Download PDF | Irfan Shahid, Byzantium And The Arabs In The Sixth Century. 2, Part 1 Dumbarton Oaks ( 2002)
508 Pages
Preface
Byzantium and the Arabs in the Sixth Century (BASIC) consists of two volumes: BASIC I, parts 1 and 2, published in 1995, on the political, military, and ecclesiastical history of the Arab Federates, especially the Ghassa¯nids, in the context of the Arab-Byzantine relationship; and BASIC II, parts 1 and 2.
This book, BASIC II, part 1, examines toponymy, structures, historical geography, and the frontier; the second part, BASIC II.2, will present the social, economic, and cultural history of the Ghassa¯nids and will deal with Byzantium and the Arabian Peninsula. The two volumes of BASIC constitute the middle part of the trilogy and are also prolegomena for the third part, Byzantium and Islam in the Seventh Century (BISC). The Arab conquests under the banner of Islam closed the late antique period and opened the early medieval era in the history of the ArabByzantine relationship, the Near East, and the eastern Mediterranean world.
I It had been my intention to write the social, economic, and cultural history of the Ghassa¯nids first, and I had completed researching it when I realized that BASIC II.1, the present volume, should take precedence in the order of publication. Scholars who have read BASIC I.1–2 have inquired about the exact whereabouts of the Ghassa¯nids, the location of their towns, villages, fortresses, churches, monasteries, and palaces, and a statement from a distinguished art historian finally convinced me of the soundness of this approach. It also became evident that BASIC II.1 is the necessary background for BASIC II.2, which will include a discussion of the efflorescence of Arabic poetry at the courts of the Ghassa¯nids. This will raise the question of whether they had an o¯ideion in the Byzantine style for poetry recitation, the insha¯d of Arabic poetry, which was very developed in preIslamic times, and, if so, where exactly these o¯ideia were located.
The same applies to their horses, so important to them in war, for the hunt, and for riding. Did they have one or more hippodromes and, if so, where? All activities of a social, economic, and cultural life are related to fixed spots. The result of all these considerations was this volume, justified in the order of publication by such reflections and also by another: if “chronology is the spinal column of history,” space is also one of its columns. In the case of the Ghassa¯nids it was to be the search for their Lebensraum, for the various districts in Oriens they occupied and urbanized, for their towns and villages; and within these, for their fortresses, churches, monasteries, palaces, and mansions. References to these were extracted from the sources, mainly Syriac and Arabic, and then were categorized. This laid the foundation for researching the problems discussed in chapters 2, 3, 4, and 6, all of which could be done in the quiet of the university library, but it would have been the work of an armchair historian. Themes such as toponymy and historical geography called for fieldwork in Oriens, now Bila¯d al-Sha¯m. I, therefore, devoted an entire year, 1993–94, to this purpose, which I spent at the American Center for Oriental Research (ACOR) in Amman, Jordan. From this base much of my research on the Ghassa¯nids was done and my visits to Ghassa¯nid sites in Jordan and Syria were planned.
I visited all the sites that the literary sources have indicated were Ghassa¯nid with two or three exceptions when climatic and other conditions precluded a visit. After visiting the relevant sites in Jordan I traveled to those in Syria, where the German Archaeological Institute was my base. This enabled me to visit the Ghassa¯nid sites from the H. awra¯n and Jawla¯n to the north, to the Euphrates valley, and beyond, including the two tributaries, al-Balı¯h. and al-Kha¯bu¯r, completing what might be termed a site survey during which my wife, Mary, photographed all the relevant sites as we visited them.
This fieldwork was concluded in the summer of 1994; by that time I had visited the entire Ghassa¯nid limitrophe from the Euphrates to the Gulf of Eilat. My vision of the sites and of the Ghassa¯nid achievement in this limitrophe, noteworthy for its difficult climate and terrain, was thereby revolutionized. My visit to these sites was, I believe, the first of its kind, in the sense that, unlike other archaeological journeys undertaken by the many scholars who have visited this area in the course of the last two centuries, it was sharply focused on the Arab federate (mainly Ghassa¯nid) presence in Oriens in the sixth and seventh centuries and nothing else. In addition to revolutionizing my vision of Ghassa¯nid toponymy and structures, it has drawn my attention to how much remains to be done and can be done in rescuing from oblivion traces of Ghassa¯nid architectural achievements of all types. The Ghassa¯nid scene was both encouraging and discouraging: much has been destroyed, but much remains to be retrieved. The journey confirmed many of the data of the literary sources on the whereabouts of the Ghassa¯nids and on their structures.
The saying of biblical archaeologists, “The spade confirms the Book” may, mutatis mutandis, be said of the Ghassa¯nid scene, “The spade confirms the T a¯rı¯kh of H. amza.”1 Many of these sites await excavation. This is one of the two ways in which advances in this field can be made. The superstructures of many Ghassa¯nid buildings have disappeared, but the substructures remain with the possibility of uncovering the plans of buildings and their inscriptions, which will shed light on the history of the dynasty. The other way for advancing knowledge in this area is the discovery of new manuscripts for the poets that eulogized the Ghassa¯nids. It is difficult to believe that the extant poems on the Ghassa¯nids are the only ones composed on the dynasty; much of that poetry has been lost. Especially exciting would be the recovery of Akhba¯r Mulu¯k Ghassa¯n,2 the locus classicus of Ghassa¯nid history, which possibly included a full account of their structures.
Excavating the Ghassa¯nid limitrophe is an alluring task that presents many challenges for both historians and archaeologists. Just as the Ghassa¯nid dynasty is a valid and intelligible unit of historical research, so the Ghassa¯nid limitrophe that they inhabited is a clearly defined area with most of the toponyms in it identified in this volume, while the rest will be in due course, as research progresses. This limitrophe is easily accessible to scholars who live in Bila¯d al-Sha¯m, within striking distance of all these sites. Hence they are in an ideal position to undertake excavations, whether they are related to the two departments of antiquities in Syria and Jordan or to the various universities in these two countries. It is hoped that the European and American archaeological institutes will also become engaged in this research; it was the American and European expeditions in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries that began serious research in the area that involved the Ghassa¯nids, although their research was not focused on them. What is wanted is systematic research that targets the Ghassa¯nid limitrophe, not one that treats it peripherally as a parergon. My fieldwork in 1993–94 has convinced me that much can be expected from such research on the limitrophe, and such expectations have very recently been justified. Even as I write these lines the news has reached me of the discovery of a church complex at Nitil in the Madaba region of Jordan with the recognizably Ghassa¯nid names of a phylarch and a king inscribed in it. The presumption is that it was built by the Ghassa¯nids, one of whom is also buried there.
If true, this church opens new vistas for discussing Ghassa¯nid religious architecture to which a chapter has been devoted in this book, and I will have occasion to write an appendix on it when more details reach me. What matters now is that such an important site has been discovered by a group that was not looking for Ghassa¯nid architectural remains but simply stumbled on one of them, and in a place that the literary sources have not associated with the Ghassa¯nids. Surely this is a sign that these sources have not been exhaustive in their lists, a fact known previously, since other architectural remains, such as those at Qas.r al-H. ayr and D. umayr, are not mentioned by the authors in question. It is not difficult to imagine how much more fruitful the excavation of well-known Ghassa¯nid sites will be, such as Ja¯biya in the Golan or Tall al-Khamma¯n in Batanaea. The Ghassa¯nid limitrophe is a vast arc that extended from the Euphrates River to the Red Sea at the Gulf of Eilat; thus only a team of scholars and archaeologists can undertake this gigantic task. The discovery of the church at Nitil augurs well for the future, and so does the fact that the Ghassa¯nid structures are entangled with Umayyad sites, as has been suspected, and as has been stated in some detail in the course of this book.
As many scholars have been for a long time interested in Umayyad structures in Bila¯d al-Sha¯m, this may lead them now to a return to the Ghassa¯nid sites in their search for origins and substrates. The task attracts the present writer, but it is too late for him to become an archaeologist. The extent of my involvement in this endeavor is the composition of this volume, which I hope will be of some help to those who will excavate the Ghassa¯nid limitrophe. II In its presentation, this book departs from the previous ones in the series in that it is not chronological but topical. This presentation is called for by the nature of the subject matter. The section on the sources, in which the two principal ones, the Syriac and the Arabic, are discussed, requires no knowledge of either language on the part of the reader. The sources function mostly as quarries whence place names are extracted for reconstructing the toponymic world of the Ghassa¯nids. All are transliterated, and no Syriac or Arabic words are used in their respective scripts, with the exception of a few Arabic terms. It has been necessary to use certain terms in relation to the Ghassa¯nids as their history unfolds and becomes clearer. The zone in which they were settled in Oriens is often referred to as ba¯diya, the steppe land of the Syrian region.
The term is unfortunate and misleading when the Ghassa¯nids are involved because linguistically it is related to badw, bedouin, the term used for the Arab nomads who moved about in search of water and vegetation for their flocks. As the Ghassa¯nids were a sedentary group, the term is inappropriate, especially as it perpetuates the myth of their nomadism. Instead of ba¯diya, the Graeco-Roman term limitrophe is used here as in previous volumes, where the case for its use was stated.3 The term limes also occurs quite often in this volume as in the preceding ones. It is controversial, and many scholars have denied that there was a limes in the sixth century in Oriens. Here, as before, the limes is used simply to denote the Byzantine frontier without any of its controversial implications.4 Because the Ghassa¯nids were elevated around .. 530 to be the dominant group among the foederati of Byzantium in Oriens, and because their share of the long Limes orientalis was the segment from Circesium on the Euphrates to Ayla on the Gulf of Eilat, it was necessary to find a convenient term for referring only to this segment of the entire Limes orientalis. As the term Limes Arabicus is already in use to refer to the southern segment in the Provincia Arabia (although to some the term never existed), and as its continuation to the Euphrates was called the Strata Diocletiana, a new term was necessary for referring to the segment of the limes that combined both these two stretches, coterminous with both the Limes Arabicus and the Strata Diocletiana.
The term Limes Arabiae is the convenient one to use: it is distinguished from the southern segment popularly known as the Limes Arabicus, and it is geographically accurate since it is that segment of the Limes orientalis that faced the Arabian Peninsula, the ethnic reservoir of pastoralists that posed a threat to the security of Oriens.
Acknowledgments
Like its predecessors in this series, this book owes much to many individuals and institutions without whose help it could not have been completed. First and foremost comes Dumbarton Oaks under the aegis of which this series on Byzantium and the Arabs has been published, continuing the theme pioneered by Alexander A. Vasiliev whose classic Byzance et les Arabes established it as a branch of Byzantine studies. Dumbarton Oaks’ unrivaled resources are well known to all who have been privileged to work there.
I am especially grateful to the many members of its staff who contributed to the publication of this volume. In the Byzantine Library, Irene Vaslef extended her customary helpfulness, as did Virgil Crisafulli and Mark Zapatka. Alice-Mary Talbot, the director of Byzantine Studies, meticulously reviewed the entire manuscript. In the Publications Department, Glenn Ruby, publishing manager, expedited the preparation of the manuscript for press, especially its format and illustrations, Lauren Henkin, graphic designer, drew the fifteen maps neatly and elegantly, Robin Surratt, senior editor, saw the manuscript through the editorial process. I also thank Frances Kianka, the copy editor for this book as she was for the preceding volumes in this series. Finally, my conversations with the director of Dumbarton Oaks, Professor Edward Keenan, a Russian specialist, on Alexander A. Vasiliev, who made Dumbarton Oaks a center for Arab-Byzantine relations, have also been an inspiration. My association with Dumbarton Oaks began in 1954–55 as a junior fellow and has provided me the rare opportunity of contact with its community of scholars, with whom I have had stimulating conversations and extensive correspondence.
They are far too many to enumerate but include Alexander Alexakis, JeanClaude Cheynet, George Dennis, Clive Foss, Oleg Grabar, David Graf, Peter Grossmann, Peter Herde, Kenneth Holum, Benjamin Isaac, Walter Kaegi, Frances Kianka, Leslie MacCoull, Stamatina McGrath, Cyril and Marlia Mango, John Nesbitt, David Olster, Thomas Parker, Lennart Ryde´n, Werner Seibt, Jean-Pierre Sodini, Guy and Sara Stroumsa, Robert Thomson, Warren and Irina Treadgold, and Witold Witakowski. Special mention should be made of those who are no longer with us: Robert Browning, Alexander Kazhdan, and Nicolas Oikonomides. I also owe a special debt of gratitude to the American Center for Oriental Research, Amman (ACOR) and its director, Pierre Bikai. As an ACOR-USIA
Fellow for 1993–94, I spent the academic year in Jordan engaged in the fieldwork essential for this volume. ACOR (or Aku¯r, as it is affectionately called in the language of the country in which it is located) was the center where I conducted my research on the various sites in Bila¯d al-Sha¯m/Oriens, aided by its excellent library. It was my base, whence I visited the various sites in Jordan relevant to my research. While I was at ACOR, Zbigniew Fiema, a dynamic archaeologist, discovered the famous Petra Papyri, one of which has a precious reference to the Ghassa¯nid phylarch Abu¯ Karib. I am grateful to him for this discovery, which, owing to its sad state of preservation, will take a long time to be evaluated accurately.
The Finnish scholar Maarit Kaimio, who is in charge of deciphering this papyrus, was good enough to keep me abreast of progress on it, and I should like to thank her for her communications. The Studium Biblicum Franciscanum and Custodianship of the Terra Sancta in Jordan are under the directorship of Father Michele Piccirillo, whose reputation is well known for his exciting excavations and his recovery of the Christian past in the Holy Land. All his discoveries are relevant to my work in this early Byzantine period, especially in the region where the Ghassa¯nids flourished, such as Mayfa a Umm al-Rasa¯s, and particularly his more recent excavations at Nitil in the Madaba region. The complex of Ghassa¯nid churches, with their Greek inscriptions, excavated there has opened new vistas for studying federate Arab religious architecture. I am most grateful to Father Piccirillo for information on his historic discovery and especially for permission to include illustrations of the Nitil church complex in this book. Two other institutions were also invaluable for my work in Jordan. The first was the Department of Antiquities presided over by Dr. S.afwa¯n Tall. Both he and Dr. Fawzı¯ Zayadine, well-known scholars in this field, extended much needed assistance.
Fawzı¯’sexpertise in the Byzantine period was especially helpful in facilitating my visits to the sites. The second was the University of Jordan, which I visited on various occasions to consult books in its library and discuss historical problems with colleagues in this field, especially Drs. Abd al- Azı¯z al-Du¯ri, Ih.san Abba¯s, and Abd al-Karı¯m Gharaibeh. Dr. Gha¯zı¯ Bisheh was exceptionally generous with his time: he took me and my wife, Mary, to see Qas.r Burq , al-Mushatta¯, and al-Qast.al, and we exchanged views on Ghassa¯nid-Umayyad architectural relations. Mr. Ra¯mı¯ Khouri, the director of Al-Kutba publishing house, kindly provided me with photographs of sites and buildings. My cousins Ka¯mil and Tawfik Kawar were also helpful in various ways pertaining to my travels in Jordan; Wida¯d, Ka¯mil’s wife, was especially helpful both in facilitating my movements and in recommendations on the best way to reach sites; these were especially valuable coming from an individual who is genuinely interested in Jordan’s archaeology. My work involved not only Jordan but also Syria, where I spent part of my academic year. My bases in Damascus were the German Archaeological Institute, whose then director was Dr. Thilo Ulbert, and the French Institute of Archaeology (IFAPO), whose then director was Dr. Franc¸ois Villeneuve.
The libraries of both institutes were invaluable for my research, as were conversations with the two directors, especially with Dr. Ulbert who had been excavating one of the major Ghassa¯nid sites, Rus.a¯fa, and the praetorium or ecclesia of the Ghassa¯nid king Mundir. Dr. Ulbert was also kind enough to take me with his colleagues on a field trip to Nama¯ra and Khirbat al-Bayd.a¯. Related to the German Archaeological Institute and its work, although he was not then in residence, is Dr. Gunnar Brands whose work on Rus.a¯fa and on Mundir’s structure outside it is of special interest to me; I would like to thank him for his letters and offprints on the subject. The maps and library of the French Institute were especially important to my work, as was a conversation, brief as it was, with its director, Franc¸ois Villeneuve, on Gabalene/Jiba¯l in Jordan and with Mr. Michael Makdisi on bibliography. To the two directors, I am most grateful.
The Department of Antiquities in Syria was absolutely essential for the task of visiting the Ghassa¯nid sites. This fieldwork would have been impossible without the assistance of two of its leading members, Dr. Adna¯n Bounni and Dr. Qa¯sim T.weir. My trips to the various Ghassa¯nid sites in such an extensive region from H. awra¯n to the Euphrates would have been impossible without the official support of these two colleagues at the Department of Antiquity. I am deeply grateful to them both. While I was visiting the sites in various parts of Syria, I had the good fortune of being assisted by the department’s representatives in its regional branches:Kha¯lid al-As ad,H. asanH. at.u¯m,Muh.ammadHaykal,Muh.ammadKhayyata, Murhaf Khalaf, Ah.mad T. arakji, and Abd al-Razza¯q Zaqzu¯q, to all of whom I am grateful. My trip to the Near East for fieldwork in Jordan and Syria would not have been possible without the administrative help of my colleagues at Georgetown University. The Graduate School released me from teaching duties during 1993–94 so that I might devote it exclusively to research. Thanks are especially due to Deans James Alatis, Richard Schwartz, and Richard Cronin for making this possible. A special debt is also owed to our efficient Near East and Arabic specialist at the Lauinger Library, Brenda Bickett, who never stinted me her time and energy in getting books, both at the library and through the interlibrary loan service. In addition to these institutions and their staff, which have facilitated my research on this volume, there are individuals to whom my warm thanks are due. At the top of this list come: Zvi Ma oz, whose knowledge of the Golan is unrivaled and to whose monumental chapter on it in The New Encyclopedia of Archaeological Excavations in the Holy Land mine owes much, providing me a panoramic view of the region throughout its various periods, and whose conversations and letters have been equally valuable; and Franz Rosenthal, our senior Semitist, Arabist, and Islamist, who has been an inspiration to his junior colleagues for half a century and whose comments on the manuscript in its last stages were invaluable. A debt of a different kind is owed to my wife, Mary, who helped every step of the way and was my constant companion throughout the entire academic year of fieldwork in Jordan and Syria.
She photographed the vast number of sites from the Euphrates to the Gulf of Eilat, often under harsh climatic conditions and in difficult terrain. Without these photographs, which I hope to publish, memories of our visits to these historic sites, which had been known to me as an armchair historian only from books, would have faded. These photographs revive memories of my encounters with the remains and traces of a civilization that has almost vanished. Indeed they arouse a sentiment not unlike that described by the English Romantic poet, “Poetry is emotion recollected in tranquility.” The publication of this volume was generously supported by the Diana Tama¯rı¯ S.abba¯gh Foundation, and I am most grateful to its Trustees, presided over by Mr. A. Shoman, for their contribution. The dedication of this book to the memory of three scholars needs a few words of explanation. Without the endeavors of Johann Gottfried Wetzstein, many important inscriptions would have been lost as well as the identification of certain Ghassa¯nid toponyms, and his maps are invaluable. He was the first scholar to walk in the footsteps of H. amza al-Is.faha¯nı¯. Although his industry was sometimes better than his judgment, as Theodor No¨ldeke noted, Wetzstein is still the indispensable guide to remains that have since then been lost; without him no record of them would have survived. The second scholar, a distinguished archaeologist and art historian, is much better known. Ernst Emil Herzfeld’s oeuvre is witness to the wide range of his interests and his remarkable versatility. He worked on the list of H. amza long after Wetzstein had provided the raw material on which Herzfeld could work, with the advantage of being not an armchair historian, as No¨ldeke, the father of Ghassa¯nid history, had been. In addition to a most perceptive reading of the list, Herzfeld discovered “the source of the source” which incomprehensibly had eluded No¨ldeke himself. A volume such as this, in which the Ta¯rı¯kh of H. amza is so fundamental, ought to commemorate the scholar who was the first to do him justice. The third scholar, an Arab from Syria, deserves to be mentioned in the company of the first two. Ah.mad Was.fı¯ Zakariyya¯ was not an academic but an agricultural engineer with a vivid sense of the importance of his country in the history of the Near East throughout all its periods, pre-Islamic as well as Islamic. He took upon himself, without being aided by any institution or government, to travel far and wide in Syria and wrote precise descriptions of its monuments and the places where he found them. He was inspired by the work of the seventeenth-century Ottoman traveler Ewliya¯ Cˇelebi, who for forty years had traveled extensively in the Ottoman Empire and the neighboring regions; in the third of his ten-volume account of these travels, his Seya¯hatna¯me, he recorded his travels in Oriens/Bila¯d al-Sha¯m. Zakariyya¯ made a re´sume´ of this volume with a copious commentary which he titled Jawla Athariyya and then proceeded to write a work of his own, al-Rı¯f al-Su¯rı¯. It grieved him to see the monuments of his country in decline or in ruins, and this moved him to issue warnings against those who were tampering with them, treating them lightly, and so destroying them. His two volumes may not be as scholarly and detailed as Rene´ Dussaud’s Topographie, but they are within measurable distance of that invaluable work.
I am indebted to all three scholars for what they have done to preserve the monuments of Oriens/Bila¯d al-Sha¯m, including those of the Ghassa¯nids. Hence the appropriateness of reviving their memory in these acknowledgments, especially as one, possibly two of them, are nowadays hardly known to the world of scholarship. The two quotations that follow the dedication page unite an Israelite prophet and an Arab poet. Joshua needs no introduction to the reader, but Labı¯d does. He was a major pre-Islamic poet, and the verse comes in the exordium of his famous ode in which, more Arabico, the poet expresses the traditional lament over the deserted encampment and the departure of its occupants. After halting his mount, he questions the deserted abodes on those who have departed but nurses no hope that the silent remains will respond to his appeal—an exercise in futility. Joshua’s question is more optimistic: just as the spade has confirmed the Bible, so has it confirmed H. amza. The second quotation, a verse, needs no apologies. I have always admired the late Sir Ronald Syme as a true product of the school of literae humaniores, the students of which study a civilization in its tripartite components: history, philosophy, and literature. He used to grace his scholarly works with quotations from the poets, whose sensitivity to historic events was sometimes more impressive than that of the historians themselves, witness his Roman Revolution. Hence the invocation of a verse of poetry from the distant past of pre-Islamic Arabia. May this humanistic approach to historiography continue. Irfan Shahıˆd August 31, 2000
Introduction
The chief historian of the reign of Justinian, during which the Ghassa¯nids became the privileged group of foederati in Oriens, left these federate Arabs of Byzantium almost homeless without a single reference to a location where they were settled, and so did his school of the historians of the sixth century who followed him. By his silence, Procopius also denied them any share in the spiritual life of Byzantium, whereas they wrote an important chapter in the history of Christianity in Oriens in the sixth century as zealous Monophysites. The result of all this series of suppressio veri and suggestio falsi has been a perception of the Ghassa¯nids as nomads who roamed Oriens and made no contribution whatsoever to the life of the limitrophe in which they were settled.
That Procopius hardly spoke the truth about the Ghassa¯nids should have become evident from the two books in this series, BASIC I, parts 1 and 2, which, however, concentrated on the political, military, and ecclesiastical role of the Ghassa¯nids with only sporadic references to their residences, fortresses, and towns. Fortunately the recovery of their strong sedentary presence in Oriens, reflected in their architectural achievements, religious and secular, is possible despite the silence of Procopius. Various sources provide the facts of that presence and show that the Ghassa¯nids, who were settled in the long limitrophe that extended from the Euphrates to the Gulf of Eilat and also in the transverse wedge or area that extended from Gaulanitis to Auranitis, were enthusiastic builders (philoktistai) who left behind them some impressive architectural monuments both secular and religious and contributed to the rise of settlements and sedentary centers in this limitrophe. This then is the thrust of this volume. The table of contents clearly reflects its themes, all related to Ghassa¯nid structures. The sources, however, need to be discussed briefly in this introduction, as does the significance of these Ghassa¯nid structures, the detailed discussion of which has imparted a number of new dimensions to Ghassa¯nid history and to the Ghassa¯nid-Byzantine relationship. These should be set against the background of the sixth century and the age of Justinian briefly discussed in the introduction to a previous part of BASIC I.1.
Theodor No¨ldeke, the distinguished German scholar, laid down certain rules, which might be termed No¨ldeke’s Law, for writing the history of the Arabs before the rise of Islam, especially the Ghassa¯nids: the prose Arabic sources of later Islamic times are not entirely reliable on the history of a dynasty that flourished in the sixth century; the general information they present may be acceptable, but they lack accuracy and their weakness is especially patent in chronology and the sequence of rulers. He therefore recommended that a sound history of the Ghassa¯nids must be built on the contemporary Greek, Syriac, and pre-Islamic Arabic sources, especially contemporary Arabic poetry. Each category of these sources has its own value and documents one aspect of Ghassa¯nid history.
On this foundation he was able to present the most reliable account of both the chronology and the sequence of Ghassa¯nid rulers. The first two categories of sources, the Greek and the Syriac, are the principal sources for the military, political, and ecclesiastical history of the Ghassa¯nids, and they have formed the basis on which the two previous volumes in this series have been written, BASIC I, parts 1 and 2. For this volume on toponymy and structures, the Greek literary sources have nothing to say, but the Syriac and Arabic sources do. Hence they are the ones that have been exploited for writing this volume. Although No¨ldeke was mainly interested in chronology and with it the identity and sequence of rulers, he was the first to struggle seriously with the problem of Ghassa¯nid structures as presented by H. amza, the tenth-century Muslim writer to whom he had an ambivalent attitude, fully justified because of the problem of source survival when he wrote his monograph on the Ghassa¯nids. The two documents crucial for a proper appreciation of H. amza were not at his disposal. Research on the structures of the Ghassa¯nids took a sharp turn for the better as a result of the availability of the evidence from archaeology represented by the praetorium extra muros at Rus.a¯fa, advertised by A. Musil, and the discovery that the source of H. amza was a reliable early work, Akhba¯r Mulu¯k Ghassa¯n, made by E. Herzfeld. However, No¨ldeke’s Law and technique for advancing the frontiers of knowledge on Ghassa¯nid history remain standard and authoritative, with only modifications and additions called for by the publication of new sources, by better understanding of Muslim historiography and appreciation of certain Muslim authors, such as H. amza himself, but above all by the best of all evidence for the Ghassa¯nid establishments—the archaeological—not available to No¨ldeke, who remained an armchair historian.
The discovery of the “source of the source” by Herzfeld was a breakthrough, but not being an Arabic philologist he did not pursue it. His discovery, however, has made possible further probings into “the source of the source” and the result has been the section in this volume devoted to Akhba¯r Mulu¯k Ghassa¯n. If No¨ldeke had been aware of it, it would have revolutionized his thought on H. amza and Ghassa¯nid structures. He therefore, and in full conformity with his own law, fell upon the verses of the two major poets, contemporaries and panegyrists of the Ghassa¯nids, H. assa¯n and Na¯bigha. He was the great connoisseur of Arabic poetry, witness his Delectus, and an acute critic of what in it is authentic and what is not, witness his Beitra¨ge. This was especially important in his analysis of the poetry of H. assa¯n, who became in later life the poet laureate of the Prophet Muh.ammad. As a result, much spurious poetry was fastened on him in later times for various reasons. But his pre-Islamic verse is untouchable as far as the problem of authenticity is concerned, and so it has been judged by No¨ldeke and by everyone who has written on the poetry of H. assa¯n. Various chapters in this volume treat the relevant sources in full conformity with No¨ldeke’s technique, but a synopsis of them is desirable for a better grasp of their range and value. T S S Although the main value of the Syriac sources resides in their contribution to understanding the spiritual life of the Ghassa¯nids as zealous Christians, they do have precious references to Ghassa¯nid toponyms and structures. They are all contemporary primary documents.
One of the earliest is Simeon of Be¯th-Arsha¯m, the Monophysite firebrand, one of whose letters documents the residence of the Ghassa¯nid Jabala in Ja¯biya, their capital in the Golan as early as ca. .. 520. The Chronicle of Dionysius of TellMah.re,which includes thewell-known letter of Peter of Callinicum, documents the Ghassa¯nid presence in or near Mabboug/Hierapolis in .. 587 in the far north with a reference to their church in Ja¯biya in the Golan in the south. By far the most important Syriac document that literally floods with light the Ghassa¯nid contribution to the religious life of Oriens and to their structures is the letter of the Monophysite abbots with reference to 137 monasteries in the Provincia Arabia alone, whose patron and protector was the Ghassa¯nid Arethas. T A S Like the Syriac sources, most of the Arabic sources are contemporary and primary. Those that are not derive from sources that are, such as the Chronicle of H. amza. First, the poets. The major ones are a trio consisting of panegyrists of the dynasty, namely, H. assa¯n, Na¯bigha, and H. a¯tim, of whom the first two are the most important. H. assa¯n was the poet laureate of the Ghassa¯nids, their relative who belonged to the Azd of Medina. Na¯bigha was the celebrated poet of Dubya¯n, the Arabian tribe that had close relations with the Ghassa¯nids. H. a¯tim belonged to the tribe of T. ayyi , also a tribe of Arabia and an ally of the Ghassa¯nids. One of the most brilliant portions of No¨ldeke’s classic on the Ghassa¯nids was the one that treated the first two poets from whom he so skillfully extracted the valuable data on the Ghassa¯nids. The third poet was unknown to him as a valuable source for the Ghassa¯nids In addition to this trio there were other contemporary poets who have important references to the Ghassa¯nids: Mutalammis, A sha¯, Labı¯d, and Amr ibn Kulthu¯m, all of whom were contemporaries; to these may be added a few poets of the Umayyad period who have some references to Ghassa¯nid towns and structures, valuable for the persistent Ghassa¯nid presence in Umayyad Bila¯d al-Sha¯m where the Ghassa¯nids still maintained a strong profile. Second, prose works. Although written in the Islamic period, two works stand out as fundamental for Ghassa¯nid toponymy and structures because they both derive from an early work on the Ghassa¯nids, written either before or shortly after their fall in the seventh century, most probably during the caliphate of Mu a¯- wiya. This precious work, discussed in great detail in this volume, is Akhba¯r Mulu¯k Ghassa¯n, exclusively on the Ghassa¯nid dynasty. It is not extant, and this is a great loss for Ghassa¯nid history, as great as that of the chapter on the dynasty in the Syriac Historia Ecclesiastica of John of Ephesus. The two works that stand out are the Chronicle of H. amza al-Is.faha¯nı¯, a tenth-century Muslim historian, who included in his Ta¯rı¯kh a precious account of the Ghassa¯nids and their structures in a chapter especially devoted to them; and the work of the thirteenth-century geographer/scholar Ya¯qu¯t, who in his celebrated Mu jam al-Bulda¯n (Geographical Dictionary) also mentioned the Ghassa¯nids. He complements what H. amza says on them, and both derive from the same source, Akhba¯r Mulu¯k Ghassa¯n. In addition to these two important works, there have been published recently two Islamic works on pre-Islamic Arabia, with a wealth of information, namely, al-Mana¯qib al-Mazyadiyya and Nashwat al-T. arab fı¯ Ta¯rı¯kh Ja¯hiliyyat al- Arab, works of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries respectively. They are not specifically on the Ghassa¯nids nor on structures, but they bear indirectly on both. Another group of sources, Arabic epigraphy, is represented by the Trilinguis Zabadaea, Usays, and H. arra¯n inscriptions. These are sixth-century documents, the last two of which are especially important, as they relate the Ghassa¯nids to one of their forts in Usays and document the erection of a church at H. arra¯n in Trachonitis. A Solid as literary evidence is for the reality of Ghassa¯nid structures, it remains isolated and vulnerable if not buttressed by more concrete evidence on the ground, that is, monuments. Fortunately these have survived almost miraculously for some fourteen centuries to support what the literary sources have yielded on the Ghassa¯nids as builders.
The three that have survived are quite significant: (1) the praetorium extra muros of Mundir at Rus.a¯fa, most probably an audience hall for conducting military and political affairs; (2) the tower of Qas.r al-H. ayr al-Gharbı¯, which illustrates the Ghassa¯nid role in the Monophysite church and their deep interest in monasticism; and (3) the mansion at Hayya¯t, where presumably Mundir resided during his visits to the town.
These three monuments thus illustrate different aspects of Ghassa¯nid life; all are in a good state of preservation and are impressive witnesses to the Ghassa¯nids as philoktistai. They are separated from one another by long distances, evidence that the Ghassa¯nids were spread far and wide in Oriens. None is mentioned by the literary sources, surely a sign that these were selective in listing the Ghassa¯nid monuments and thus were not comprehensive, let alone exhaustive. II The significance of the conclusions drawn from the evidence of the toponyms and structures of the Ghassa¯nids is multidimensional and may be briefly presented as follows. Together with the two previous volumes on the political, military, and ecclesiastical history of the federate Ghassa¯nids and the next volume on their social, economic, and cultural history, the present volume reveals a mature Christian Arab culture and presence that emerged in Oriens in the century and a half before the rise of Islam. In the history of Arabic culture in Oriens/ Bila¯d al-Sha¯m, this Ghassa¯nid federate one lies between the previous Nabataean/ Palmyrene culture, which was pagan Arab, and the later Umayyad culture, which was Muslim Arab. The Ghassa¯nids represented the ripest expression of a Christian Arab culture. The cultural analyst of Oriens in this early Byzantine period had conceived of the region as bicultural, composed of Aramaic/Syriac and Graeco-Roman sectors. After the appearance of this series on the Arab foederati, especially the last on the Ghassa¯nids, it is no longer possible to speak of Oriens in bicultural terms. The Ghassa¯nids stamped the limitrophe with a strong Arab identity after its Arabness had been diluted by the Hellenization and Romanization of the Nabataeans and the Palmyrenes. Consequently the triculturalism of Oriens became firmly established, consisting of the Graeco-Roman component and the Semitic one, divided between the Aramaean and the Arab. The Ghassa¯nid architectural monuments that have survived are the most eloquent witness for the reality of the Arab component in the triculturalism of sixth-century Oriens. In the history of the Limes orientalis in the three centuries from Constantine to Heraclius, the Ghassa¯nids and their military monuments shed light on the second and middle phase of that limes, the first being the overhaul of the eastern defense system by Diocletian, and the third and last being the demise of the limes under Heraclius. It was they who took over from the limitanei the charge and watch over the limes, and this takeover brought about the disestablishment of half of the defense system as conceived by Diocletian, imparting a new vibrancy to the stagnant frontier system. Again, their surviving monuments remind the student of frontier studies of the Ghassa¯nid presence along the limes during that takeover. One of the surprises that intensive research into the history of the Ghassa¯nid foederati has revealed was the emergence of a new large figure in the history of Arab-Byzantine relations, almost as important as that of the better-known Are- thas, who has occupied the center of the stage in the history of these relations. Now another major figure, Abu¯ Karib, his brother, appears in charge of the southern sector of the Limes Arabiae in Palaestina Tertia. As the Ghassa¯nids were not only rude soldiers fighting the wars of Byzantium but also princes of peace as patrons of the Monophysite church and of Arabic poetry for which their courts became the destination of poets from the Arabian Peninsula, their architectural achievements were not limited to the construction or renovation of forts and fortresses.
They built palaces, mansions, churches, monasteries, and audience halls. Fortresses were purely functional, erected for defense, but these nonmilitary structures must have reflected artistic features in much the same way that such structures reflected them in the Byzantine world of the Graeco-Roman establishment and in the Aramaic world. This was the sixth century, during which Justinian reigned and whose reign witnessed the golden age of Byzantine Christian art both in the capital and reflected in the provinces of the various dioceses of which the Oriens of the Ghassa¯nids was one. Ghassa¯nid architectural features are therefore the reflection of Byzantine art in its provincial version in Oriens and possibly sometimes adapted to Arab tastes. The Ghassa¯nid monuments or what have survived of them are of some interest to the Byzantine art historian of the early Byzantine period. Fortunately the three that have survived reflect something of what they must have looked like before they suffered degeneration. These monuments represent the three aspects of their life: military, religious, and civic. Whether the study of these monuments and others that, one hopes, will be discovered reveal an Arab adaptation of Byzantine artistic forms remains to be shown. Perhaps the newly discovered church at Nitil in the Madaba region offers a fair chance of studying the artistic features of a Ghassa¯nid structure, not available for inspection in the others that have survived. A chapter in this volume has touched lightly on such adaptations as the ambulatory in or around their churches, reflective of the partiality of the Arabs and the Semites in general to circumambulation as one of their cherished rites in their celebration of the Christian liturgy. The Byzantine geographers such as Hierocles and George of Cyprus ignore in the Synecdemos and the Descriptio the toponymy of the Arab federate presence in Oriens, perhaps not surprisingly since such towns as Ja¯biya were not poleis and the toponymy of the foederati was not within the range of their interest. But as the volumes of BASIC have shown, the towns and districts in which the Ghassa¯nids lived were important in the wars, politics, and religious life of Byzantium, if a holistic view is taken and not only a slanted, sectional one relating to Chalcedonian Byzantium and the Graeco-Roman establishment in Oriens. Ghassa¯nid towns such as Ja¯biya and Jalliq and Ghassa¯nid districts such as alBalqa¯ deserve to be better known in view of the important part they played in both Byzantine and early Islamic times and in view of the fact that they repre- sented the strands of continuity between the two orders. The historical geography of these towns and districts and not only the intersection of their coordinates on maps also deserve to be researched and written. Such research is in line with some major projects in Byzantine scholarship, the Tabula Imperii Byzantini, edited by Herbert Hunger, and L’activite´ byzantine directed by He´le`ne Ahrweiler. This research, because it provides a background for early Islamic history, is also related to the work of Islamists on cartography such as the Tu¨binger Atlas des Vorderen Orients and the work of those interested in regional geography such as Eugen Wirth. The historical geography of four Ghassa¯nid towns or towns with Ghassa¯nid association has been researched and included in various sections of this volume, as has been one district, the Golan, in its Ghassa¯nid profile.
But this is only a modest beginning, intended to arouse further interest. Much more research is needed on what has remained of Ghassa¯nid toponymy in Oriens. The Ghassa¯nid federate presence has emerged as an important substrate in the structure of the Umayyad state. Various sections of this volume discuss this all-pervasive presence and with it the Byzantine presence, mediated and filtered through the Ghassa¯nids who had themselves been Byzantinized for a century and a half. The founder of the Umayyad dynasty, Mu a¯wiya, availed himself of the skills and expertise of the Ghassa¯nids in running the new and first Muslim empire, not on strictly Arabian and Muslim lines. The Ghassa¯nid presence or even heritage obtained in variouswalks of Umayyad life of which the militarywas themost visible. The ajna¯d, the military circumscriptions into which Bila¯d al-Sha¯m under the Umayyads was divided and which were the secret of Umayyad military successes and even their own stability, were inherited by the Umayyads from the Byzantine past in which the Ghassa¯nids played a major role. The conqueror of Carthage, the pacifier of North Africa for the Umayyads, and the founder of Qayrawa¯n was the Ghassa¯nid general, H. assa¯n ibn al-Nu ma¯n. Of this all-pervasive Ghassa¯nid presence in the Umayyad state, the most visible and concrete are the architectural monuments of the Ghassa¯nids, some of which have fortunately survived.
They are one of the main concerns of this volume; because of their survival they illustrate vividly the Ghassa¯nid presence in the Umayyad state, most of which has disappeared with the fall of the Umayyads and the lapse of time. But this one, the architectural, still stands, and it is argued in this book that the Umayyads must have moved into many of the Ghassa¯nid structures, developed them, and adapted them to their tastes and needs with the result that they became hardly recognizable as originally Ghassa¯nid.
Thus Ghassa¯nid architectural history is very much the concern of the Umayyad art historian, especially now that this volume has shown that the Ghassa¯nid architectural presence was not confined to a few monuments but was much more extensive than previously thought, extending from the Euphrates to the Gulf of Eilat, the same area of the Umayyad qus.u¯r. This entails a return on the part of the Umayyad art historian to Umayyad monuments in order to find out how much they might owe to a possible Ghassa¯nid substrate. Various articles by the present writer and some sections in BASIC I, parts 1 and 2 have questioned the veracity of Procopius in his accounts of the Ghassa¯nid involvement in the wars of the reign of Justinian. It has also been questioned in this volume on toponymy and structures, especially in connection with what Procopius says in the Buildings, which led to a return to the Wars and the Secret History for related matters. The result of the inquiry has been as follows. The Wars and the Secret History have concealed the fact that the overhaul of the Limes orientalis by Justinian around 530 involved the Ghassa¯nids in a very substantial way. They were given important new responsibilities for the defense of Oriens, which they successfully and faithfully performed. What is more, they gradually replaced the limitanei for the defense of the diocese, a radical change in the Diocletianic defense establishment which consisted of comitatenses in the interior and limitanei in the exterior lines of defense. In the Buildings, Procopius was silent on the Ghassa¯nid contribution to the fortifications he noted at length. As is well known, there is a gap in the list of fortifications that Justinian is supposed to have erected in the East.
This gap, which might be termed the “enigmatic gap,” extended from Palmyra to Ayla on the Gulf of Eilat. There is no mention of any work done by Justinian in this long sector of the Limes orientalis, since Procopius suddenly stops at Palmyra, after giving a detailed account of fortifications in the other provinces in the region. This vacuum must be adjudged enigmatic as it is impossible to believe that the frontier from Palmyra to Ayla was left without any attention on the part of Justinian or the central government. Contemporary Arabic poetry in panegyrics on the Ghassa¯nids refers to Ghassa¯nid buildings, as does a prose work in Arabic, a late tenthcentury Chronicle that derives from an early authentic source, but above all archaeology. All have witnessed to the Ghassa¯nids as enthusiastic builders, philoktistai. The enigmatic gap can thus no longer be said to be enigmatic. Only Procopius’ silence made it look so. The Ghassa¯nids were in charge of it, and they must have taken care of its defense, including fortresses, traces of which have survived, such as the praetorium extra muros at Rus.a¯fa, the tower at Qas.r al-H. ayr al-Gharbı¯, and the tower at D. umayr. Just as Malalas was a check on Procopius and his account of the Ghassa¯nids, making his charge of prodosia leveled against them untenable, so do other sources such as the Ta¯rı¯kh of H. amza function as checks on Procopius when the latter is silent on who was in charge of the enigmatic gap and who took good care of its fortifications. Procopius obscured the significance of the appointment of Abu¯ Karib over Palaestina Tertia and presented it as a consolation prize for a “Saracen” in an area that was of no crucial importance to imperial interests. In so doing and in concealing that Arethas and Abu¯ Karib were brothers, he succeeded in concealing the more important fact of the appointments of the two Ghassa¯nids as wardens and watchers over the Limes Arabiae, as part of the general overhaul of the Limes orientalis that involved the magister militum Sittas in the north, in the Armenian sector of the limes. T The Limitrophe The term limitrophe was used in the previous volume, BASIC I.1, for the zone that the Ghassa¯nid foederati occupied where they were deployed along the limes. As this volume deals in a large way with frontier studies, it has become necessary to explain the use of this term in this new context.1 The term is a hybrid, a GraecoLatin term (limes-tro´fo"). “Although technically not limitanei, the Ghassa¯nids were in fact such, and one of their assignments was the defense of the limes along which they were encamped.”2
Now that the Ghassa¯nid takeover from thelimitanei has been discussed in a chapter entirely devoted to it,3 the case for the use of the term becomes stronger. Unlike the term limes, which has been under fire as a technical term in frontier studies, this one is not; literally it means the lands set apart for the support of the troops on the frontier, and so it serves the purpose of describing the zone, the borderland that the Ghassa¯nids occupied. The case for its use in sixth-century parlance is thus justified in connection with the Ghassa¯nids’ new function as foederati de jure, and limitanei de facto; it is a term free from the old associations of the old one, limes, and especially called for by the discovery of the new function the foederati were now performing. The case for its use in this book is justified also because of the section on the Ghassa¯nids as a sedentary group and not a group of nomads,4 a myth that has vitiated for a long time most of what has been written about them; it was necessary to find a term that would accurately describe the area they occupied in Oriens as sedentaries. The term associated with the Ghassa¯nids in Arabic, ba¯diya, means little or nothing to the general reader and sounds alien in a chapter on Roman frontier studies, unlike limitrophe. Another equally important reason for the choice of limitrophe is that the term ba¯diya is related in the popular conception to nomads, which the Ghassa¯nids were not, a myth this volume has exploded. The resuscitation of the term from the Graeco-Roman terminology of late antiquity is thus both necessary and desirable. No apologies are needed for its introduction as a neologism since it is attested in English both as an adjective and a substantive, although it went out of fashion toward the end of the sixteenth century. It is noteworthy that in the twentieth century it was literary artists who revived it: Vladimir Nabokov in English5 and Louis Calaferte in French. But the term, useful and attractive, is far more the property of the late antique historian. Ghassa¯nland In this volume, the useful term Ghassa¯nland occurs many times. Land in the compound term Ghassa¯nland is the translation of Menander Protector’s term, when he referred to the territory of the Ghassa¯nid king Mundir in the late 560s (hJ jAlamounda´rou gh') and also reflects their self-image in the Arabic sources. There is also reference in Theophanes (.. 563) to the raids made by the Lakhmid king Amr against the “places” of Arethas, Mundir’s father, eij" tou`" to´pou" aujtou'. Both phrases have been discussed in detail,6 and both the “places” and “land” were possibly, but not necessarily, extra limitem.7 Whatever was meant by these two terms in Theophanes and Menander, the Ghassa¯nids were settled on state-owned lands that legally were Roman/Byzantine territory and not Arab Ghassa¯nid. So this was Roman territory not ceded to the Ghassa¯nids by the Romans but extended to them to settle on, not as cives, but foederati, allowed to do that by the terms of the foedus. So the term Ghassa¯nland should be understood only in this sense. Whether the Ghassa¯nid takeover from the limitanei, which made them such de facto if not de jure, entailed corresponding changes in the terms of the foedus is not clear. As is well known, the limitanei received grants of land which they tilled,8 and if such grants were accorded the Ghassa¯nids after their takeover from the limitanei, then the employment of the term Ghassa¯nland would acquire further and stronger justification. Even more relevant was the Byzantine practice of making land grants to foreign migrants in return for military service.9 The Ghassa¯nids qualified as such, and so the possibility that they received these land grants can be seriously entertained. The case for the employment of the term Ghassa¯nland may be stated on the ground that the Ghassa¯nids lived in various parts of Oriens in the long limitrophe that extended from the Euphrates to Ayla on the Red Sea, and in the transverse wedge: Auranitis, Trachonitis, Batanaea, and the Golan. So the term is convenient to use when reference is made to them not in a specific area of their presence in Oriens but in general. Urbanization/Ruralization As the Ghassa¯nids were a sedentary group, credited with many structures and settlements in Oriens in the Arabic sources, many of which have been confirmed by archaeology, it was necessary to discuss their achievement in this connection.
The term urbanization was used in BASIC I.1 (e.g., p. xix) and in my article on Ghassa¯nids in the Encyclopaedia of Islam. The term was accurate when applied to two Ghassa¯nid toponyms, Ja¯biya and Jalliq, which were indeed flourishing towns, possibly cities, their two capitals.10 The rest of their settlements were hardly towns or cities, hence the term “urbanization” is not accurate for describing the efforts of the Ghassa¯nids to establish centers of sedentary life in Oriens, both in the limitrophe and in the transverse wedge. French scholarship has established the fact that the settlements in the transverse wedge where the Ghassa¯nids lived were villages and rural settlements and that such was the culture of that region. The term urbanization is therefore misleading, and ruralization is the much better term, although its connotation in English is not exactly the establishment of rural sedentary centers in the countryside.11 But as it is contrasted with “urbanization,” its employment is defensible, and so it is close enough as a description of the activity of the Ghassa¯nids as a sedentary group living in the country. Norman Lewis’ phrase “the frontier of settlement”12 describes well the Ghassa¯nid rural centers in the limitrophe, the “limitrophe of settlements.” The use of the term is very appropriate in connection with the Umayyad caliphs, who often moved to the country where they built many of their residences.13 C The reader of this volume, so detailed on the structures of the Ghassa¯nids and their role in the defense of Oriens after the takeover from the limitanei, may gain the impression that their role has been exaggerated. This would be a misconception. The prominence given to the Ghassa¯nids derives from the fact that they were such within the framework of the series of Arab foederati in the service of Byzantium from the fourth through the sixth century, namely, the Tanu¯khids, the Salı¯- h.ids, and the Ghassa¯nids, treated in the three preceding volumes in this series.
As for their role within the Byzantine defense system in Oriens in the sixth century, this, too, has not been exaggerated but given its rightful place within that system. Oriens was defended by a strong Byzantine/Roman army under the command of the various duces and the magister militum in Antioch. The Ghassa¯nid foederati functioned as only part of this defense system, a point emphasized in the relevant chapter.14
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