centuries its distinctive character culturally. Before this period, most of the Arabs were pagan, and after it most of them became Muslim. Consequently, these three centuries are those during which the dominant and significant cultural current that influenced the life of the Arabs was the Christian one, and thus they represent the middle period in the spiritual journey of the Arabs, from paganism to Christianity to Islam. The exploration of the historical dimensions of this period, the unity that characterizes it, and its relation to the Roman and the Islamic periods, has not only placed it diachronously as a middle period in the history of a long relationship but has also disclosed its centrality. Hence its significance and complexity. Its complexity is partly derivative from its relations to two major historical themes: (a) Byzantium and the Eastern Question, and (b) Byzantium and the Barbarians. Of these two themes, only what is relevant to and illuminative of the Arab-Byzantine relationship will be treated in this introduction. A. The Eastern Question The military and the economic facets of the Arab profile of the Eastern Question are related to the most important encounter in the history of ArabRoman relations, namely, the meteoric rise of Palmyra and its spectacular fall in the third century. Palmyra had been at one and the same time the capital of a vast commercial empire and of a powerful military organization. Under Odenathus, it saved for Rome the pars orientalis; under Zenobia, it annexed it. Aurelian razed it to the ground, thus completing the dismantling of the Arab military establishment in its entirety, a process which began three decades earlier with the fall of }::latra to Shapur and of Edessa to Gordian. The main features of the political and economic aspects of the Eastern Question that emerge out of the Arab-Roman encounter in the third century and that affect the Arab-Byzantine relationship may be presented as follows: 1. The elimination of Palmyra and the vacuum created by its fall brought the Romans face to face with the Persians, and the important military facet of the Eastern Question again became for Rome what it had always been and what it continued to be-a Persian problem. The Arabs ceased to have an independent existence for Byzantium. After they had been a factor in the shaping of Roman history in the third century, they became an element in Byzantium's scheme of things. 2. In the economic sphere, the fall of Palmyra brought about that gradual shift of commerce from the Mesopotamian route to the West Arabian one-the historic via odorifera-a process which was consummated in the sixth century. Through this shift, Byzantium was brought into a new relationship with another Arab group, the city dwellers of West Arabia. But what Palmyra had united, namely, economic prosperity and military power, was now separated. The military groups in the north had no economic basis for their power but were entirely dependent on Byzantine subsidies. The Arab trading cities of western Arabia had no appreciable military power to match their economic prosperity. Neither was capable of any major military undertaking because the two complementary resources for such an undertaking did not obtain. Hence Byzantium's control of the Arab problem throughout this period. The military and the economic facets of the Eastern Question as it bears on the Arabs in the context of the Arab-Byzantine relationship may be briefly elaborated as follows: (a) The Byzantine solution of the Arab problem benefited from the lesson that the encounter of Rome with Palmyra had inculcated. Powerful independent caravan cities such as had characterized the Roman period were not allowed to develop or to be revived. With the elimination of the Arab clientstates of the Roman period, especially Palmyra, a new structure had to be devised to fill the vacuum created by the fall of Palmyra and to meet the challenges posed by the Arabs and the Arabian Peninsula and which placed the Romans in a constantly reactive posture in defense of the imperium. This new structure was the work of Diocletian, who complemented the military victory of Aurelian over the Arabs by the construction of the Strata Diocletiana, which with its castra and caste/la reflected Rome's determination to take upon itself the defense of the Orient, or that part of it, previously undertaken by Palmyra. But the new defense system with its Limes Diocletianus and its Roman limitanei was not enough to deal with the challenges coming from the Arabs and the Arabian Peninsula. The limes rose and remained in a state of permanent tension between the desert and the sown, and this could only be resolved or alleviated through the employment of Arabs to deal with the Arabs who were raiding the imperial frontier and the limitrophe provinces. The foederati were Byzantium's answer to the permanent challenges that were emanating from the Arabian frontier. The foedus, the treaty, was the convenient device which absorbed the shock of the Arab military groups who fought their way across the limes, and it made them technically allies of the empire, allowing them to settle on Byzantine territory and extending to them the annona, the annual subsidy in return for military service. For three centuries the foederati represented the new Byzantine experiment in Arab-Byzantine relations. (b) The shift from the Mesopotamian to the West Arabian route chimed well with the plans and interests of Byzantium. The Persians were astride two of the principal trade routes which connected the Mediterranean with the Far East. The goal of Byzantine diplomacy was the establishment of a series of alliances in the Red Sea area which would enable Byzantium to bypass the Persian obstacle, enter into direct commercial relations with the Far East, and revive the tradition of Roman trade which had slipped in the third century into the hands of foreign intermediaries. These endeavors brought Byzantium in touch with the Arabs of the incense route, and they explain the concerns of Byzantium over what otherwise might seem insignificant episodes, such as the military operations against the Arabs in the island of lotabe around A.D. 500, or the acquisition of an oasis in northern J::Iijaz, probably Tabuk, around A.D. 530, or the assiduity with which they cultivated the friendship of the phylarchs of Palestina Tertia in the fifth century. Just as the Persians were astride the Mesopotamian route, so were the Sabaeans astride the West Arabian one, and this fact presented a problem for Byzantium, although a less serious one than the Persian. Much depended on the goodwill of the Sabaeans, who were strategically located in control of the incense route. But they were anti-Byzantine ever since the ill-starred expedition of Aelius Gallus during the reign of Augustus. Hence the function of the Arabs settled on the West Arabian route as an important link between Saba and Byzantium. They became the intermediaries of this transit trade and consequently reached a degree of economic prosperity which Mecca, the future city of Islam, fully illustrates in the sixth century. Mecca's services to Byzantium were complemented in the most adequate fashion by a sister city to the south, namely, Najran. Although situated in the Sabaean south, Najran was an Arab city. It was an important trade center, being the focus of a number of trade routes within the Peninsula; and it finally and indirectly rid Byzantium of the Sabaean problem. A joint expedition by Abyssinia and Byzantium brought about the downfall of the Sabaean kingdom, its occupation by the Abyssinians, its conversion to Christianity, and its amenability to Byzantine influence. The spice route in all its segments thus became safe for Byzantium.
To sum up: the displacement of the Mesopotamian route by the West Arabian one was a turning point in the history of the Arabs before the rise of Islam and in the history of their future relations with Byzantium. Of the many consequences that attended the fall of Palmyra, it was this economic one that turned out to be the most significant, since it enabled Mecca to rise to a position of dominance in Arabia and to perform against Byzantium what Palmyra had been unable to perform against Rome. From Palmyra to Mecca would be a suitable rubric for describing the story of this Byzantine period, as From Petra to Palmyra would be an equally suitable one for the earlier Roman period. By what they express and imply, these rubrics illustrate important aspects of the law of political generation and decay, or the rise and fall of political organizations in pre-Islamic Arabia: namely, that it was the sedentary element that shaped the history of the Peninsula and not the nomads, in spite of the latter's wide diffusion and numerical superiority, and that the changes and revolutions in Arab history were directly related to the replacements and displacements of the trans-Arabian routes. B. Byzantium and the Barbarians The history of Byzantium is inseparably linked with that of the three principal groups of barbarians who hammered at its northern and southern frontiers, the Germans, the Slavs, and the Arabs. All of these succeeded in erecting new political structures on former Roman and Byzantine territory and all of them had been drawn into the cultural orbit of Mediterranean Rome. The northern barbarians, the Germans and the Slavs, remained in that orbit, while the Arabs, after revolving for three centuries, suddenly and dramatically flew off, erected a new imperium sacrum of their own, the Islamic Caliphate, and themselves became the center of a new cultural orbit within which revolved new groups of barbarians, the Turks and Mongols of central Asia and the Berbers of North Africa. Byzantium's was not the only cultural orbit in which the Arabs of pre-Islamic times revolved. There were two others, that of l:limyar in South Arabia and that of Sasanid Persia. But it was the Byzantine orbit that was the most powerful of the three in the life of the Arabs as a center of cultural radiation and it continued as such throughout these three centuries. The illumination of some of the obscurity that shrouds the process of Byzantinization among the Arabs in pre-Islamic times is, therefore, highly desirable as a complementary contribution to the study of the Slavic profile of the same process and the Germanic profile of the process of Romanization. Before examining this process, a few preliminary remarks and a number of distinctions and definitions are necessary: 1. Of the three constituents of Byzantinism, namely, the Roman, the Christian, and the Greek, the Roman and the Christian are especially signifi cant, and the Christian is the much more important of the two. It was the most vital and efficacious instrument of Byzantinization among the Arabs of pre-Islamic times. 2. The agents of the process of Byzantinization are principally two: the imperial administration and the ecclesiastical establishment. The interests of the two do not necessarily coincide, except in areas of overlapping jurisdiction, but, generally speaking, their resources and efforts are complementary. 3. The Arab beneficiaries of Byzantium are not homogeneous, but fall into four distinct groups of varying degrees of receptivity to the cultural process. A recognition of their heterogeneous social structure is essential for an accurate evaluation of the success or failure of the Byzantinizing process among them. The first group are the cives, the Rhomaioi, living in the Diocese of the Orient, to whom civitas was extended by the Edict of Caracalla in A.D. 212. The second group are the foederati, the allies settled on both sides of the limes. The third group are the nomads of inner Arabia. The fourth group are the city dwellers of the middle segment of the spice route in western Arabia. The first group, the cives, belonged to Byzantium, and their history is really part of Byzantine provincial history and not so much of Arab-Byzantine relations. They were the group in whom the process of Byzantinization was complete in all its elements, Roman, Christian, and Greek, and whose life and fortunes are intimately reflected in the Latin and Greek inscriptions of Syria. They were the Arabs of such client-states as Petra and Palmyra, who continued to live within the limes after the annexation of the first by Trajan and the second by Aurelian and who lived mainly in the eastern provinces of the Diocese of the Orient. They had settled in this area long before Rome extended its conquests to the eastern Mediterranean, and for this reason they had been subjected to the Greek influence for a much longer period than to the Roman or the Christian, having had three centuries of contact with Hellenism through the Seleucids and the Ptolemies. Although not strictly the concern of this book, they are relevant in three ways: (a) They determined the ethnic constitution of the eastern provinces and thus enabled the Arab foederati to function smoothly and efficiently in discharging their duties. (b) They became an element in the story of the Muslim conquest of these provinces in the seventh century, an element which, however, tends to be exaggerated; they also gave the Muslim occupation of Syria a quality of permanence and accelerated the process of Arabization in the former Byzantine provinces of Oriens. (c) Finally, they remained one of the most important links between the Old Order and the New and a strand of continuity in the Byzantine influence in Umayyad times.
The second group, the foederati, comes next to the Arab Rhomaioi in reflecting the success of Byzantinization among the pre-Islamic Arabs. Both the imperial administration and the ecclesiastical establishment work together in the transmission of the Roman and the Christian elements. The Christian element preceded the Roman, since conversion to Christianity was one of the terms of the settlement of the foederati and their alliance with Byzantium. The Roman element follows the Christian, mediated through their service in the Byzantine army. The influence of this Roman element is reflected in their adoption of Roman weapons and methods of warfare, but more so in the spirit of the Roman army, in its discipline and organization. Their commanders were given the title "phylarch," and it is the emergence of the phylarchate of the Orient, organized along Roman lines, that affords the best opportunity for inspecting the process of Romanization. The phylarchs were endowed with the ranks of the imperial hierarchy, including the gloriosissimate. The conferment of these high ranks is a telling indication of the importance of the foederati and the degree of their integration into the Byzantine system, and this integration is best attested in the sixth century. The gloriosissimate made the supreme phylarch equal in rank to the highest civil and military Roman officials in the diocese, the magister militum and the comes Orientis. But it was not only in purely military and administrative fields that the foederati revealed the degree of Byzantinization to which they had been subjected. Contrary to a widely held view, they were not rude soldiers or semi-nomads, but a sedentary group that contributed to the urbanization of Syria and to the stabilization of the frontier between the desert and the sown. From their f?iras, their military encampments, towns developed, and along the limes rose their castles and palaces, the desolate ruins of which are still standing. A more sensitive measure of the degree of Byzantinization that the foederati underwent is afforded by their involvement in Christianity, the most vital of the three constituents of Byzantinism. The sincerity and seriousness of their Christian confession are most sharply reflected in their stand against the Arian emperors of the fourth century and the Chalcedonian emperors of the sixth on purely doctrinal grounds, since none of their interests, material or other, could have been served by opposition to the empire on whose subsidy they depended. Through their involvement in Monophysitism, the foederati touched the deeper rhythms in the life of an empire whose mind was theological, and this involvement eventually brought about their downfall. The foederati turned out to be not only recipients of Byzantinism but also its middlemen to their countrymen in the Arabian Peninsula. Through their contacts with the groups they had to deal with militarily, politically, and diplomatically, they became indirect agents of the process of Byzantinization, supplementing the work of the imperial administration and the ecclesiastical establishment, particularly in the propagation of Christianity in regions that were more accessible to them than to the Orthodox Byzantine Church. The third group, the nomads, was the group in whom the process of Byzantinization was least effective. The inaccessibility of the inhospitable regions where they roamed and their very nomadism were factors which militated against the success of Byzantinization among them. The element that could reach them was neither the Roman nor the Greek, but the Christian, and when it did, it did not sink very deep. They were more the concern of the ecclesiastical establishment than the imperial administration. Of considerable interest, however, is the fact that the more important instrument of Christianization was the monastery, not the church. The anchorites and eremites of early Christian times found in the desert a congenial place of retreat, and so, where the church could not function for geographical and other reasons, the monastery could and did. But it remained a passive center of pietism and asceticism and not an active agent of evangelization. Nevertheless, its influence was considerable. Of the cities of western Arabia which represent the fourth group, Najran in the Arabian South is the city that merits most attention. The agents of Byzantinization were neither the imperial administration nor the ecclesiastical establishment in Orthodox Byzantium. The process of Byzantinization was part of "the involuntary mission of Byzantium," carried out by non-Orthodox missionaries. The base from which these issued was Mesopotamia, whence they carried their activities into India, Central Asia, and the Far East, and part of this extensive evangelic movement was the drive to the southwest, to the Arab city of Najran; this was not the only region where the missionaries spread Christianity among the Arabs, but this was the most important and the most relevant for Byzantium. The Monophysites came not only from Mesopotamia but also from Abyssinia, Christian since the conversion of the famous king of Axum, 'Ezana. Najran became the great center of Christianity in the Sabaean South and the focus of international intrigues in which economics, politics, and religion were all entangled. Diophysite Byzantium, doctrinally opposed to the heretical form of Christianity prevalent among the Arabs of Najran, could not withhold its support of a center in that area of vital importance for its economic and political interests, namely, South Arabia. Hence the joint Byzantine-Ethiopian expedition in the third decade of the sixth century which made of South Arabia a Christian country for some fifty years and also a Byzantine sphere of influence. The Foederati Of the four groups of Arabs subjected to the Byzantinizing process in these three centuries and discussed in the preceding section, the second, the foederati, deserve much attention because they are the concern of this book. These three centuries may, in fact, be justly and rightly called the period of the foederati in the history of Arab-Byzantine relations. They will, therefore, be singled out for a somewhat elaborate treatment in a more comprehensive context. 1. Just as the term foederati distinguishes this new Arab-Byzantine relationship in these three centuries, so does the term phylarchus. Although the foederati were ruled by their kings, the more distinctive term that describes their commanders is that of phylarchus, the title given to them and sometimes even to their kings. This period is, then, also the period of the phylarchs, as contrasted with that of the Arab rulers of such important centers as Petra, Edessa, and Palmyra in the preceding Roman period. The early history of the phylarchate in the fourth century is obscure, but it is clearest in the sixth century when it reached the climax of its development. The structure of the phylarchate then became complex, and it was pyramidal. At the apex stood the supreme Ghassanid phylarch and king with the rank of gloriosissimus, while at the base stood minor commanders with a lesser rank, such as clarissimus. Within this system, the supreme phylarch was the undisputed head of the other phylarchs whose relation to him was similar in rank and function to that of the various duces to the magister militum. 2. The foederati of these three centuries are distinguished from the Arabs with whom Rome had had to deal in the third century, such as the Palmyrenes, in many important respects: (a) The Palmyrenes, as also the Nabataeans and the Osroenian Arabs, had been settled in the area even before Pompey appeared in the East, while the foederati of this period, such as the Tanukhids and the Lakhmids, were newcomers who crossed the limes in the fourth century and some possibly before, in the third. One of the most important differences between the new foederati and the Palmyrenes is that the life and history of the latter centered around their fortress city, Palmyra, as did the history of the Nabataeans around Petra and of the Osroenians around Edessa. It was from Palmyra and because of it that the Palmyrenes were able to pose a threat to the empire during Zenobia's revolt. In contrast with the Palmyrenes, the Nabataeans, and the Edessans, the foederati of this period are not masters of important urban centers in Syria whence their power could grow to the point at which they could pose a real danger to imperial authority. It was perhaps the bitter lesson of Palmyra that induced Byzantium not to provide her new Arab allies with the urban nuclei for the growth of an imperial and aggressive political and military structure. The new foederati have their military establishments, their ~iras and paremboles, and sometimes they are associated with an important center such as Anasartha, but they were not allowed to develop a major urban center. This fact possibly, has inter alia given rise to the false notion that these foederati were nomads. (b) Important as the differences are between the foederati and the Arabs of Palmyra, the most important differences, however, are to be sought in the cultural sphere. The conversion of the Arab foederati to Christianity constituted the differentia between them and all the other Arab groups with whom Rome had had to deal in the Roman period. The foederati received the annona, and thus they were technically mercenaries, paid soldiers, and so the subsidy was the bond that united them, a bond that alone could not have induced in them a real sense of loyalty. Christianity revolutionized the relationship between the foederati and Byzantium and added a powerful dimension to their loyalty. The old legal and technical bond of fides that had united Roman emperor and his Arab ally was now cemented by a common faith to which both Byzantium and her Arab allies were passionately devoted. The concept of /ides underwent a spiritualization that caused it to emerge even stronger and to be more meaningful as a bond. This was especially fortunate, coming as it did after the bloody encounter with Palmyra which resulted in its utter destruction, perhaps reflecting Roman despair in future cooperation with the Palmyrene Arabs. The result must have been an atmosphere of mutual distrust which was not easy to dispel, and it would have been difficult to find a formula of coexistence through which the Arab-Roman relationship could be restored to normality. Christianity solved this problem by uniting the two parties within its spiritual fold, and whatever disagreements developed turned round the correct interpretation of the same faith which they shared. But it was the community of this faith that mattered on the battlefield when they fought the fire-worshiping Persians and the idol-worshipers of Arabia. (c) There was yet another important cultural difference between the foederati of these three centuries and the Palmyrenes of the third. While Arabic was the first language of the Palmyrenes, these became, as a commercial community and a military power, so much involved because of their international relations with Aramaic, the lingua franca of the East, that it is unlikely that written Arabic was ever used by them for any purpose. The language of their Semitic inscriptions was Aramaic. The foederati of these three centuries present a different spectacle in their relation to the Arabic language. Although they must have learned some Latin as the language of the Roman army of which they formed a part, and more Aramaic, yet Arabic was their principal language, and those of the fourth century had hailed from the region of the Lower Euphrates, in and around }:IIra, which probably witnessed one of the earliest outbursts of pre-Islamic Arabic poetry. It was through the medium of Arabic that the earliest attested Arabic poetry in Oriens was composed in the fourth century for these very foederati, thus preluding a long tradition of Arabic poetic composition in Oriens associated with the foederati of the fifth century, the Salil:iids, and those of the sixth, the Ghassanids. The tradition of poetic composition associated with these foederati had extraliterary implications, one of which was related to their strong sense of identity as Arabs. Unlike the other Arab groups of the Roman period who were assimilated to the Graeco-Roman and the Aramaic cultures of Oriens, these retained their Arabness in spite of the non-Arab influences to which they were subjected. 3. These foederati and their phylarchi had an important place in the Byzantine army of the Orient, a function that developed throughout these three centuries until it reached its climax in the sixth. This place and the assignments and duties which went with it may be summarized as follows: (a) The new army of the Byzantine period was created by Diocletian and further developed with important modifications by Constantine, who strengthened the mobile army of comitatenses at the expense of the limitanei and separated the cavalry from the infantry, putting the former under a magister equitum. The place of the Arab foederati may be set against these innovations of Constantine and his exercitus comitatensis and the new qualities of mobility and horsemanship which characterized the new army. The Arab foederati were professional fighters, raiders and riders, in the Arabian Peninsula before they settled in both parts of the Fertile Crescent. Unlike their Nabataean and Palmyrene predecessors, they did not engage in trade or agriculture and thus were purely professional soldiers who, unlike the limitanei, were kept at a high level of military efficiency. Throughout these three centuries they functioned as mobile cavalry units in the army of the Orient and on occasion were drafted into the exercitus comitatensis, as happened in the reign of Valens when they accompanied the emperor to fight in the Gothic War in Thrace and where their cuneus equitum acquitted itself remarkably well in encounters with the Goths. As mobile cavalry units in the Byzantine army of the Orient, the foederati reach the climax of their development in this capacity in the sixth century, and more is known about the Ghassanid foederati of that century than about any other groups of foederati in this pre-Islamic period. To the army of the Orient they contributed numbers, mobility, and spirit. The Byzantine armies of the sixth century were relatively small armies and the Arab federate contingent formed a substantial portion of that army. In a war the battles of which were sometimes entirely cavalry engagements, the Arabian horse proved its mettle tactically and strategically. It was ubiquitous on the battlefield and in the pursuit. It coursed far and wide, crossed the Euphrates, and penetrated as far as Assyria and Armenia. Once it covered the retreat of Belisarius and probably saved for Justinian the life of the magister militum who was to effect the reconquest of Africa from the Vandals and Italy from the successors of Theodoric. Hailing from a Peninsula where war was the national industry and from a heroic age in pre-Islamic Arabia, these foederati infused fresh blood and new vigor into the Byzantine army of the Orient throughout the three centuries of their employment in the imperial service. (b) The foederati had three main assignments in Oriens: the defense of the more outlying and exposed provinces against any threat from the Arabian Peninsula; the containment of the Lakhmids, the Arab allies of Sasanid Persia; and participation in the regular campaigns of the Byzantine army against the Sasanids. Each of these three assignments was a response to permanent challenges and problems which obtained in the East. In spite of the rise of the Limes Diocletianus and the concentration of regular Roman troops along that limes in great numbers, the Arab foederati remained indispensable, especially for dealing with the Arabs of the Peninsula and with the Lakhmids of l:fira. The nature of the problem was such as to admit of only one solution-the employment of Arab troops as allies. Not static defenses, but mobile ones, could meet the threat of the Peninsular Arabs. The foederati thus stepped in to perform what static defenses could not perform. Thoroughly familiar with the principles of desert warfare, with the topography of the Peninsula from which they had come, and, above all, with its tribal groups and political alignments, the foederati could impose the will of Rome in the desert. The end in view was to impose a pax Romana in the desert, or that part of it which adjoined the Roman frontier, to enable the provinces of Oriens to develop peacefully and quietly without the alarms and raids of the Peninsular Arabs. That the foederati eminently succeeded in the discharge of this duty is amply clear in the case of the Ghassanids of the sixth century when there is ample documentation for this success. And the same holds true of the success of their assignment to contain the Lakhmid Arabs, the Arab allies of Sasanid Persia, whom their overlords, the Persian kings, used to unleash against the Byzantine frontier whenever it was convenient for them to do so. This threat was adequately met in the sixth century, whose foederati turned out to be more powerful than their Lakhmid adversaries and who succeeded in administering a check to their raids and in burning their capital, l:fira. The foederati were a military group, unlike some of their Arab predecessors in the Roman period, for instance, the Nabataeans, who were a commercial community. And yet they contributed to the economic well-being of Byzantium by protecting the caravans of the spice route in Palestina Tertia and in l:lijaz, by enabling the outlying provinces of Oriens to grow, unmo- lested by nomadic raids, by participating in military expeditions in the Peninsula in support of Byzantine economic interests, and by engaging in diplomatic activities on behalf of the empire in the world of the Southern Semites. After successfully warding off for three centuries the assaults of the Peninsular Arabs againt the limes and Oriens, the foederati could not withstand the assault of a new group of Arabs in the seventh century, united by the power of Islam, after some two decades of a series of strikingly unfavorable circumstances in Arabia which operated to the disadvantage of Byzantium. In A.D. 636 the federate shield irreparably broke at the decisive battle of Yarmuk in Trans-Jordan. Christianity Of the three constituents of Byzantinism and of the process of Byzantinization analyzed previously, namely, the Greek, the Roman, and the Christian, the one that affected and influenced the Arabs of pre-Islamic times most vitally was the last. For this reason it deserves some elaboration, especially as it is the cultural component that endows this period of three centuries with the unity it undoubtedly possesses, as the Christian period in the spiritual history of the Arabs, as indeed the golden period of Arab Christianity. It is also the cultural constituent which was officially sponsored for propagation by Byzantium, both the imperium and the ecclesia, within the confines of the empire and outside it in the Arabian Peninsula, and which affected so deeply the life and history of the foederati in the course of these three centuries. In this area as well as that of the army, the foederati attained full integration into the Byzantine system. (a) Just as Arabia and the Arabs revolved in the political orbit of three Near Eastern states, Persia, Byzantium, and }:Iimyar, so were they subjected to influences from three main Near Eastern religions, Judaism, Christianity, and Zoroastrianism. Arabia became the playground of these three religions, but what mattered was the first two and what might be termed the struggle for Arabia between the two monotheistic religions, Judaism and Christianity. The latter won the upper hand, and the tide turned decisively against Judaism in the sixth century. In addition to the rise of a strongly Christian Arab presence in Oriens in the shadow of the Christian Roman Empire in this period, there were two other great centers that radiated Christianity to the Arabs: }:Iira, the capital of the Lakhmids on the Lower Euphrates, and Najran, the Arabian martyropolis in the south. These three centers transmitted powerfully, converting the Arabs to Christianity in these three centuries, a process facilitated by the conversion of the pagan Roman Empire. Christian Byzantium remained not only the imperial Colossus for the Arabs but the greatChristian fortress that was protecting and propagating Christianity, especially in Oriens, in western Arabia, and in South Arabia. (b) How a religion of peace and humility was presented to and accepted by such military groups as these hardy desert warriors, hailing from the Arabian Peninsula, is not a mystery. Constantine had militarized the image of Christ, and the Cross became a symbol of victory carved on the shields of the Roman soldiers. The Arab foederati accepted this new image of Christ and Christianity, of a powerful, victorious Christ, who gave them victory in battle, and under that aegis they fought their wars and invoked his name in battle. Christianity converted the foederati into Crusaders, and as such they fought their wars in the course of these three centuries, whether they were fighting the fire-worshiping Persians or the pagan lakhmid and Peninsular Arabs. Their commitment to Christianity was also reflected in the religious wars of the period on the domestic scene in Byzantium itself, reflecting the seriousness with which they took their Christian confession in support of what they considered the correct theological position. Perhaps the most remarkable instance of this commitment and involvement was the role played by the sixth-century foederati in the history of the Monophysite movement. It was an Arab federate king, Arethas, who, resting on his military record in the Persian War and with the help of the Empress Theodora, was able to resuscitate the Monophysite movement in Oriens. The federate kings assumed the role that the Byzantine emperors had assumed of presiding over church councils and using their prestige to enforce uniformity of theological opinion when Monophysitism was rent by theological dissensions. Their role in the resuscitation of the Monophysite movement was important, as were the consequences of that revival among the Syrians, the Arabs, the Copts, the Ethiopians, and the Armenians. Thus, through their involvement in Monophysitism and its revival, the Arab foederati of this period contributed to the shaping of the fortunes of Christianity and of Christian history in Oriens and ensured for themselves a place in the history of Eastern Christianity. (c) These three centuries were the golden period of Arab Christianity in the sense that during this period the Arabs developed a fairly mature Christian culture. Only faint vestiges of some of the components of this Christian culture in these three centuries have survived: the ruins of some of the architectural monuments, the churches and the monasteries, while whatever Christian poetry or literature was composed has disappeared, with the exception of a few verses. Well preserved, however, is the memory of their saints and martyrs. Two of the saints of the Christian Church are Arabs of this period, St. Moses and St. Arethas, whose feasts fall on the seventh of February and the twenty-third of October respectively.
IV. THE FOURTH CENTURY: A SYNOPTIC VIEW The fourth century opens this middle period in the history of Arab-Roman relations, extending from the reign of Constantine to that of Heraclius, divisible into three subdivisions or smaller periods, and roughly coinciding with the fourth, fifth, and sixth centuries. 1 In the study of Arab-Byzantine relations in the pre-Islamic period of three centuries, a grasp of the history of the fourth century is fundamental since it was during its course that were laid the foundations of the ArabByzantine relationship and were born the institutional forms of Arab federate history that developed in the course of these centuries, reaching their climax in the sixth. Various constituents of federate cultural life also came into being in this century. These institutional forms and cultural constituents of Arab federate history in the fourth century may be summarized as follows: ( 1) This was the century of the foederati and the phylarchi, representing a new type of relationship and alliance between Byzantium and the Arabs in Oriens. It witnessed the rise of what might be termed the phylarchate of the Orient. (2) The century also witnessed the rise of the twin institution that went with the phylarchate, namely, the Arab episcopate of the Orient. It is in this century that both Arab bishops and bishops of the Arab foederati are first attested. (3) In addition to the episcopate, the beginnings of an Arab Church also came into being in this century, since all the components that a church consists of may be said to have existed. This was the church of the Saracens, representing most probably the oldest roots of the Arab Church within the Patriarchate of Antioch. (4) All indications point to the conclusion that it was in this century that the rudiments of an Arabic liturgy came into being. (5) Although Cosmas and Damian of the Roman period were, according to a Greek hymn, considered Arab, it is to this century that belongs the first undoubtedly Arab saint of the Byzantine period, St. Moses. (6) The beginnings of pre-Islamic Arabic poetry are shrouded in obscurity, but the first attested composition of such poetry took place in this century in its latter half, during the reign of Valens, and possibly the earliest attested poetic expression of Christian religious sentiments. Thus, the century witnessed a highly organized Arab military, ecclesiastical, and cultural presence in Oriens, which served as the foundation of all subsequent developments of federate presence until the seventh century. In strictly Arab terms, the dominant Arab group among the foederati of this century were the Tanukhids, and the history of Arab-Byzantine relations in the fourth century is largely that of the rise, decline, and fall of this dominant group among the foederati and the first Arab client-kingdom of Byzantium, the Tanukhids. 2 The fourth is a tumultuous century in the history of Byzantine-Persian relations and of Byzantine-German relations, the climax of which was the Visigothic victory at Adrianople in A.D. 378. And so it is in the history of Arab-Byzantine relations, especially when contrasted with the fifth century, which was a century of relative peace on the eastern front. The course of Arab-Byzantine relations in this century becomes intelligible when set against the background of the policies initiated and pursued by the two historical personalities who dominated this century and left their mark on it. On the Byzantine side, this was the century of Constantine, as it witnessed the Christianization of the empire, the barbarization of the army, and the translatio imperii, all of which affected the Arabs and the Arab-Byzantine relationship. On the Persian side, it was the century of Shapur II, who lived so long (A.D. 309-79) and reigned so long (A.D. 326--79). It was not so much his longevity as his aggressiveness that mattered and that set the two world powers on a collision course. His aggressiveness was irredentist. The Persians considered the Diocletianic acquisition of the Mesopotamian and trans-Tigrine provinces a rape. Shapur II was thus determined to recover the lost provinces. And it was not until the latter half of the century and by the terms of the Peace of Jovian in A.D. 363 and of the Settlement of A.D. 387 that the Persians considered the wrong had been righted. Within the dynamics of the forces unleashed by the policies of these two sovereigns and their interaction, the place of the Arab foederati was assured in the history of this century, and they did make important contributions to the welfare of both the imperium and the ecclesia. (1) They took an active part in the Persian and the Gothic Wars. They participated in the wars of the house of Constantine against Persia; and of the Persian Wars of that house, it was Julian's in which their participation was most significant. After the conclusion of the Peace of Jovian in A.D. 363, the Gothic problem claimed the attention of the Emperor Valens, and it was his reign that witnessed the most substantial contribution of the Arabs to the Byzantine war effort. In that reign, the Arab foederati were withdrawn from their settlements and encampments along the oriental limes and dispatched to faraway Thrace, where they defended Constantinople itself and took part in the Gothic War before Adrianople and possibly also in that fateful battle. And if lmru' al-Qays of the Namara inscription did indeed conduct his campaign against Najran in South Arabia, sponsored by the Romans in the reign of Constantine, then the two expeditions would represent the farthest limit of Arab participation in, and contribution to, the Byzantine war effort in the fourth century. (2) Between their participation in the Persian and the Gothic Wars, th._e foederati fought a war of their own against the imperial armies of the Emperor Valens in the last triennium of his reign, A.D. 375-78. In a sense, this was the most significant of all the wars of the century in which they participated. Unlike their participation in Julian's Persian War or Valens's Gothic War, this one was fought on purely doctrinal grounds, and this is what endows it with more than a merely military significance. The foederati fought it as an orthodox group against the Arian Valens and won. It was an extraordinary military encounter between a group of Arab foederati, led by their queen, Mavia, and the imperial armies of Valens. In this century, the Arab foederati were the champions of orthodoxy and the faith of Nicaea against the Arian emperors of the century. Their soldiers fought for it, their saint, Moses, stood for it, and their queen, Mavia, negotiated for it. The foederati appear as the mailed fist of the Nicene party in Oriens who took upon themselves the defense of the true faith. Their relation to orthodoxy is especially important since the image of the Arabs in the Byzantine ecclesiastical mirror was that of heretics, hallowed by the phrase Arabia haeresium ferax. This was true of the foederati of the sixth century, the Ghassanids, who veered toward Monophysitism, but not true of the federate Arabs of th€ fourth century, who were strictly orthodox. Their correct doctrinal persuasion in the fourth century indicates that their gravitation toward nonorthodox views was not a uniform pattern of response to doctrinal challenges. They appear in this century not only orthodox but also the defenders of orthodoxy against the imperial government itself. Their strict orthodoxy, however, did not save the foederati of the fourth century from imperial displeasure, since there were many grounds on which federate-imperial relations could founder, and they did. One of the ironies of the history of these orthodoxfoederati is that it was the very orthodox emperor, none other than Theodosius himself, that brought about their downfall in the first triennium of his reign.
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