BYZANTIUM AND THE ARABS IN THE SIXTH CENTURY Volume 2 | Part 2 IRFAN SHAHÎD BYZANTIUM AND THE ARABS IN THE SIXTH CENTURY A mosaic in the floor of the southern sacristy of the Church of St. George at Mt. Nebo. It is dated 536 and so its Arabic term, bi-salām, illustrates the calligraphic expression of the Arabic script in pre-Islamic times, as discussed in the chapter on Calligraphy in this volume. BYZANTIUM AND THE ARABS IN THE SIXTH CENTURY IRFAN SHAHÎD Volume II Part 2: Economic, Social, and Cultural History PUBLISHED BY DUMBARTON OAKS RESEARCH LIBRARY AND COLLECTION Washington, D.C. Copyright © 2009 by Dumbarton Oaks Trustees for Harvard University, Washington, D.C. All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. All maps by K. Rasmussen (archeographics.com), © 2009 by Dumbarton Oaks, Trustees for Harvard University Library of Congress cataloging-in-publication data available ISBN 978-0-88402-347-0 IN MEMORIAM P. MICHELE PICCIRILLO 1944–2008 P. FRANCIS DEMARET 1927–2009 Contents Abbreviations x Preface xiii Acknowledgements xxi I Economic History I The Role of the Ghassānids 3 II The Ghassānids and the Security of Oriens 6 III The Ghassānids and International Trade Routes 10 IV The Fairs 33 V The Ghassānids as Tax Collectors 41 VI A Ghassānid Dyarchy in Oriens 43 VII Other Contributions 45 VIII The Wealth of Arabia 47 IX Economic Rivalry in Arabia: Byzantium and Persia 52 Appendix Al-Nuʿmān ibn al-Mundir: Ghassānid or Lakhmid? 57 II Social History A Background I Ghassānid Federate Society 61 II The Women of Ghassān 81 Appendices I Elizabeth of Najrān 110 II Yawm al-Khurūj: The Day of the Exodus 111 IIi Palm Sunday 112 Iv The Education of a Ghassānid Princess 113 v Al-Jūdī, Layla’s Father at Dūma 115 vi Yawm al-Furāt, “the Battle-day of the Euphrates” 116 Contents III Prose Accounts on the Ghassānids 118 Appendix Reynold Nicholson on the Ghassānid Royal Court 125 B Daily Life IV Food 127 Appendix Paradise in the Koran 135 V Drink 138 Appendix Garisaean Bacchus 157 VI Clothes 159 Appendix The Vestimentary System: Further Observations 173 VII Medicine 176 C Rituals, Entertainment, and Leisure Activities VIII Music and Song 182 Appendix Μῖμος and μιμάς in Arabic 201 IX Dance 204 X Victory Celebrations 207 XI Votive and Victory Offerings 220 Appendix The Ghassānids and the Old Testament: Job/Ayyūb 228 XII The Horse 230 XIII The Hunt 238 Appendix Traps and Snares 246 XIV Ghassānid Banquets 250 XV Recreation in the Countryside: Tabaddi 255 Contents ix III Cultural History I The Ghassānid Limitrophe 261 II The Ghassānid Sedentary Presence 268 III Architecture and Decorative Art 277 Appendices I On the Archaeology of the Limitrophe 285 II The Monasteries of the Ghassānids 287 III Al-Jawhara al-Nafīsa 289 IV The Monastery as a Cultural Center 291 V The Arabic Script 297 VI Chivalry: The Birth of an Ideal 303 VII Poetry 306 Appendix Poetry at the Court of the Occidental Foederati: The Vandals 324 VIII The Poets 326 IX Oratory 331 Appendix Michael Psellos: The ἐπιτάφιος λόγος on His Daughter 336 X The Ghassānid Identity 338 Addenda et Corrigenda 347 Bibliography 351 Index 375 Abbreviations BAFOC: Shahîd, Byzantium and the Arabs in the Fourth Century BAFIC: Shahîd, Byzantium and the Arabs in the Fifth Century BALA I–III: Shahîd, Byzantium and the Arabs: Late Antiquity, I–III BAR: British Archaeological Reports BASIC I.1: Shahîd, Byzantium and the Arabs in the Sixth Century: Political and Military History BASIC I.2: Shahîd, Byzantium and the Arabs in the Sixth Century: Ecclesiasti cal History BASIC II.1: Shahîd, Byzantium and the Arabs in the Sixth Century: Toponymy, Monuments, Historical Geography, and Frontier Studies BASOR: Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research (Jerusalem) BGA: Bibliotheca Geographorum Arabicorum BSOAS: Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies (London) BZ: Byzantinische Zeitschrift CSCO: Corpus Scriptorum Christianorum Orientalium DOP: Dumbarton Oaks Papers EI2: Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd ed. GAS: Sezgin, Geschichte des arabischen Schrifttums GF: Nöldeke, Die Ghassänischen Fürsten JAOS: Journal of the American Oriental Society JÖB: Jahrbuch der Österreichischen Byzantinistik JRA: Journal of Roman Archaeology Lib.ann Studium biblicum franciscanum: Liber annuus LSJ Liddell, Scott, and Jones, eds., A Greek-English Lexicon Martyrs: Shahîd, trans. and annot., The Martyrs of Najrân OC: Oriens Christianus OCP: Orientalia Christiana Periodica ODB: Kazhdan, ed., The Oxford Dictionary of Byzantium PAS: Nöldeke, Geschichte der Perser und Araber zur Zeit der Sasaniden PG: Migne, ed., Patrologia Graeca PO: Patrologia Orientalis Abbreviations xi RA: Shahîd, Rome and the Arabs RE: Paulys Realencyclopädie, new rev. ed. SubsHag: Subsidia Hagiographica ZDPV: Zeitschrift der Deutschen Palästina-Vereins Preface his volume, BASIC II.2, is the last of six volumes that constitute the middle sec- Ttion of a three-part work, Byzantium and the Arabs. Its first part treated Arab- Roman relations in the centuries that elapsed from the settlement of Pompey in 63 b.c. to the reign of Diocletian (a.d. 284–305)—the centuries of the pagan empire. The third part and the climax of this project,Byzantium and Islam in the Seventh Century (BISC), will treat in two volumes the rise of Islam and the Arab Conquests. The six volumes of the middle part have their own identity as a contribution to the study of Arab-Byzantine relations in late antiquity, the proto-Byzantine period, but they are also prolegomena to the concluding part. The most relevant as prolegom- enon is this volume, since it involves a brief discussion of the economic influences on the prime mover of both Islam and the conquests, the Prophet Muḥammad. This volume builds on its predecessor,BASIC II.1, which is devoted to Ghassānid toponymy, monuments, and historical geography. Elucidation of the Ghassānid Lebensraum—the limitrophe and the transverse wedge, with their set- tlements, villages, and towns—is the sine qua non for discussing the three themes of this volume, namely, Ghassānid economic, social, and cultural life and history. The preceding volume revealed a new subdivision of Arab archaeology during the three centuries that preceded the rise of Islam in Oriens that had been terra incog- nita; it was neither pagan Arab, such as that of Petra and Palmyra, nor Muslim Arab, such as that of Damascus and Jerusalem, but Christian Arab. BASIC II.1 also revealed another aspect of Arab archaeology in the Oriens of the Muslim Arab period, now Bilād al-Shām: the strong Ghassānid substrate in the structure of many Umayyad structures, the so-called desert castles and palaces. I Two of the main strands of continuity between the two volumes may now be pointed out. 1. This volume has unearthed the history of a truly mature and unique Christian Arab culture that arose in the shadow of the Christian Roman Empire. Its birth, growth, and maturation took place in the context of Byzantium’s mission civilisatrice, not outside the limits of the imperium among the “barbarian” peoples that surrounded xiv Preface it, but within Oriens, whither the Ghassānids and other Arab foederati had wandered from regions of the Near East that were physically and culturally disadvantaged and less developed. In the Diocese of Oriens, they inevitably were subjected to the gravi- tational pull of Byzantium in its tripartite structure of “Romanitas,” Hellenism, and Christianity, all of which deeply affected their life. The third component was the most powerful and pervasive; it transformed innumerable aspects of their life and history. The result was the rise of a mature Christian culture, which obtained only once in Arab history in Oriens (Bilād al-Shām), then came to an end in the seventh century, when its active and fruitful life ceased to flourish within a Christian political entity. Its flame, independently rekindled some twelve centuries later, has been flickering fitfully and intermittently in present-day Lebanon. In an effort to recover its history from oblivion, traces of this Byzantinized Christian Arab culture in distant proto- Byzantine Oriens have been ferreted out in this volume and retrieved from the debris of extant sources. 2. Just as Ghassānid structures in the Oriens of the sixth century have been revealed in BASIC II.1 as substrates in many structures that the Umayyads erected in the later Muslim period, much of the Ghassānid contribution to the economic, social, and cultural life of Oriens persisted in the Umayyad state, especially as the Ghassānids, even after their defeat at the Yarmūk in 636 toppled them from their position as the phylarchs and client-kings of Byzantium in Oriens, succeeded in maintaining a strong presence in Umayyad Bilād al-Shām. Their three fairs, or aswāq, survived in the Umayyad period, as did many aspects of their social life, especially those pertaining to wine, song, and tavern life; these were enthusias- tically embraced by the more hedonistically inclined of the Umayyad caliphs, such as the two Yazīds and Walīd, the son of the second Yazīd. Especially impor- tant was the survival in Umayyad times of the various forms of entertainments in which the Ghassānids had indulged: namely, their sojourns in the country or tabaddi, the hunt, and horse races. These took place not in Inner Oriens but in the limitrophe, to which the Ghassānids had been consigned by their over- lords, the Umayyads—but which the Umayyads, now themselves the lords of Bilād al-Shām, occupied and made the venue of their entertainments. Thus the Ghassānid substrate is disclosed by a strand of continuity in Umayyad social life, just as in the preceding volume it was disclosed by continuities in Umayyad mon- umental structures. These continuities clearly suggest that the better-known and the better-documented Umayyad period can cast light on some aspects of social life among the Ghassānids.