Download PDF | Irfan Shahid, Byzantium And The Arabs In The Sixth Century Vol. 1, Part 1 Dumbarton Oaks ( 1995)
746 Pages
Preface
This is the third volume of the series that treats the Arab-Byzantine relationship in the proco-Byzantine period from the reign of Constantine to that of Heraclius. It concludes the middle part of a trilogy, the climax of which is the third, namely, Byzantium and Islam in the Seventh Century (BISC), which deals with the period that witnessed the rise of Islam and the Arab conquests. 1 The three volumes of the proto-Byzantine period-BAFOC, BAFIC, and BASIC-have an independent existence as a contribution toward understanding the Arab constituent in the makeup of late antiquity in the Near East, but they also serve as prolegomena to the final part of this trilogy. The century that the present volume treats is the crucial one in the protoByzantine period since it represents the transition from late antiquity 2 to the early Middle Ages. I In view of the relative abundance of the material for writing the history of this century, BASIC will appear in two parts : BASIC I deals with political, military, and ecclesiastical history; and BASIC II will deal with cultural history, relations with western Arabia, with the tribes of the Outer Shield, and with frontier studies.
The present volume discusses the Arab-Byzantine relationship in the reigns of the six emperors of the sixth century : Anastasius, Justin I, Justinian, Justin II, Tiberius, and Maurice . The treatment has been extended to include those of Phocas and Heraclius, since these two reigns belong to the same genuine historical era-the last phase of the proto-Byzantine period, terminated by the Islamic Conquests . BASIC I deals almost exclusively with the foederati in the history of Byzantine Oriens. These are principally the Ghassanids who dominate Arab-Byzantine relations during the period. The history of the Arab foederati in this century is better documented than those of the fourth and fifth. Hence there are more data for writing the history of the Arab-Byzantine relationship during the reign of each emperor, and one may trace the strands of continuity running through each reign. Ghassanid figures appear as large historical personalities and no longer shadowy ones as in the fifth century.
In view of the aridity of the sources for the history of the foederati in general, the relative abundance of the data for this century is a gift to the student of the Arab-Byzantine relationship. Hence copious quotations have been made from these sources, and they have been gathered together in this single volume for the first time as a convenience to the student of this period. Often these sources are quoted in extenso, which enables the sources to speak for themselves. At times the same passages provide data for both political and ecclesiastical history, and therefore appear in both contexts in this volume, where their specific relevance is discussed. Some statements, which may seem repetitious, are included in order to serve various functions in different contexts. The sources are mainly Greek and Latin, overwhelmingly Greek for the political and military history, while Syriac assumes greater importance for the ecclesiastical. Quotations from these sources are presented in modern European languages for the convenience of the reader unfamiliar with classical languages. However, whenever necessary, passages are quoted in the original languages for intensive analysis which can be done only when the original Greek, Latin, and Syriac texts are before the reader. II If the fifth century was terra incognita for Byzantino-Arabists before BAFIC was written, the sixth has not been so. In 1889 Theodor Noldeke's brilliant monograph on the Ghassanids appeared and opened a new chapter in the historiography of the dynasty. 3 The monograph established its correct chronology and the sequence of its rulers in the sixth century.
This was Ni:ildeke's main concern in writing this monograph, which thus is a series of notes and footnotes on the dynasty rather than a history of it, let alone a history of Arab-Byzantine relations in this century. It has, however, dominated the writings of all who have dealt with the Ghassanids, including the present writer, who have been truly in the debt of this distinguished German scholar. Since the publication of Noldeke's Ghassanischen Fiirsten new sources have been published, especially Greek and Syriac, and advances have been made in research on the sixth century and the whole of the proto-Byzantine period, which are essential for understanding the Arab-Byzantine relationship. This has resulted in drastic and substantial revision of Noldeke's perception of the Ghassanid dynasty, which has influenced the writings of all those who came after him. The series of these revisions will become clear in the course of this volume, but two of them should be mentioned here: the explosion of the myth that the Ghassanids were nomads, and the emergence of the Ghassanids as zealous Monophysites who wrote an important chapter in the history of that Christian confession in the sixth century. The ecclesiastical role of the Ghassanids is fully discussed and documented in BASIC I, while their role as a sedentary community is only partially treated. The latter receives a fuller treatment in BASIC II, where their contribution to the urbanization of the limitrophe 4 is discussed at length. Since 1889 no work has appeared that was specifically devoted to the Ghassanids or the Arab-Byzantine relationship.
The Ghassanids received some attention, mostly in the inter-war period, in the works of ecclesiastical historians who wrote on Oriens Christianus, such as F. Nau. 5 One of these works, A. Aigrain's monumental article, "Arabie," 6 was a tour de force but nevertheless was written from the perspective of a Christian ecclesiastical historian who was writing on the Arabs in general, and not on the Ghassanids in particular. Hence it has all the limitations of a work conceived and executed within that framework. The present work is therefore the first study devoted to the Ghassanids since Noldeke's monograph. It builds upon Noldeke, who approached the Ghassanids as a philologist, but treats them differently. It presents a history of the Ghassanids as foederati of Byzantium in the sixth century and sets them within the mainstream of Byzantine history in this crucial century. It thus forms a climax to the present writer's early work, a series of articles on the Ghassanids and other aspects of the Arab-Byzantine relationship in the sixth century.
These studies have been collected in a volume 7 which thus forms a companion to BASIC I and is indispensable for its readers. As these early articles have appeared in the Variorum series, they have not been included here. Instead they are simply referred to, with the exception of a few pages that appear in the present volume because they are essential to the argument in which they occur. As careful readers of the volumes of this series will have noted, the Arabs are not treated as such, but as foederati of Byzantium strictly within the framework of Byzantine history in Oriens in the sixth century. Thus the Byzantinist, and not only the Byzantino-Arabist, will find here discussions of problems that bear on his or her interests as a Byzantinist. Many passages pertaining to the Arabs in the Greek and Latin historians are intensively analyzed for the first time, thus shedding light on many aspects of Byzantine history and historiography. The technical Latin designation of the Arab allies of Byzantium in this proto-Byzantine period was foederati (Greek EVCT1TEv0oL or CTUµµaxot). This was the term applied to those of the fourth and the fifth centuries, the Tanukhids and the Sali~ids respectively, and it is applicable to the Ghassanids of the sixth century as well. Procopius' well-known passage,8 when carefully examined, suggests not the discontinuance of the application of the term in the reign of Justinian but rather its capaciousness that now included other categories of troops, such as the private bands of soldiers led by condottieri.
The Arab allies of Byzantium in the sixth century, the Ghassanids, are thus referred to as foederati in this volume, and they were truly such. The foedus was and remained the instrument of policy that regulated Rome's relationship with them as with all foreign allies, and they continued to receive the annona foederatica and remained non-citizens to whom civitas .v.ras not extended. The sixth century is better known than the fifth both to Byzantinists and to Byzantino-Arabists alike. Hence the chapters of ~his volume, organized around the reigns of the emperors, are not difficult to follow, especially as a short introduction in each chapter presents the main problems of each reign . These introductions do not make superfluous the writing of a synthesis that has been a feature of the two earlier volumes on the fourth and fifth centuries . This synthesis, however, will be included at the end of BASIC II, since only then, after discussing the cultural history of the Ghassanids and their role in the defense system of Byzantium in Oriens, can the significance of their history be fully grasped.
Acknowledgments
The research that has made possible the writing of this volume was mainly conducted at Dumbarton Oaks, and it is, therefore, to this institution with its unrivaled facilities for Byzantine studies that I must first tender my thanks . They are especially due to Professor Henry Maguire, Director of Byzantine Studies, whose support has contributed substantially to the completion of this volume; to the Librarian of the Byzantine Library, Irene Vaslef, for her help in the area most relevant to my research, books and periodicals, and their acquisition when not available at Dumbarton Oaks; and to the Publishing Manager, Glenn Ruby, who has helped considerably in expediting the publication of this volume, especially with his counseling on its production and related matters. To all three and their staff, I am truly grateful. I owe thanks also to Georgetown University, for its generous support of my research in granting leaves of absence and summer fellowships, and especially to Dean James Alatis and Assistant Dean Richard Cronin of the School of Languages and Linguistics, Dean Richard Schwartz and Associate Dean Gerald Mara of the Graduate School, and Brenda Bickett and Carolyn Colwell of Lauinger Library. To Clare Hall, Cambridge, where I spent my sabbatical of 1987-88, I owe a pleasant and fruitful year. Its proximity to the Cambridge.University Library, with its splendid collections of Classical and Oriental works, was certainly an advantage which facilitated my research. I should, therefore, like to thank its President, Anthony Low, and his wife, Belle, for the warm welcome they accorded me and my wife, and for their various kindnesses throughout that year. Special mention should be made of Frances Kianka, the able copy editor of a long and difficult typescript; Victoria Erhart, for working on the tables and stemmata; Alvin Shaw, for drawing the maps; and last, but not least, two anonymous readers whose incisive comments contributed much to the refinement of the text. In this company is my wife, Mary, who helped every step of the way and spent long hours typing parts of the manuscript. Many are the individuals with whom I have corresponded and conversed about my research, and I should like to record my thanks to the following
Alexander Alexakis, Sebastian Brock, Robert Browning, Victoria Erhart, David Frendo, David Graf, Sidney Griffith, Peter Grossmann, Benjamin Isaac, Walter Kaegi, Widad Kawar, Alexander Kazhdan, Ofer Livne, Leslie MacCoull, Eric McGeer, Cyril Mango, John Martindale, John Nesbitt , David Olster, Michael Pavkovic, Fr. Michele Piccirillo, Ljubica Popovic, Franz Rosenthal, Lee Sherry, Nancy Sevcenko, Peter Topping, and Tilo Ulbert. My thanks are also due to those patrons of learning, the Trustees of the Tamari-Sabbagh Foundation, whose support of this series on Byzantium and the Arabs has expedited the publication of these volumes. I am especially grateful to two of its members, A. Shoman and H . Sabbagh, for their continuing interest . If Horace 's integer vitae scelerisque purus is applicable to anyone in the field of Near Eastern studies, it is to the philosopher/Islamicist whom the dedication commemorates, George P. Hourani, one of the secular saints of his generation, to whom I owe more than I can express. I had hoped to dedicate with Ad Multos Annos the second part of this volume on ecclesiastical history to his younger brother, Albert, a scholar who truly belonged to the Age of Spirituality, but death suddenly overtook him, thus uniting the two brothers in the same dedication.
Introduction
The context within which the three volumes on Byzantium and the Arabs · in the proto-Byzantine period are written has been explained in the introduction to the first volume on the fourth century, BAFOC, in the section titled "Byzantium and the Arabs before the Rise of Islam," and the problems and themes of this period have also been discussed there in another section. 1 This introduction, therefore, consists of only two sections, one dealing with the sources and the other giving a synoptic view of the sixth century. Both sections will contribute to a better comprehension of the many chapters and detailed analyses that constitute this volume . I. THE SOURCES What was said about the sources and their relative importance for BAFOC and BAFIC is also applicable to this volume. For BASIC I, the three major sets of sources are the Greek, Latin, and Syriac; the first two have made possible the writing of the political and military history of the period, while the third has made possible writing the part on ecclesiastical history . A. The Greek sources may be divided into the following categories. 1. Literary sources: all the major historians and writers of the period have been drawn upon: Procopius, Malalas, Nonnosus, Agathias, Menander, Evagrius, and Theophylact. Choricius of Gaza, too, has been very useful, and so has been the Chronicon Paschale. The later chronographers, Theophanes and Patriarch Nicephorus, have not been neglected. 2. Hagiography has been especially important: the Vitae of the various monks of Palestine in the work of Cyril of Scythopolis and the Vita of Simeon the Younger have illuminated basic aspects of Ghassiinid history; much less important has been the Pratum Spirituale of John Moschus. 3. Novellae: two of the novels of Justinian, the one on Arabia and the other on Palestine, together with the edict on Phoenicia Libanensis, have been very useful for understanding the phylarchal situation in these three provinces. 4. Epigraphy: unlike the fifth century in Arab-Byzantine relations, the sixth is well served by Greek epigraphy . A number of inscriptions on both Arethas and his son Mungir have been assembled, and they are especially welcome for obvious reasons. B. The Latin sources are much less important than the Greek, but they have been drawn upon for some useful data: Marcellinus Comes, Corippus, John of Biclar, the letters of Pope Gregory, and Gregory of Tours. C. The Syriac sources are mainly relevant to writing the ecclesiastical history 2 and are divisible into three categories. 1.
Contemporary historians: three of them have been extensively drawn upon-Joshua the Stylite, Zacharia of Mytilene, and John of Ephesus. The last is by far the most important. 2. Later historians and chroniclers: in addition to the short chronicles, titled Chronica Minora in CSCO, there is the large figure of Michael the Syrian, and to a lesser degree Pseudo-Dionysius. 3. Contemporary documents: the letters of Simeon of Beth-Arsham on the martyrs of Najran, the Documenta Monophysitarum, and the letter of Peter of Callinicum. These are the principal sets of sources that have been laid under contribution for BASIC I. The Arabic sources are the least important for this part but become crucial for BASIC II, which to a great extent is based on them. One Arabic source, however, is of immense importance for BASIC I, and it is the best of all sources, since it comes from epigraphy-the Usays inscription. It is the only Arabic inscription on the Ghassanids that has been discovered. 3 These sources complement one another. The secular Greek historians are silent on the Arab religious affiliation to Christianity. This is revealed only in some Greek hagiographic works-Cyril of Scythopolis, the Vita of Simeon, and a Greek inscription that reveals the Ghassanid affiliation with Christianity-but their true and fundamental role in the fortunes of Christianity in the sixth century is revealed only in the Syriac authors. These sources for the sixth century are no longer those of the fragmentary classicizing historians on whose surviving fragments BAFIC was based.
They are authors whose works have been preserved. Hence the problem in dealing with them is not that of "the encounter with the fragment" 4 but the ira et studium that are so much a part of their work. All these sources have already been edited, commented upon, and evaluated.5 My task here has been to isolate the Arabica in them-the passages on the Arabs and the foederati-subject these to an intensive examination, and give an evaluation of each of these historians in the light of this examination. The results shed new light on the historiography of these sixth-century authors, who have been recently studied by such scholars as Elizabeth and Michael Jeffreys, Roger Scott, Brian Croke, Ann Moffatt, Averil Cameron, David Frendo, R. C. Blockley, Pauline Allen, and Michael and Mary Whitby. II. THE SIXTH CENTURY: A SYNOPTIC VIEW A Unlike the fifth century, ·which witnessed a long peace between Persia and Byzantium, the sixth was a tumultuous century during which that peace was shattered in the first reign, that of Anastasius, and war with Persia continued to break out in the reign of each succeeding emperor. These continual wars in the East were accompanied by the outbreak of others with the Germanic peoples in the West, brought about by the Justinianic reconquest of the Roman Occident, and with the Slavs who invaded the Balkans in the latter part of the century. The empire was fighting on all fronts. However, the Persian wars in the East had special significance in the context of the long conflict with Sasanid Persia, especially as they culminated in the Persian war of Heraclius' reign, which was followed almost immediately by the war with Islam. This war decreed Byzantium out of Oriens, Egypt, and North Africa, and opened atruly new era in the history of Byzantium and the world . For many scholars, it signifies the end of late antiquity in the East and the beginning of the Middle Ages, thus making the Arab Conquests and the seventh century the true watershed between the two historical eras. 6 There was also the ecclesiastical controversy that tore apart the Byzantine Orient. While the Arian heresy was definitively disposed of in the fourth century, and thus became a problem only in the Occident where it was embraced by many of the Germanic tribes; and while Nestorianism in the fifth was eliminated from Byzantine territory when the School of Edessa with its Nestorian bias was closed by Emperor Zeno in 489, Monophysitism remained a thorn in the side of Orthodox Byzantium, within Oriens, in Armenia, and in Egypt, that is, in most of the eastern provinces of the empire . In spite of sincere efforts on the part of Chalcedonian emperors to effect a reconciliation and attain the ideal of una fides, the Monophysites remained irreconcilable till the very end. The movement had many political and military implications, and this contributed from within to increased tension and instability in the East. The emperor who was most involved in both the military conflicts and the theological controversies was Justinian, whose personality and achievements dominate the century, and thus the period may truly be called the century of Justinian,7 as the fourth may be called the century of Constantine . His reign was the longest: for almost half a century, including the reign of his uncle Justin I, he was the effective ruler of the Byzantine state, actively pursuing his political, military, and ecclesiastical goals until his death in 565 . It was in fact Justinian who changed the course of Arab-Byzantine relations in this period when he initiated a vigorous pro-Ghassanid policy.
B Set against the backdrop of such a century, the Arab foederati appear as active participants in the making of its history, both militarily and ecclesiastically. As the Persian war was fought continually in this century, the Ghassanids as foederati naturally appear regularly in the campaigns of the war and take part in important military engagements, such as the battle of Callinicum in 531. In addition, they conduct campaigns against their inveterate enemies, the Lakhmids, the allies of Sasanid Persia. After containing their thrusts against Oriens, they finally crush them in a decisive victory in Chalcis in 554 and continue to thrash them in the 570s. Although technically not a part of the exercitus comitatensis of Oriens, they virtually functioned as such, galloping for Byzantium against the Persians and the Lakhmids and keeping watch on the oriental limes. The three volumes of the second part of this trilogy-BAFOC, BAFIC, and BASIC-especially the last, are the most detailed account of any federate group in the service of Byzantium in the Orient in this proto-Byzantine period. Their history is practically unknown to the general historians of this period or even to the specialized military histories of Byzantium. 8 As Monophysites and zealous ones, they took an active part in the religious conflicts of the century. They turned out to be the mailed fist of the movement in Oriens. Their kings intervened on critical occasions to serve the interests of their confession.
Around the year 540 the Ghassanid Arethas effected the ordination of two bishops, Jacob and Theodore, and with this the resuscitation and reestablishment of the Monophysite hierarchy after it had been decimated by persecution and executions. He continued to guard the interests of the Monophysite confession till the end of his long life and reign in 569, when he made his exit from history not as the redoubtable warrior, which he was, but as an ecclesiastical peacemaker in the Tritheistic controversy. 9 The emperor most deeply involved with the Ghassanids was Justinian. In 5 29 he conferred on Arethas the extraordinary Basileia and made him s~preme phylarch, the commander-in-chief of the Arab foederati in Byzantium. In addition he initiated a vigorous and enlightened oriental policy that encompassed not only Oriens but also the Red Sea area. 10 The Ghassanids served him well throughout the reign, and he placed full confidence in their loyalty in spite of malicious insinuations by Procopius, the chief historian of the reign, which evidently he completely ignored. The harmonious federate-imperial relation ship collapsed later when one of the diadochoilepigonoi had Arethas' son arrested and another had him exiled to Sicily, measures that resulted in a bloody encounter before the walls of Bostra in which the Ghassanids vanquished the Byzantine army and killed the dux of the Provincia Arabia . The Ghassanid phylarchate was suspended for five years, an event that had far-reaching consequences for Arab-Byzantine relations. The key to understanding this dramatic turn of events must be sought in Ghassanid Monophysitism. While the Sali:l_iids of the fifth century lived in perfect unison with Chakedonian Byzantium, as the Tanukhids had done in the fourth century with the exception of the reign of Valens, the Ghassanids did not. They fell victim to the change of imperial dynasties in the sixth century which had conflicting theological positions. They had adopted Monophysitism during the reign of the Monophysite Anastasius, but the advent of Justin and his dynasty spelt disaster for them. As they remained faithful to their confession, they had to pay the price.
Their continued loyal adherence to the Monophysite faith explains the tensions that the Ghassanid-Byzantine relationship experienced throughout the century and that finally led to an armed conflict, and, more serious, to the eventual failure of Justinian's enlightened Arab and Arabian policy. The Byzantine ecclesia contributed its generous share to the fall of the Ghassanids, perhaps even more than the imperial administration . It was against loyal and zealous fellow Christians such as the Ghassanids that the Chalcedonian ecclesia, intolerant of confessional pluralism, threw its weight and contributed to their downfall. As the final part of this trilogy (BISC) will explain, the disastrous course of Ghassanid-Byzantine relations late in the century, which weakened the Ghassanids, contributed to the success of the great historical movement that was Islam and the Islamic Conquest-hence the importance of the Ghassanids in world history, and not only in the provincial history of Oriens in the proto-Byzantine period. 11 C The conclusion of the second part of the trilogy with the completion of this volume makes it necessary to end this introduction with a few words on the larger historical framework within which the three volumes (BAFOC, BAFIC, and BASIC) have been written-the history of the Diocese of Oriens in the proto-Byzantine period. Oriens is an intelligible unit of historical study and research, distinct from Anatolia and Egypt, ethnically, linguistically, geographically, and cul rurally. It deserves to be treated as such, both as a Byzantine diocese of the proto-Byzantine period and as the future Bilad al-Sham (and Jazira) in the Arab-Umayyad period when it became the metropolitan province of the new Islamic empire. The three volumes in this series are a contribution to the history of this diocese as far as its federate Arab constituent is concerned.
They have traced the history of the Arab foederati-the Tanukhids, the Sali~ids, and the Ghassanids-mainly in the political, military, ecclesiastical, and administrative spheres, in the three centuries from the reign of Constantine to that of Heraclius. Oriens, ethnically a Semitic region, received fresh and vigorous ethnic and cultural strains in its Hellenistic period. Cultural analysts have conceived of it as a bicultural region consisting of the Syriac/Aramaic and Hellenic elements. Such an analysis neglects the Arab and Arabic constituent which makes of Oriens a tricultural region. The previous volumes and the present one have touched lightly on the cultural life of the Arabs. Hence the Arab contribution to the cultural life of Oriens is not very clear and has not been easy to grasp . BASIC II will deal with their contribution in a substantial way, and the triculturalism of Oriens will clearly emerge, important for the protoByzantine period and also for the Umayyad, when the Arabs are no longer foederati but the new masters of Oriens, now Bilad al-Sham. 12 As has been explained in the introduction to BAFOC, the Arabs in these volumes are not treated as such but as the Germans of the East, both as foederati for the empire and, proleptically, as the future conquerors of Oriens and the North African provinces. Thus these volumes have set the stage for comparative studies of the historic role of the two peoples, in spite of the obvious differences that obtained between them. 13 When the Arab foederati of Byzantium in Oriens are studied in this context, they are no longer anonymous groups lumped together under the umbrella title of "Saracens" but a succession of distinct groups, each of which had its own history and special relationship to the empire, in much the same way that the Goths, the Vandals, and the Franks each had their own history and identity. In the case of the Arabs, the principal groups of foederati were the Taniikhids, the Sali):iids, and the Ghassanids, the foederati of the fourth, fifth, and sixth centuries respectively. These three volumes have been conceived as being at one and the same time a contribution to the study of the Arab federate constituent in the makeup of late antiquity in Oriens and also as prolegomena for the study of the rise of Islam and the Arab Conquests, the drama of which has puzzled generation after generation of scholars who have tried to understand, inter a/ia, what happened to Roman arms on 20 August 636 on the battlefield of Yarmiik.
That drama presents a highly complex web of problems. This series is a contribution toward a better understanding of that drama, as it fills the gap of three centuries that preceded the rise of Islam in the history of ArabByzantine relations. The annihilating defeat of Yarmiik is a chapter in the theme "Byzantium and the Arabs," and the elucidation of that theme in the course of the three preceding centuries sheds a bright light on the mystery of that fateful battle, and with it the early Arab Conquests.
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