Fisher G. Between Empires. Arabs, Romans, and Sasanians in Late Antiquity

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Between Empires

Arabs, Romans, and Sasanians

in Late Antiquity

GREG FISHER

Great Clarendon Street, Oxford OX26DP

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# Greg Fisher 2011

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For Paola

and

in memory of Tom Sizgorich, mentor and friend

Preface

This is an examination of politics at the extremities of Roman power,

focusing on the relationship between the Romans and their Arab allies

in the sixth century. From the broad perspectives of the Empire’s

approach towards the barbarians and the short- and long-term effects

of imperial policies, it is mostly interested in what the contemporary

sources from within and around the Roman Empire said about the

Arabs, and, in particular, the Jafnids, and the conclusions we might

draw from them. It is important at the outset to state clearly that while

the scope of the ﬁnal chapter extends into the seventh century and the

early Muslim Arab occupation of Syria and other parts of the Near

East, this is not an investigation of the very particular view of the past

produced by the much later Muslim sources. This is not simply because

I am not an Arabist by training, but also because there is a need to set

the Jafnids and the others who appear in this study within the debates

and schemes of Roman imperial history.

Between Empires aims to provide a study of a signiﬁcant but often

under-represented aspect of the Roman world in Late Antiquity. It

analyses the evolving relationships between the two dominant em-

pires of the Near East, Rome and Sasanian Iran, and their primary

Arab clients, the Jafnids and the Nas



rids. It explores how members of

these two groups, building on a pattern of closer contacts between

centre and periphery, became increasingly integrated into aspects of

the cultural, political, and religious life of the two empires in the

period up to approximately

AD 600. One of the many results of this

process was the emergence of a measurable sense of pre-eminence,

status and self-conﬁdence which is visible in their changing activities

and attitude towards their patrons. Fragments of information in

contemporary literary accounts, inscriptions, and archaeological evi-

dence act as an indicator of shifting and crystallising identities,

providing a basis for assessing the problem of how we can understand

the role and identity of the two most prominent Arab confederations

of pre-Islamic Late Antiquity. It is argued in this study that the

dynamics of the relationship between Arab groups and empires

were of fundamental importance to the development of discrete

identities for the Jafnids and Nas



rids during Late Antiquity.

This study is intended to make a contribution to several areas of

scholarship, by, among others, challenging problematic views about the

Arab allies of Rome and the Sasanians, and by building on promising

avenues of research identiﬁed by Robert Hoyland and Mark Whittow.

Its main contribution is to offer a more balanced and nuanced picture

of where and how we situate the Jafnids and Nas



rids within the broader

themes of late antique history in the Near East, as well as within other

historical schema such as centre–periphery and uneven power relation-

ships—for instance, those between dominant empires and margin-

alised peripheral groups. It also aims to show the ways in which

some of those aspects which would become important for the later

development of Muslim Arab identity, such as the connection between

the Arabic language and elites, seem to have begun their development

within the political and cultural matrix of the late antique Roman

world. By emphasising the importance of the ‘late antique setting’ to

our understanding of historical processes which would go on to take

many centuries to develop, it is my aim, here, to offer a new addition to

a productive and dynamic ﬁeld of research which explores the origins

of the modern world in the fabric of the ancient.

The Introduction to Between Empires brieﬂy discusses the essential

background for the analytical chapters which follow, each of which is

based around a particular aspect of the relationship between Rome

and the Jafnids and the Sasanians and the Nas



rids and, occasionally,

the H

ujrids and the H

imyarite kingdom of south Arabia. In Chapter

2, ‘Aspects of Arab Christianisation in Late Antiquity’, the discussion

explores the Christianisation of Arabs on the edge of the Roman

Empire, and their participation in late antique religious landscapes.

It shows that many contemporary observers understood that the

‘conversion’ of the Arabs was a stereotypical civilising and sedentar-

ising force, which could bring those from the periphery into the

ordered world of the Empire. In the experiences of the Jafnids, a

different subtext emerges, showing the ways in which the ruling

Jafnid elite manipulated the different opportunities which came

with becoming Christian and avoided the most dangerous of the

pitfalls which inevitably accompanied Roman ecclesiastical politics.

For their part, the Nas



rids avoided making a commitment to any

particular religion. In spite of pursuing different strategies, both

groups achieved similar results, managing to escape many of the

entanglements which were part of the unstable religious environment

in the sixth century. This ability to occupy a middle ground without

Preface vii

making an irrevocable commitment was of great importance in

protecting the political position of the Jafnid and Nas



rid elites.

Chapter 3, ‘Empires, Clients, and Politics’, explores the political

development of the Jafnids and the Nas



rids from a number of per-

spectives, including that of the integration of barbarians into the

Roman Empire in Late Antiquity. Here, the discussion also uses the

example of the H

ujrids of central Arabia to highlight the processes

being analysed. The chapter shows how state support for particular

pre-eminent individuals encouraged political power to crystallise

around single ruling dynastic families. These families—the Jafnids,

ujrids and Nas



rids—derived much of their power from ongoing

state sponsorship. This type of centralisation of power also improved

the functioning of links between client and sponsor. This chapter gives

particular attention to the literary, epigraphic, and limited archaeo-

logical evidence which shows how the Jafnids integrated into the world

of Roman late antique elites. At the same time, it also shows how

integration into the two empires produced a perhaps unintended

consequence—an increasing sense of political and diplomatic auton-

omy for the Jafnids and Nas



rids, up to the last quarter of the sixth

century. The general processes at work here are also found within the

more general schema of Near Eastern centre–periphery relationships,

showing how the Jafnids and Nas



rids can be integrated into broad

historical concerns.

Chapter 4, ‘Arabic, Culture, and Ethnicity’, is the last of the three

thematic chapters. It examines the extremely problematic question of

whether or not Arabic stood as a distinct marker of ethnic identity,

before the advent of Islam and the Muslim conquests of the Near East

developed the association between language and identity in a new

direction. The chapter discusses the evidence for Old Arabic, includ-

ing the three Arabic-language and Arabic-script inscriptions of the

sixth century, as well as the evidence for the corpus of oral poetry. It

also addresses the Nemāra inscription, with its problematic phrase,

‘king of all of (the) Arab(s)’. I suggest here that, although it is not

possible to answer deﬁnitively the question posed at the beginning of

the chapter, it is productive to approach the question of what sig-

niﬁcance should be attached to the numerous linguistic developments

within the broader political concerns discussed in the previous chap-

ter. I suggest here that the appearance of Arabic on monumental elite

inscriptions, the production of poetry, and developments in the script

are perhaps best understood in parallel with the growth in status and

viii Preface

political conﬁdence of Arab elite groups such as the Jafnids. Finally, in

its concluding section Chapter 4 brieﬂy considers two other matters

of ethnicity which span Late Antiquity and the Early Islamic period—

the problem of Abrahamic descent, and the possible late antique

origins of the romanticised ﬁgure of the bedouin in poetry.

Chapter 5 anticipates the conclusion to this study. Here, I analyse

the numerous reasons for the exile of the Jafnids, and the execution of

the ﬁnal Nas



rid leader, showing how their measured political strat-

egies which continuously placed them ‘in-between’ ultimately

brought about their decline. The argument is also placed in the

wider context of current debates concerning continuity, change,

catastrophe and decline in Late Antiquity.

In Chapter 6, the conclusion, I assess the broader signi ﬁcance of

the material analysed in Chapters 2, 3, 4 and 5. I suggest that, while

both the Jafnids and the Nas



rids were able to manage the pressures

brought to bear by their imperial sponsors by being active partici-

pants in a dynamic, two-way relationship, the long-term growth of

both was inevitably capped by Roman and Sasanian power, and both

Arab groups were, in the end, overtaken by events. Yet their incom-

plete integration or subordination—for example, by acting as imper-

ial clients and ﬁghting imperial wars, whilst simultaneously pursuing

their own goals—gave them a strong sense of identity, which was

largely based around their political activities. Through the Jafnids and

Nas



rids we see how Arab elites were developing identities well before

Islam, and in ways which were deeply embedded within the cultural

matrix of Late Antiquity. Secondly, the history of these groups shows

the proﬁtability of approaching Arab elites from numerous wider

perspectives—for example, as imperial clients, or as participants in

the general historical schema of state–periphery relationships, in the

Near East as well as elsewhere. Conceptualising the history of the

sixth-century Arabs discussed here in this fashion gives us fresh ways

to analyse the difﬁcult and sparse sources. Finally, I suggest that,

while they may not have been critical military allies, it is clear that

as occasional participants in the religious, political, and cultural world

of Late Antiquity the Jafnids and Nas



rids played a small but impor-

tant role within the numerous strands which link together the sixth

century, and the developing Islamic world which came afterwards.

Greg Fisher

Ottawa, Canada

Preface ix