The transformation of Mard ō Mard from a Persian tradition to a literary topos
Written by: Ilia Calogero Curto Pelle
In his brilliant survey of literary topoi in the early Arabic historical tradition, Albrecht Noth argued that, in using Arabic sources for the reconstruction of the Arab conquests of the 7th century,
“we must take an all-encompassing view of the forms and the biases of early Islamic tradition as a whole, in order to assess accurately even one occurrence”.1 Noth dedicated a large part of his book studying the different literary schemata and topoi in Arabic futūḥ (conquest) narratives, their transferability from one event to another, and the complications for the reconstruction of early
Arabic history when this “[s]ystematization and schematization” prevails “over purposeful description of actual events…”2 One of the elements of the early Arabic conquests that he labels a literary topos is the use of duels at the onset of battles between the Sassanians and Arabs.3 While he concedes that “single combat was beyond any doubt a custom of the early period, especially since this usage has its roots in pre-Islamic times”,4 his discussion of these duels is quite brief – only about a page in length. But the implications of this labeling of duels as mere topoi are similar to those of his discussion of Persian commanders’ names, which Parvaneh Pourshariati argued contributed to a “skewed reconstruction of Iranian history”,5 which forces us to “reckon with this period of Iranian history in a vacuum that has been occasioned by our own lack of research”.6 This is even more so the case because we know of a Sassanian military tradition of single combat –
1 Albrecht Noth, The Early Arabic Historical Tradition. A Source-Critical Study (Princeton: The Darwin Press, Inc., 1994), 18-19. 2 Noth, Early Arabic Historical Tradition, 12. 3 Noth, Early Arabic Historical Tradition, 168-169. 4 Noth, Early Arabic Historical Tradition, 168. 5 Parvaneh Pourshariati, Decline and fall of the Sasanian empire: the Sasanian-Parthian confederacy and the Arab conquest of Iran (London; New York: I.B. Tauris & Co. Ltd, 2008), 164. 6 Pourshariati, Decline and fall of the Sasanian empire, 162. Page | 1 mard ō mard (man to man). Therefore, we must investigate what this tradition and its usage in the
Arab histories tell us about the battles of the early conquest of Iraq. In this essay, I will argue that these duels had their historical basis in the tradition of mard ō mard, that the diverse descriptions of these duels in the first battles of the conquest of Iraq can make us fairly confident of their historicity, and that the internal controversies among our sources in the battle of al-Qadisiyyah testify to the transformation of this Sassanian military tradition into a literary topos.
Before discussing this it is first necessary to provide the reader with a brief discussion of the key terms in this paper and with a short reconstruction of the historical events of the early Arab conquest of Iraq. The first key term of this paper is the name given to the Persian custom of single combat in the scholarly literature – mard ō mard. The term is translated from Middle Persian as
“man-to-man” and was modeled after the cry that the Persian general would shout out to his opponents after the latter refused to submit to the rule of the Shahanshah and the Zoroastrian religion.7 This tradition seems to have preceded the Sassanian period, but it was under the House of Sassan that it developed “a firm law code”,8 strict regulations, and high ethical standards.9 For the Sassanian kings, military prowess was an important tool of dynastic legitimation, which led them to present their successes as victories of the king in single combat.10 These include the battle relief at Firuzabad, the rock-relief at the necropolis of Naqsh-e Rostam, the Paris cameo of the capture of Valerian, and the Picture Book of Sassanian Kings.11 In pre-Islamic literary works, we
7 Arthur Christensen, L’Iran sous les Sassanides (Copenhagen: E. Munksgaard,1944), 216; David Nicolle, Sassanian armies: the Iranian empire early 3rd to mid-7th centuries AD (Stockport: Montvert, 1996), 19. 8 Afsaneh Sh Shahbazi, “ARMY i. Pre-Islamic Iran,” in Encyclopaedia Iranica, II/5, 489-499, last updated August 12, 2011. http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/army-i. 9 Josef Wiesehöfer, Ancient Persia from 550 BC to 650 AD, trans. Azizeh Azodi (London; New York: I.B. Tauris, 1996), 198-199. 10 Wiesehöfer, Ancient Persia, 199. 11 Wiesehöfer, Ancient Persia, 198-199; Shahbazi „ARMY i.” Page | 2 have two instances, where mard ō mard is recorded. The first one appears in Procopius.12 During the first day of the battle of Dara, a Persian cavalryman issues a challenge to the Byzantine soldiers and is subsequently defeated by the Byzantine Andreas. This horrifies the Persians, who send a second soldier to face him and who is also defeated. Now, while the story of the individual Andreas and his duel might be a purely literary device, as Whately asserts, John Malalas, whose history seems to have been “based on official documents,” does make mention of duels at another stage of the same battle.13 Therefore, while Andreas himself might be mythical, the idea of a duel, initiated by the Sassanians, is not. We can find corroboration of this principle in the second description of such a duel. Malalas records that during the Roman-Sassanian War of 421-422 Bahram V offered a duel between his champion Ardazanes and a Roman champion to decide who the victor of the war would be.14 The Roman champion, the Gothic foederatus Areobindus, was victorious, and then
Bahram allegedly negotiated a peaceful settlement to the conflict. Again, while the notion that a
Sassanian shah would let an entire war hinge on a single duel is clearly spurious, Areobindus’s duel is also attested in the Ecclesiastical History of Socrates Scholasticus: “Areobindus… killed the bravest of the Persians in single combat”.15 Shahbazi and Charles both seem to accept the historicity of this duel, even if it did not lead to the end of the war, especially given that Charles identifies that Malalas correctly designated Ardazanes, a member of the Immortals, as a horseman and recorded the duel as occurring on horseback.16 Therefore, even if we choose to not trust the two narratives verbatim, we cannot simply dismiss the Persian tradition of mard ō mard as a literary
12 Procopius of Caesarea, The wars of Justinian, trans. H.B. Dewing (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, Inc., 2014), 32-33. 13 Connor Whately, Battles and Generals: Combat, Culture, and Didacticism in Procopius' wars (Leiden; Boston: Brill, 2016), 75. 14 Shahbazi „ARMY I,” 498; Michael B Charles, “The Sassanian Immortals,” Iranica Antiqua 46 (2011): 299. 15 Rev. Andrew C. Zenos, “The Ecclesiastical History of Socrates Scholasticus,” in A Select Library of Nicene and Post-Nicene Father of the Christian Church Second Seris. Volume 2. Socrates, Sozomenus: Church Histories, ed. Philip Schaff and Henry Wace (New York: The Christian Literature Company, 1890), 162. HathiTrust. 16 Shahbazi „ARMY I,” 498; Michael B Charles, “The Sassanian Immortals,” Iranica Antiqua 46 (2011): 299-300. Page | 3 invention, since it is attested in Byzantine written accounts, Sassanian rock reliefs, and, as we will see, the Arabic historical tradition. Now let us briefly turn to the second important term in this essay – the literary topos. Here, we can readily accept Noth’s definition of a topos as “a narrative motif which has as its primary function the specification of content, and aims to elaborate matters of fact… and it is normally bound to description of a specific situation, definition of a brief moment, or characterization of a person.”17
Next, we need to review the narrative of the Arabic conquest by focusing more precisely on the battles between the invasion of Iraq and the battle of al-Qadisiyyah which included duels.
In doing so, we will follow the most widely accepted sequence of events,18 but no exact dates will be offered due to the renewed disagreement in the field, prompted by Pourshariati’s early chronology for the conquest of Iraq.19 For the reader’s orientation, the events here would have occurred between 628 and 638 A.D. The first phase of the campaign was led by the “Sword of
Allah” – Khālid ibn al-Walīd. After subjugating al-Yamāmah in the Ridda Wars (“Wars of
Apostasy”), Khālid marched on Ubulla, allegedly with the approval of the first caliph Abu Bakr. 20
Khālid confronted a Sassanian army under Hormozd at the Battle of the Chains. Hormozd came forward and shouted: “Man to Man! Where is Khalid?”21 The duel that followed was won by Khālid and another Arab soldier despite the intervention of two other Persian soldiers on Hormozd’s
17 Noth, Early Arabic Historical Tradition, 109. 18 For a reconstruction of the events in the Arab conquest of Iraq, based on al-Tabari and other sources, see Michael Morony, “ARAB ii. Arab conquest of Iran,” Encyclopaedia Iranica II/2, 203-210, last updated August 10, 2011, http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/arab-ii, Fred McGraw Donner, The Early Islamic Conquests (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1981), Abd Al-Husain Zarrīnkūb, “The Arab Conquest of Iran and Its Aftermath,” in The Cambridge history of Iran. Volume 4: The Period from the Arab Invasions to the Saljuqs, ed. Richard N. Frye (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975), 1-56, and Agha Ibrahim Akram, The sword of Allah: Khalid bin al- Waleed, his life and campaigns (Karachi: National Pub. House, 1969), https://web.archive.org/web/20160825202140/http://www.grandestrategy.com/2007/12/sword-of-allah-khalid-bin-al- waleed.html. 19 Pourshariati, Decline and fall of the Sasanian empire, 161-286. 20 Pourshariati, Decline and fall of the Sasanian empire, 283. 21 Akram, The Sword of Allah, chap. 19, 4; Zarrīnkūb, “The Arab Conquest of Iran,” 7. Page | 4 behalf.22 The retreating Persian forces were incorporated into another army, led by Qārin, which encountered Khālid at the Battle of the River.23 According to al-Tabari, three duels happened on that day, with all three of the Persian generals losing their lives in battle.24 The victory at the Battle of the River prompted another army, led by Andarzghar, to confront Khālid at Walaja.25 The battle began with Khālid facing in single combat a “Persian who was equal to a thousand men.”26 The victory at Walaja was followed by similar success at Ullays, where Khālid defeated one of the chieftains of the Christian Arabs – Mālik ibn Qays, in single combat.27 After successful sieges at al-Hira and al-Anbar, Khālid charged surprisingly the Arab auxiliary force at ‘Ayn al-Tamr, capturing its general before his lines were arranged.28 At that point, Khālid left Iraq to assist the
Muslim forces besieging the town of Dumat al-Jandal but was forced to return and confront several small Christian Arab and Persian armies with night attacks at Muzayyah, Zumeil, and Sanyy.29 In the meantime, al-Qāqā ibn ‘Amr ibn Mālik al-Tamimī confronted one part of the Persian army at
Huṣayd, where he and another Arab defeated their Persian opponents in two duels.30 There is no duel recorded at the final battle of Khālid’s campaign against a united Byzantine-Sassanian force at Firaz.31 Khālid was then ordered to assist the Arab forces in Syria and began his famous march through the Syrian Desert.
The second stage of the conflict was led by al-Muthanna ibn Haritha and by Abū ‘Ubayd al-Thaqafī. However, the narratives of the engagements at Babil, al-Namariq, al-Saqatiyyah, the
22 Muhammad ibn Jarir al-Tabari, The History of al-Tabari volume XI, trans. Khalid Yahya Blankinship (New York: The State University of New York Press, 1993), 13. 23 Akram, The Sword of Allah, chap. 20, 2. 24 Al-Tabari, History vol. XI, 17. 25 Zarrīnkūb, “The Arab Conquest of Iran,” 7; Akram, The Sword of Allah, chap. 21, 3. 26 Al-Tabari, History vol. XI, 20. 27 Al-Tabari, History vol. XI, 23. Akram, The Sword of Allah, chap 22, 3, identifies the chieftain as Abdul-Aswad, probably by mistake in the translation from Arabic. 28 Al-Tabari, History vol. XI, 54. 29 Akram, The Sword of Allah, chap. 26, 3. 30 Al-Tabari, History vol. XI, 62; Akram The Sword of Allah, chap. 26, 2. 31 Akram, The Sword of Allah, chap. 26, 4. Page | 5 climactic engagement at the Battle of the Bridge, and even the Battle of Buwayb, which probably never even occurred as described in the sources,32 all conspicuously lack any occurrences of mard
ō mard. The only instance of something resembling a duel is the fatal confrontation of Abū ‘Ubayd with the elephant at the Battle of the Bridge, whose “firm relation to reality” has been well- established by its attestation in almost all of the Arabic narratives of the battle.33
The third stage of the Arabic conquest of Iraq is a direct result of the defeat at the Battle of the Bridge and the death of Abū ‘Ubayd. Sa‘d ibn Abī Waqqās now headed the Arab army, which would encounter the Persian imperial army under Rustam at the climactic battle of al-Qadisiyyah.
The battle was recorded in extreme detail by the Arab histories. However, there is a lot of uncertainty concerning the course of the battle, which also translates into the quantity of the duels and the people who fought in them. According to Mas’udi, there were duels on the first day of the battle, resulting in two victories for the Arabs.34 Sayf ibn Umar al-Tamimi puts two different versions concerning the quantity of the duels depending on his sources, both of which are collected in al-Tabari: Muḥammad, Ṭalḥah, and Ziyād point to two duels, followed by a Persian coming forward and shouting “mard ō mard” upon the start of the engagement,35 while Ismā‘īl ibn Abī
Khālid points to a single confrontation between ‘Amr ibn Ma‘dīkarib and a Persian archer, who failed to kill ‘Amr before being chased and killed.36 The situation is even more complicated on the second day. On that day, Qāqā bin ‘Amr arrived with reinforcements from Syria and, according to
32 For the uncertainty around the historicity of the Battle of Buwayb, see Donner, The Early Islamic Conquests, 199. 33 Noth, Early Arabic Historical Tradition, 133, based on, among others Matthew S. Gordon, Chase F. Robinson, Everett K. Rowson, and Michael Fishbein, ed, The Works of Ibn Wāḍiḥ al-Yaʻqūbı̄ : an English translation (Leiden; Boston: Brill, 2018), 769, Aḥmad ibn Yaḥyá Balādhurī, The origins of the Islamic state: being a translation from the Arabic, accompanied with annotations, geographic and historic notes of the Kitâb futûḥ al-buldân of al-Imâm Abu-l ʻAbbâs ibn-Jâbir al-Balâdhuri. Vol. I, trans. Philip K. Hitti (New York: AMS Press, 1968), 404, Masʿūdī, Les Prairies d'Or: Tome Quatrième, ed. Charles Pellat (Paris: Imprimerie Impériale, 1865), 200, HathiTrust, Al-Tabari, History vol. XI, 188 and 192, as well as Ibn Ishaq’s fragments included in Al-Tabari, History vol. XI 194. 34 Mas’udi, Les Prairies d’Or, 208-209. 35 Muhammad ibn Jarir al-Tabari, The History of al-Tabari volume XII, trans. Yohanan Friedmann (New York: The State University of New York Press, 1992), 91-92. 36 Al-Tabari, History vol. XII, 92 and 140. Page | 6
Mas’udi, Sayf based on Muḥammad and Ṭalḥah, and the father of al-Qāsim ibn Sulaym ibn ‘Abd al-Raḥmān al-Sa‘dī, immediately came forward and defeated two Persians in two duels.37
However, Sayf also reports, on the authority of the father of al-Qāsim ibn Sulaym and al-‘Alā’ ibn
Ziyād, that these two duels were instead fought by Al-A‘raf bin al-A‘lam al-‘Uqaylī.38 There is even more confusion concerning whether there was another duel happening at the same time as or after Qāqā’s second duel. Mas’udi talks about a duel between al-Awar bin Kutbah and the shahriar of Sédjestân (Sistan), which ended with the death of both participants.39 A similar tale is told concerning the martyrdom of ‘Ilbā ibn Jaḥsh al-‘Ijlī in quite gory details on the authority of the father of al-Qāsim ibn Sulaym and al-‘Alā’ ibn Ziyād.40 Finally, Sayf mentions a version by
Muḥammad and Ṭalḥah, which recounts that, while Qāqā was busy fighting the Persian al-
Bayruzān, al-Ḥārith bin Ẓabyān bin al-Ḥārith was fighting another Persian called Binduwān.41
Thankfully, Muḥammad, Ṭalḥah, and Ziyād only relay Hāshim bin Utbah’s statement on the third day that “[t]he beginning of the battle is individual combat, and then the shooting of arrows.”42 The only more precise information concerning a duel on that day comes from Sayf on the authority of
‘Abdallāh bin al-Mughīrah al-‘Abdī, who relayed what he heard from al-Aswad bin Qays, who had heard from their elders, who had fought at the battle, that Shabr bin ‘Alqamah, who was “short, slender and ugly,” had fought a duel with a Persian.43 We know that early on the fourth day Rustam was killed (though the killer is debated)44 and that the battle ended with victory for the Arabs.45
After the battle, the Arab cavalry pursued the remnants of the Persian army under Jalinus, who
37 Mas’udi, Les Prairies d’Or, 211-212, al-Tabari, History vol. XII, 98 and 100. 38 Al-Tabari, History vol. XII, 101. 39 Mas’udi, Les Prairies d’Or, 212-213. 40 Al-Tabari, History vol. XII, 101. 41 Al-Tabari, History vol. XII, 98. 42 Al-Tabari, History vol. XII, 109 43 Al-Tabari, History vol XII, 112. 44 Noth, Early Arabic Historical Tradition, 115-116. 45 Al-Tabari, History vol. XII, 124 and 130. Page | 7 would die in battle in personal combat with either Zuhrah bin al-Ḥawiyyah (according to three of
Sayf’s sources) or Kathîr ibn-Shihâb al-Ḥârithi (according to Balādhurī).46 The only other duel that is mentioned between the victory at al-Qadisiyyah and the capture of Ctesiphon is at the small battle at Kūthā, where Zuhrah tricked the enemy general Shahriyār into fighting Abū Nubātah Nā‘il ibn Ju‘shum al-A‘rajī, a Tamīmī, by pretending that he was a slave and thus angering Shahriyār.47
As we can see from the historical summary, the confusion and internal inconsistencies that permeate the historical records of duels between Arabs and Persians, particularly those of the battle of al-Qadisiyyah, can easily lead us to dismiss the duels in the early battles of the conquest of Iraq as a case of what Noth calls “systematization and schematization… over purposeful description of actual events”.48 However, I would like to put forward three counter-arguments for why the events of the Battle of the Chains, the Battle of the River, Ullays, and ‘Ayn al-Tamr cannot be considered instances of the use of mard ō mard as a literary topos. Firstly, the duels in these battles do not fulfill Noth’s criteria for describing duels as a literary topos. Secondly, Sayf ibn Umar, who is the largest source of stories concerning these duels in al-Tabari, has been shown to actually be a more reliable source than previously assumed concerning Persian politics and customs. Finally, if we do accept that the duels were only topoi, then we are left with the question of why no duels are mentioned at all during the second stage of the Iraqi campaign, including at the probably ahistorical battles of Firaz and Buwayb.
Noth’s argument concerning duels as a literary topos is mostly speculative, despite his concession that single combat was “a custom of the early period, especially since this usage has its
46 Al-Tabari, History vol. XII, 126 and 128 or Balādhurī, The origins of the Islamic state, 416. 47 Muhammad ibn Jarir al-Tabari, The History of al-Tabari volume XIII, trans. Gautier H.A. Juynboll (New York: The State University of New York Press, 1989), 5. 48 Noth, Early Arabic Historical Tradition, 12. Page | 8 roots in pre-Islamic times”.49 He claims that, given the victory in single combat could be “counted as a badge of honor… [t]he motif of single combat … offered the possibility of casting actors of the early period of Islam in heroic rôles.”50 Therefore, he equates single combat with another topos
- the recitation of names of participants in a battle.51 The claim that victory in single combat can be a source of prestige is unobjectionable and, in fact, was the whole point of the ritual for the
Sassanians, as shown in the discussion of mard ō mard above. But a closer look at the different descriptions of the duels at the Battle of the Chains and the Battle of Walaja can show us that the possibility of a duel being used as a topos does not mean that all these duels must be topoi. First of all, Khālid fought Hormuzd at the Battle of the Chains in single combat. While the formula ikhtalafā ḍarbatayn (“they exchanged two blows”)52 is indeed used, the contest does not end, as
Noth would expect, but continues with the pre-planned intervention of Hormuzd’s bodyguards.53
Had Qāqā bin Amr not intervened, Khālid might have died. So, this is more a glorification of Qāqā than it is of the dueling Khālid. Compared with this quite detailed account, the duel at Walaja is presented with only one sentence: “On the day of al-Walajah Khālid fought in single combat a
Persian who was equal to a thousand men and slew him”.54 Here, the glorification of Khālid is clear, especially given the subsequent anecdote of him having a meal over the dead Persian’s body.
Also, the topos of the “thousandman” has been identified and discussed already by Noth.55 And while the latter clearly is an example of single combat as a topos, it lacks the formula “they exchanged two blows” that Noth uses as an argument for the formulaic nature of duels in the
49 Noth, Early Arabic Historical Tradition, 168. 50 Noth, Early Arabic Historical Tradition, 168. 51 Noth, Early Arabic Historical Tradition, 169. 52 Noth, Early Arabic Historical Tradition, 169. 53 Al-Tabari, History vol. XI, 13. 54 Al-Tabari, History vol. XI, 20. 55 Noth, Early Arabic Historical Tradition, 169. Page | 9 historical accounts.56 This formula is also not present in the detailed description of the duel at the
Battle of the River,57 Ullays (where Khālid fought an Arab, not a Persian),58 or ‘Ayn al-Tamr.59
Noth’s argument concerning the use of rhyming names has already been addressed and problematized by Pourshariati since the “rhyming” of the names of Persian commanders can be explained by the Middle Persian suffixes required for forming names.60
Moreover, Sayf ibn Umar has often been labeled an imperfect source due to the internal contradictions within his collections, some of which have been seen in the above discussion of the battle of al-Qadisiyyah. Indeed, Noth claims that “Sayf could not possibly have had a unified conception of history”, which meant he could not possibly be assigned to a school of Islamic history.61 However, Pourshariati has shown in her book that Sayf indeed had a coherent internal logic and that the details he presents are “so detailed that it is incredible that scholarship has dismissed them for as long as it did.”62 Noth himself concedes that “a great many of the “Persian traditions” have thoroughly individual traits and cannot be explained away as constructions out of
Islamic futūḥ.”63 Therefore, it is quite surprising that the individuality of the descriptions of duels in the early part of Sayf’s narrative has not been taken into consideration in his discussion of duels as a literary topos. This does not mean that Sayf is a perfect source and that everything he recounts is true. For example, the outsized role of Qāqā bin Amr both at al-Qadisiyyah and Nihāwand has been largely, if not fully, fabricated.64 However, if we keep in mind the biases inherent in his narrative, as we might do with every other written source, and that the reports that Tabari has
56 Noth, Early Arabic Historical Tradition, 169. 57 Al-Tabari, History vol. XI, 17. 58 Al-Tabari, History vol. XI, 23. 59 Al-Tabari, History vol. XI, 54. 60 Pourshariati, Decline and fall of the Sasanian empire, 163-164. 61 Noth, Early Arabic Historical Tradition, 8. 62 See Pourshariati, Decline and fall of the Sasanian empire, 171, 200, and 282. 63 Noth, Early Arabic Historical Tradition, 39. 64 Pourshariati, Decline and fall of the Sasanian empire, 233-234. Page | 10 collected have not passed down to us “in unadulterated form” and so must be even more carefully scrutinized, 65 then Sayf can be the source of more useful information than he previously was given credit for, including for the early conquests of Iraq and the role of mard ō mard in them.
Finally, if, as Noth asserts, we accept the use of duels in all of these battles as literary topoi, then we are left with an important question: why do we not find any reports on duels at the battles between ‘Ayn al-Tamr and al-Qadisiyyah? Even more strikingly, we do not find any duels at two battles, whose historicity is quite dubious: Firaz and Buwayb.66 Indeed, if Buwayb was entirely concocted to serve as Muthanna ibn Haritha’s swan song, as Donner has shown,67 one might expect to see the wounded general prevailing in single combat against his enemies or at least some duels appearing in the smaller skirmishes before the Battle of the Bridge. After all, we do see instances of duels in the first battles of the invasion of Iraq, which would have been comparable in scale.
And yet, Sayf and other sources of Al-Tabari remain silent. Perhaps Pourshariati’s point that the
Arabs seem to have adopted a strategy by al-Qadisiyyah of targeting Persian nobles to weaken the
Sassanids might explain the absence of duels in these battles.68 This might also explain why, after the death of Qārin at the Battle of the River, “the Muslims did not fight anyone whose nobility had lapsed among the Persians”.69 After losing two important nobles (Hormozd and Qārin) in battle, the Persians would evade participating in a mard ō mard against the Arabs. Indeed, the duel at
‘Ayn al-Tamr would be fought against an unprepared Arab commander, while the “thousandman” topos at Walaja would have been concocted to glorify Khālid. This can also explain the absence of
65 Noth, Early Arabic Historical Tradition, 6-7. 66 Noth, Early Arabic Historical Tradition, 205-206 and Pourshariati, Decline and fall of the Sasanian empire, 218- 219. 67 Donner, The Early Islamic Conquests, 199. 68 Pourshariati, Decline and fall of the Sasanian empire, 233. 69 Al-Tabari, History vol. XI, 17. Page | 11 duels in the second phase of the campaign. And it might show us how, in the narrative of al-
Qadisiyyah, mard ō mard came to be transformed into a literary topos.
So, let us turn to the battle of al-Qadisiyyah. Tabari and Mas’udi are the only two authors who mention duels during the battle. These duels are not present in other Arabic and non-Arabic sources, such as the Armenian historian Sebeos, 70 the Syriac Khuzistan Chronicle,71 and the Arab historians al-Balādhurī72 and Al-Ya’qubi,73 while Ibn Ishaq’s version of the battle of al-Qadisiyyah includes only the confrontation between ‘Amr ibn Ma‘dīkarib and the Persian archer.74 This should make us quite suspicious concerning the different duels described on that day. Indeed, Noth describes the battles of al-Qadisiyyah, Yarmouk, and Nihāwand “as a group which consists essentially of topoi and anecdotes strung together.”75 Al-Qadisiyyah was a pivotal battle in Islamic history, so much so that the Caliph Umar allegedly united all the Arabs, who fought in that battle, under the common denominator of ahl al-Qādisiyyah (people of al-Qadisiyyah) and assigned to all of them two thousand dirhams.76 In doing this, he did not take into consideration whether these men had converted to Islam while the Prophet was alive or they had converted later, whether they had remained on Abu Bakr’s side in the “Wars of Apostasy” or had been part of the “ahl al-riddah”
(people of apostasy) and so had rebelled against Abu Bakr. Whether this change in truth can be attributed to Umar or not, participation at the Battle of al-Qadisiyyah became a marker of status for the descendants of the Arabs who fought in it. Indeed, those who had joined Islam after the battles of al-Qadisiyyah and Yarmouk received half of the ahl al-Qādisiyyah – only 1000 dirhams.77 This
70 Sebeos, Sebēos' history, trans. Robert Bedrosian (New York: Sources of Armenian Tradition, 1985), 127. 71 Nasir Al-Ka’bi, trans., A Short Chronicle on the End of the Sassanian Empire and Early Islam. 590-660 A.D. (Piscataway, NJ: Gorgias Press, 2016), 79-80. 72 Al-Balādhurī, The origins of the Islamic state, 409-416. 73 Gordon, Robinson, Rowson, and Fishbein, The Works of Ibn Wāḍiḥ al-Yaʻqūbı̄, 771-772. 74 Al-Tabari, History vol XII, 140. 75 Noth, Early Arabic Historical Tradition, 12. 76 Al-Tabari, History vol. XII, 201. 77 Al-Tabari, History vol. XII, 201. Page | 12 can explain Sayf’s fabrications of the role of Qāqā ibn ‘Amr, as both were members of the Banū
Tamīm and so Sayf would have had ulterior motives to glorify a member of his tribe.78
In this sense, dueling became connected in the battle of al-Qādisiyyah with the killing/capturing topos, described by Noth: “There can be no further doubt that the killing/capturing motif… was used by various groups, especially genealogical ones, which sought to claim glorious deeds of the past for themselves.”79 The difference between the two topoi is that it does not matter whom an ancestor engaged in a duel. The only thing that would matter for the descendants of that figure would be that their ancestor fought and distinguished himself in the battle of al-Qādisiyyah, which would have large implications for their status in Muslim society, as we have seen. The reason why today we have no objective criteria to prove or disprove the historicity of specific duels, as Donner and Noth note,80 is that many of Sayf’s sources and he himself would have attempted to play up the importance of their respective tribes, families, and ancestors by linking themselves to a figure such as Qāqā ibn ‘Amr or Al-A‘raf bin al-A‘lam al-‘Uqaylī. That some, if not all, of the duels at al-Qādisiyyah have been invented is increasingly likely, especially if we accept that Persian nobles would have avoided engaging the Arabs in mard ō mard after the numerous defeats and the many scions of noble houses who had lost their lives in battle with the Arabs. Indeed, Rustam never challenged Sa‘d ibn Abī Waqqās to a duel and never sent a proposal of a mard ō mard in the way that Bahram V did in Malalas’s account. Similar concerns would govern other pivotal battles, such as Yarmouk and Nihāwand, and thus explain why a duel is present in Al-Tabari’s account of the battle of Yarmouk.81 Once dueling became transferable, dislocated from its basis in the Persian
78 Pourshariati, Decline and fall of the Sasanian empire, 233-234. 79 Noth, Early Arabic Historical Tradition, 116-117. 80 Donner, The Early Islamic Conquests, 204 and Noth, Early Arabic Historical Tradition, 168. 81 Al-Tabari, History vol. XI, 100. Page | 13 ritual of mard ō mard, it started behaving as a topos, following the process described by Noth.82
Just as elephants were part of Sassanian military tradition, but were transformed into a literary topos (one example of which is their marginal descriptions at the battle of al-Qadisiyyah),83 thus also duels, which were initially instances of Sassanian generals performing the tradition of mard ō mard before the start of battles, became a stereotype of the expected behavior of Persian forces and so would be deployed in other contexts as a topos. One such usage of dueling as a topos were the two duels, won by Al-Aḥnaf during the conquest of Khurasan and deemed as an undifferentiated report by Noth.84
Before closing, it is necessary to briefly detail the limitations that this paper has encountered. Firstly, a large part of the Arabic historical tradition has, unfortunately, still not been translated into European languages, making proficiency in classical Arabic a pivotal prerequisite in any further expansion of this paper. This is connected to a related limitation, which is the need, identified by Noth, of the need to identify similarities in the use of topoi between events which are spatially, temporally, and contextually completely different (such as the battles of Ṣiffīn,
Nihāwand, and al-Qadisiyyah).85 Due to the constraints in the size of this paper and the time allotted for its completion, such a comparison could not be accomplished satisfactorily. Nonetheless, it is paramount that this be done in any future discussion of the topic, so that all the variations of the dueling topos can be identified and that, hopefully, objective criteria for determining the historicity of such accounts can be created. Finally, since we agree with Pourshariati’s assertion that “the victors have managed to write the Iranian history of late antiquity”,86 including existing and
82 Noth, Early Arabic Historical Tradition, 109. 83 Noth, Early Arabic Historical Tradition, 133-134. 84 Noth, Early Arabic Historical Tradition, 214. 85 Noth, Early Arabic Historical Tradition, 21. 86 Pourshariati, Decline and fall of the Sasanian empire, 164. Page | 14 possibly newly discovered Persian primary sources and secondary interpretations becomes not only a luxury but a necessity for any future discussion of this topic.
In conclusion, this paper has attempted to problematize Noth’s brief labeling of duels as a literary topos in the Arabic narratives of the conquest of Iraq by introducing the Persian custom of mard ō mard in the conversation, something which, to the author’s best knowledge, has not been done previously, and trace the transformation of personal combat from a custom into a literary topos. After a discussion of the historicity of mard ō mard, literary topoi, and the historical narrative, the paper turned to evaluate the descriptions of duels in the early conquest by evaluating the assumptions made by Noth in his monograph, reemphasizing the credibility of Sayf ibn Umar as a source of factual information, and creating possible explanations for the unexplained lacuna in reports of duels between the battles of ‘Ayn al-Tamr and al-Qadisiyyah. In the process, the paper has emphasized the individual character of the different duels in the narratives of the early battles in the conquest of Iraq. Finally, an explanation was given for the internal contradictions within the narratives of the battle of al-Qadisiyyah – that later collectors of Arabic histories stumbled upon or create embellished narratives that emphasized the participation of an individual or tribe at al-
Qadisiyyah to acquire social and possibly economic benefits as descendants of these figures.
Finally, we turned to discuss the usage of single combat as a literary topos, its relationship to other topoi, such as elephants and the capture/killing of famous people, and the opportunities for future research on this topic that could, hopefully, transcend the limitations of this paper. This paper represents my own work in accordance with University regulations.
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