Unit 2 - Sasanian Empire and the Middle East WA 2 Answer the f.docx

Unit 2 - Sasanian Empire and the Middle East
WA 2
Answer the following question and submit in your Dropbox for
Unit 2. It will be difficult to write a good assignment in fewer
than 8 paragraphs I would think. Be sure to use information in
Donner (you will need to look back at the assignment in Donner
for Unit 1), the modules including the online readings and
especiallytheir sub units! And the online reading you have
selected will help you to produce an excellent submission.
This question asks for a comparison with topics from Unit 1. In
an historical comparison, it is important to avoid making two
lists - characteristics of one and then of the other - and leaving
the actual comparison to the reader. We want YOU to make the
comparison. So it is always best to pick a couple of topics to
include - we are here asking for 2. In future assignments we
may ask for 1 or 2 or even more. And we will usually be asking
you to go back and use information you learned in previous
units.
At the top of the assignment, you should include the "password"
I assigned you in my comments on your first writing assignment
- I will increase your grade for WA 1 by 2 points if you do this.
I would think that 8 - 10 paragraphs would be a good target for
this assignment.
Compare the policies of the Byzantine and Sasanian Empires in
the Middle East. You should choose at least two aspects of their
societies, for example: governmental system, religion, treatment
of religious minorities, economy and international trade.
Unit 2 - The Sasanian Empire and the Middle East
The archway entrance to the Imperial Palace in the Sasanian
capital, Ctesiphon (located about 20 miles south of today's
Baghdad). This was rebuilt in the past 25 years - the building to
the right of the arch had been destroyed over the centuries.

A section of a stairway at Persepolis, the great capital city of
the Achaemenids - the Iranian dynasty before the Sasanians.
They build a "royal road", similar in form to the Roman roads,
from Persepolis to Sardis, on the Anatolian side of the Aegean
Sea - a distance of more than 2000 miles.
Study Guide for Donner's assignment for Unit 2.
In a very recent (July 11, 2013) long book review in The New
York Review of Books, Peter Brown alerts us to major and
really important new discoveries about the Middle East in the
earliest decades of the Islamic and "Believers" movement. The
books he reviews, combined with the book we are reading in
this course by Donner, revolutionize our understandings of the
Middle East in the 100 years before and after Muhammad.
General accounts of this period will have to be considerably
rewritten! If you get the chance, please glance through that
review.Please read either Frye or Shahid, below
· Frye , History of Ancient Iran: 325-334, Study guide
· Shahid , "Byzantinism and Arabism". Study guide
· Interesting but difficult reading: Haldon , "Pre-industrial
States and the Distribution of Resources: the Nature of the
Problem."Study Guide for Haldon. This one is really worth the
effort.
You should go through the following links - important
information for your writing assignment:Sasanian Persia versus
Rome/ByzantiumSasanian Zoroastrianism and Byzantine
Christianity
nHST 372 Middle East: Muhammad to 1800
Richard Frye. The History of Ancient Iran.
beginning with pg. 325.THE REFORMS OF CHOSROES
ANUSHIRVAN ('OF THE IMMORTAL SOUL')
Chosroes was the most illustrious of the Sasanian rulers and he
gave his name to the common designation of Sasanian rulers by
the Arabs, Kisra, much as Caesar gave his name to Roman
rulers. His reforms set a stamp on the later Sasanian state and

society and much of what we know about the organization of
Sasanian Iran dates from his reign and afterwards. Under him
the national epic was gathered together; probably at that time
the Avesta was reduced to the form of the Avestan alphabet and
writing we know at the present time, and his economic reforms
also have come down to us in Islamic writings, while stories
about the splendor, the justice and flourishing of Iran under him
abound in later Islamic writings, where he occupies a place
similar to the great Shah 'Abbas in Safavid times. The tax
reform, begun under Kavad, was carried to completion under
Chosroes, and the royal court was much strengthened by this
and other measures, which changed the face of the empire,
making it stronger when a strong ruler ruled but open to
disintegration under a weak king. At the outset he had to put
down an attempt by a group of nobles to raise his brother to the
throne, but he overcame the plotters and dispatched them.
One of his first tasks on ascending the throne was to make
peace with the Byzantines, which he did in 532 evacuating
several forts in Lazica, and to restore order in society, for as
several sources state, children did not know who their fathers
were, and questions of inheritance and ownership were
unresolved. The aftermath of the Mazdakite troubles not only
provided an opportunity to reduce the power of the great feudal
lords, who after the time of Chosroes are little mentioned except
as officials of the central government, but also to reorganize the
clergy, the higher offices of which had been occupied by
members of noble families. The basis of wealth and power of
the upper classes had to be reorganized first, and this was the
tax reform of Chosroes, the results of which lasted into Islamic
times.
F. Altheim has studied the tax reforms of Chosroes in detail and
is convincing in his conclusions that the great landed nobility
previously enjoyed great privileges in exemption from taxation,
but as a result of the seizure of lands by common folk during
the Mazdakite movement, there was great confusion in claims of
land ownership. All land was to be surveyed and taxed in the

same way everywhere, while revenues which formerly
frequently went to the nobles were to come into the central
government treasury. It is possible, as Altheim asserts, that the
indictio or tax reform of Diocletian, the joining of the Roman
iugatio and capitatio into one tax system collected three times a
year, provided the prototype for Chosroes' reforms, but this is
inference. It is related in a number of sources that taxes were
levied on the produce of land, fruits and grains, but frequently
the produce was spoiled before it could be assessed for tax
purposes. Under the new system the land was measured, the
water rights determined and yearly average rates were set for
the land which produced grain, other rates for land which had
date palm and olive trees according to the number of the
producing trees, and other reforms of which we only have hints.
The tax reform was followed by a reform of the army which was
changed from the previous practice of the great feudal lords
providing their own equipment and bringing their followers and
retainers into the field, to another system with a new force of
dehkans or 'knights,' paid and equipped by the central
government. It is interesting to note that both the number, as
well as the die quality, of coins of Chosroes I increases and
improves greatly compared to earlier issues, and the
iconography of the coins becomes more stereotyped. Also, it
should be remarked that the army reorganization under Chosroes
was concentrated on organization and on training, rather than
any new weapons or technical advances, and as previously the
heavily-armed cavalry remained the dominant force with archers
less important. The masses, as usual, were still camp followers
and little more than a rabble looking for booty, but a new
nobility of service was created which became more influential
than the landed nobility. Since payment in specie or even in
kind did not suffice to recompense the 'knights,' villages were
granted to them in fief, and a large class of small landowners
came into existence. The ruler also divided the kingdom into
four military districts with a spahbad or general in charge of
forces in each part with the primary task of defending Iran from

external foes. Walls and forts were also built on the frontiers,
but in this policy Chosroes was only continuing the policy of
his predecessors, while new roads, bridges and many buildings
have been attributed to Chosroes, whether true or not.
The army was tested in the resumption of hostilities with
Byzantium, and fortunately we have a detailed account of the
war from Procopius. The reasons for a new war were many, not
the least of which were embassies from the Ostrogoths in Italy,
who were conquered by Justinian, and pressure from some
Armenians and Arabs, both eager for war. So Chosroes broke
the peace and invaded Syria in 540 moving south of the usual
path of armies. He took several towns and received tribute from
others and soon was before the walls of Antioch, which had
suffered greatly from several earthquakes in 525-526, and it was
poorly defended making conquest easy for the Persians.
Chosroes pillaged and burned the city taking many captives,
after which peace was made with Justinian who paid the
Persians a large indemnity. On his return, however, Chosroes
obtained ransom from a number of Byzantine cities on his way.
Because of these activities Justinian renounced the truce just
concluded and prepared to send Belisarius, who had been
successful in Italy and North Africa, against the Sasanians.
After returning, Chosroes built a new city, strictly following the
model of Antioch, near Ctesiphon, and he settled his captives
from Antioch in it calling it the presumptious title Weh Antiok
Khusrau (Better than Antioch [has] Chosroes [built this]), but it
was called Rumagan, 'town of the Greeks' by the local
inhabitants, and al- Rumiyya by the Arabs. He is said to have
founded several other towns and erected walls at Derbend. The
following year the Sasanians took advantage of the request of
emissaries from the king of Lazica to send an army to support
him against Byzantine encroachments, and at first they were
successful capturing a Byzantine fortress on the Black Sea coast
called Petra and establishing a protectorate where Sasanian rule
had never before penetrated. Belisarius in Mesopotamia ravaged
the country around Nisibis, but no decisive battle was fought,

and the Byzantine general was recalled by Justinian and sent to
the west. In 543 a Byzantine army suffered defeat in Armenia,
and Chosroes was encouraged to again invade Syria, and he
besieged Edessa, now more important than Antioch, but he was
repulsed and retreated with the payment of a ransom. A five-
year truce was then concluded between the two empires and
Chosroes received two thousand pounds of gold. In Lazica the
inhabitants revolted against Persian control, and a Byzantine
force was sent in the fourth year of the truce to aid the local
populace to oust the Persians, and as a result the Lazic war
continued for a number of years.
Both Procopius and Agathias stress the strategic importance of
Lazica, and if we view the Lazic war as a prelude to the
ambitious dreams of Chosroes to control the trade of the silk
route to China and the sea way to India, as indicated by his
interventions later with the Turks and in Yemen, then the
Byzantine authors may have correctly discerned the far-reaching
plans of the Persians. In the Lazic war Chosroes finally lost,
and negotiations were begun with Byzantium in 556 which led
to a fifty-year peace treaty signed in 561, by which the Persians
evacuated Lazica for an annual payment of gold. The treaty and
a description of the sealing of the documents can be found in
Menander Protector, giving an insight into contemporary
diplomatic protocol.
In the east a new force had appeared in Central Asia, the Turks,
who attacked the Hephthalites defeating them. Chosroes, taking
advantage of the disunity of Hephthalite princes and apparently
the absence of a central authority among them, about 557-558
annexed some Hephthalite principalities south of the Oxus
River, while the Turks extended their hegemony north of the
river. The main Hephthalite domains, however, were not
annexed by the Sasanians, for under the son and successor of
Chosroes they caused much trouble. The initial cordiality
between the Turks and Chosroes soon changed, possibly
because of the hope of Chosroes to dominate trade between
Central Asia, China and India and the West. Later relations

between the Turks and Persians deteriorated, and in 568 a
Turkish embassy, recorded by Menander, arrived in Byzantium
to make an alliance against the Persians, but nothing came of
the proposed two front attack on Sasanian Iran.
The hostilities in the north between the two empires were
matched by competition in the Arabian peninsula especially
Yemen, where the Ethiopians, who had been converted to
Monophysite Christianity, sent an army in 522 against the
Himyarites, the dominant power in south Arabia at that time.lS
A local leader Dhu Nuwas defeated the Ethiopians and sought
aid from Iran, while the Ethiopians turned to the Byzantines
who responded with ships and supplies. The king of Ethiopia
led his troops across the ed Sea in 525, defeated and killed Dhu
Nuwas and installed an Ethiopian protege as king of the
Himyarites. The success of the Ethiopians led to an embassy to
them from Justinian in 531, reported by Procopius, who says the
Byzantines suggested that the Ethiopians could force the
Persians out of the India trade. Nothing came of this, since an
Ethiopian general, Abraha, seized power in the Himyarite
kingdom sometime between 532 and 535 and established an
independent state which he ruled until his death in 569 or 570,
the 'year of the elephant' or the year of the birth of the prophet
Muhammad. Several years afterwards Ma 'd-Karib, one of the
sons of Abraha, fled from his half-brother who had succeeded to
the throne, and he secured the support of Chosroes. The latter
sent a fleet and a small army under a commander called Vahriz
to the area near present Aden and they marched against the
capital San'a'l which was occupied. Saif, son of Mard-Karib,
who had accompanied the expedition became king sometime
between 575 and 577. Thus the Sasanians were able to establish
a base in south Arabia to control the sea trade with the east.
Later the south Arabian kingdom renounced Sasanian
overlordship and another Persian expedition was sent in 598
which was successful in annexing southern Arabia as a Sasanian
province which lasted until the time of troubles after Chosroes
II.

In 565 the emperor Justinian died and was succeeded by Justin
II, who resolved to stop subsidies to Arab chieftains to restrain
them from raiding Byzantine territory in Syria. A year earlier
the Sasanian governor of Armenia, of the Suren family, built a
fire temple at Dvin near modern Erevan, and he put to death an
influential member of the Mamikonian family, which touched
off a revolt which led to the massacre of the Persian governor
and his guard in 571. Justin II took advantage of the Armenian
revolt to stop his yearly payments to Chosroes for the defense
of the Caucasus passes. The Armenians were welcomed as
allies, and an army was sent into Sasanian territory which
besieged Nisibis in 572, but dissension among the Byzantine
generals not only led to an abandonment of the siege, but they
in turn were besieged in the city of Dara, which was taken by
the Persians, who then ravaged Syria and caused Justin to sue
for peace. Justin was succeeded by Tiberius, a high Byzantine
officer, in 574 who made a truce with Chosroes, but it was not
concluded, and in the following year the Persians invaded
Armenia where they were at first successful. Then, as so
frequently in the wars between the two empires, fortune
changed, and the Byzantines gained many local successes.
Attempts to negotiate a peace in 576 failed after a great
Sasanian victory over the Byzantines in Armenia. In 578 a new
Byzantine commander Maurice captured several Sasanian
strongholds, but the Armenian revolt came to an end with a
general amnesty from Chosroes, which brought Armenia back
into the Sasanian Empire, and peace negotiations between the
two great powers were under way when Chosroes died in 579.
It is impossible to do more than summarize the achievements of
Chosroes and to list the various developments in political,
social and cultural matters during his reign. So much is ascribed
to Chosroes in later Islamic writings that it is diflficult to
determine how much is fact or fable. Certainly much that we
find in state organization, taxes and the like, in Islamic times
had their origins in the state reforms under Chosroes, or in
changes which occurred during his reign, and the tendency of

peasants in Iran today to assign any obviously pre-lslamic
bridge, caravanserai or other structure to Chosroes 'of the
immortal soul' is testimony of the impression he made on his
contemporaries. Even foreign writers inimical to Chosroes were
somewhat awed by the imposing figure of the Sasanian ruler,
cruel and hard but worthy of respect.
Although history, especially in Iran, has been limited to urban,
elite groups, the basis of support of an Iranian government or
culture was the rural peasantry, and during the Mazdakite
upheaval, even the peasantry influenced events. It may be
exaggerated to say that Iran was changed from a feudal land
into an empire after Chosroes, for castes continued, with the
scribes or bureaucracy added to the traditional Indo-lranian
three-caste system of priests, warriors and common folk. In a
sense the landowning elite gave way in influence to a
bureaucratic elite tied to the crown. The direct taxes levied on
the land and on the peasants greatly reduced the 'middle-man'
role of the landed nobility between common folk and the court.
Although we have no statistics and only fragments of data, one
may speculate that in the long run the reforms of Chosroes
caused problems for the peasants, because a substantial shift in
peasant settlement patterns from old irrigated lands to new dry-
farming lands seems to have occurred. The massive irrigation
systems of Chosroes on the plains, aided by dams and canals,
may have at first aided an expansion of agriculture, but the
centralization perhaps robbed the local people of initiative with
the result of a decline in population on the plains with a
consequent growth of towns. On the plateau we have no
information but urban development was certainly much smaller
than in Mesopotamia. Also Mesopotamia and Khuzistan were
easier to administer by the central government.
The urban development in Khuzistan can be linked to the great
expansion of trade under Chosroes I. The state now tended
toward monopolistic control of the trade with luxury goods
assuming a far greater role in the trade than heretofore, and the
great activity in building of ports, caravanserais, bridges, and

the like was linked to trade and to urbanization. The Persians
dominated international trade, both in the Indian Ocean and in
Central Asia and South Russia in the time of Chosroes, although
competition with the Byzantines was at times intense. Sasanian
settlements in Oman and Yemen testify to the importance of the
trade with India, but the silk trade with China, as we shall see,
was mainly in the hands of the Sogdians.
For trade or defense reasons Chosroes practiced the ancient
transfer of populations from one part of the empire to another as
one can see by the addition of bishoprics to the realm of eastern
Christianity, as well as by many notices of such shifts in the
sources. He also welcomed refugees from the Byzantine Empire
such as the philosophers from the school at Athens which had
been closed by Justinian in 529. They became homesick,
however, and Chosroes negotiated their return in a peace treaty
according to Agathias, but he still had many medical doctors
and sages at his court. On the intellectual side of his court,
translations were made into Middle Persian from Greek, Syriac
and Sanskrit, and many stories have been preserved in later
Arabic and Persian works on the chief minister and sage
Buzurjmihr, to give him the Arabic form of his name. The
introduction of the game of chess to Iran from India is tied with
his name, and although many scholars have considered him to
be a fiction, Christensen not only argues his real existence but
identifies him with a medical doctor called Burzoe, also at the
court of Chosroes. Connected with the name of Chosroes I are
many wise sayings in Islamic works and collections of such
andarz are many, such that it is highly probable that this
Sasanian monarch became the origin of many apocryphal stories
in later works. In the realm of religion many Middle Persian
books are said to have been written in the time of Chosroes,
although it should be remembered thatjust as Shapur I and II are
confused in later works, so are Chosroes I and II. The Pahlavi
books, as well as Islamic sources, imply that Chosroes I was
tolerant of religions other than Zoroastrianism, which he
ordered cleared of heresy, and most scholars agree that the final

and fixed form of later, dualistic Zoroastrianism traces its
origins back to the reign of Chosroes I.
If we turn to the visual arts, again the pomp and glory of the
reign of Chosroes strike the observer. Many Sasanian silver
objects date from the time of Chosroes, although dating is
frequently exceedingly difficult. One reason for problems in
identifying or dating Sasanian art is the lack of a 'Zoroastrian'
art and an artistic symbolism matching Christian and Buddhist
art, although decoration perhaps predominated in late Sasanian
art over representation, and much of the geometric or floral
nature of Islamic art seems to have had its origins in Sasanian
Iran. Even though one can hard!y speak of a 'Zoroastrian' art,
all specialists agree that Sasanian art, like its predecessor the
art of the Achaemenids, is a royal art with plenty of royal
symbollsm. Much more than trade and commerce, art was bound
to the court and the wlshes of the ruler, and it seems that, just
like the coinage, the silver plates, textiles, even glassware and
pottery, not to mention architecture, all came from royal
workshops or related establishments. Whether Sasanian art is
primarily derived from Hellenistic art or is more dependent on
ancient Iranian and Near Eastern traditions is a matter for art
historians and need not concern us here, but whatever the
origins, Sasanian motifs, such as the mythical bird, the
senmurv, are found on art objects from India, China and the
western world, evidence of the importance of Sasanian culture
in the realm of the arts.
It is not possible here to even mention the many aspects and
problems of Sasanian art, except to note several features which
exemplify the nature of political power and pomp of the
Sasanian rulers. The monumental architecture, such as the Qala-
ye Dukhtar and palace of Ardashir at Firuzabad, the Taq-e Kisra
in Ctesiphon, if not built by Chosroes at least enlarged or
completed by him, and others, all express the pride and wealth
of the Sasanians. The symbolic quality of the representational
art of the Sasanians too strikes one, for representation of kingly
glory may be seen in many forms, such as the mountain goat

with a ribbon around its neck, the head of a wild boar, tulips,
winged creatures, or even leaves, all from nature yet not
represented in their natural forms but heraldic in nature. In
other words, the art objects may not have been made for the
royal court but they appear as though they were. This
'centralization' of only a few art motifs repeated many times
expresses the ideals of the imperial state and society after
Chosroes I. It is interesting that much more has been written
about the arts of the Sasanians, and they have been far more
studied, than has been the political, social or economic history
of Sasanian Iran.
One branch of Sasanian art which was widespread among the
populace but which also displayed the royal motifs mentioned
above, and has repercussions in other areas, is that of
sphragistics, for in antiquity people used seals instead of
signatures. On many thousands of Sasanian seals or seal
impressions on clay, we find a large repertolre of motifs
including figures or busts, as well as official seals only with
writings. For Sasanian onomastica the seals are invaluable, and
we find personal names such as Mihr Bokht or Zurvandad,
which, however, do not mean that those who held these names
were followers of a separate religion of Mithraism or Zervanism
but they were simply Zoroastrians. Others were named after a
fire temple, a day of the month, or for rnany other reasons.
Perhaps more important than private seals, which usually give
us only a symbol or design but sometirnes the name and title of
the owner and rarely other information, were the 'official' seals
with writing alone which tell us about administrative divisions
of provinces as well as titles, and no personal names, since they
were seals of offices not of persons. The vast majority of these
seals date from the time of Chosroes I or later, and we have an
interesting passage from the Matigan which substantiates the
evidence of the seals and sealings themselves It goes as follows:
"Furthermore, thus, the seal of usage (official seal) of the
mobads and of the hamarkar (official of finances) was first
(introduced) by order of Kavad son of Peroz and that of the

judge (datavar) first by order of Chosroes son of Kavad. When
the seals of the mobads of Fars were carved, it was written not
the mobad in the name of his mobad quality, but in the name of
the 'advocate of the poor,' and for this reason it was carved on
the seal of the mobad of Fars in this manner. Seals, of course,
were ancient in the Near East and seem to have been the
predecessors of writing. In Babylonia the vast majority of clay
sealings were economic in nature, and persons responsible for
commercial transactions put their seal mark on goods and
records of dellveries of goods. Priests participated in
transactions and in control over trade and both sealings and
cuneiform tablets relating to trade and legal matters have been
found in temples in ancient Mesopotamia. Since the Sasanians
were part of a tradition of conservatism it should cause no
surprise to find priests acting as witnesses and as udges and
custodians of records in various transactions of a village, city or
a province in Sasanian Iran. The two storehouses where
Sasanian clay sealings have been found in a room of the fire
temple at Takht-e Sulaiman in Azerbaijan and at Qasr-e Abu
Nasr or old Shiraz, held records of various transactions in the
form of clay sealings, covering a time span of several
generations at the end of the Sasanian period One controversy
still unresolved is to what were the clay sealings originally
attached before they were placed m their archives? One view is
that they were attached to rolled documents, while another is
that they were attached to oods before being removed to the
archives. In the archives these sealings may have had tags or
even documents attached to them for identification, but it is
difficult to believe that only documents were originally attached
to these sometimes large and heavy pieces of clay of so many
different forms.
From sealings, as well as from later Arabic sources, one may
reconstruct the provincial subdivisions of Sasanian Iran after
Chosroes, under the four military divisions. The province was
subdivided into kura (from Greek xvpa?) also called osan,
which in turn were divided into rostak (Ardbic rustaq) or tasug.

This division, as well as the nomenclature, was not at all
uniform throughout the empire and over time designations
changed, just as the dehkan, once a noble, became a peasant
today. Likewise, the administration, loyal to the court and
central government, was imposed on the landowning caste
system, and sometimes the two clashed in the exercise of power
and authority. The difficulty of determining provincial
subdivisions in Sasanian times, especially in the lowlands of
Khuzistan and Mesopotamia, is compounded by changes in
boundaries and in names made by various Sasanian rulers at the
end of the dynasty. We may assume that the information
provided by Arabic sources relates mainly to the situation after
Chosroes II Parviz. The division of the empire into four parts,
after the points of the compass, by Chosroes I was more for
military or defense purposes than for civil administration,
although it must be admitted that we are not informed about the
civil organization which was formed beside the military
governor (spahbad) and his assistant (?) (padgospan). To go into
details on administrative geography would far exceed the limits
of this book, and we must restrict ourselves in brief to Iran
proper.
Fars province, the Sasanian homeland, was probably a model for
the rest of the empire, and we know there were five kuras,
designated by the major cities in them, Istakhr, Arrajan,
Bishapur, Ardashir Khwarreh and Darabgird. The first, where
the governor resided, and the largest, extended east to Yazd.
Arrajan was called Weh az Amid Kavad 'better than Amida has
Kavad (built this)' or Wamqubad in Arabic or Bizamqubad on
coins. Ardashir Khwarreh was also called Gur, present
Firuzabad. The divisions of Khuzistan province are unclear, for
different Arabic sources give various provincial subdivisions,
but there were at least seven, since Khuzistan, although much
smaller than Fars, was richer agriculturally and was more
heavily populated. The largest kura was Hormizd-Ardashir
(called Hormizshahr or Suq al- Ahwaz by the Arabs), present
Ahwaz. Other kuras were Rustaqubad (in Arabic the area of

'Askar Mukram), Shustar, Susa, Jundeshapur, Ramuz and
Dauraq, but over time changes were many in this province. For
other provinces, especially on the plateau, we have much less
information which is also confusing. Changing of provincial and
local boundaries was made for many reasons, but such changes
were mountains and rivers, kept divisions fairly constant, and
the administrative subdivisions of Fars province, for example,
have remained much the same throughout history although
towns in them rose and declined.
Enough has been said to indicate the great significance of the
reign of Chosroes I, and even though much has accumulated
around his name and reign which should not be attributed to
him, nonetheless the achievements of Chosroes were
outstanding. Yet in the long run they did not insure lasting
loyalty to the dynasty, and they did not rectify the grave defects
of the caste system of society. On the contrary, the
centralization of power and authority left local officials with
little initiative and much resentment, at least in regard to the
central power, such that the Islamic invaders, after the defeat of
the imperial armies in three great battles in the west, had only
local opposition, with little thought of unity to defend the
empire. But the weakness of Sasanian Iran at that time was in
no small measure the result of both internal and external
fighting in the empire and the lack of rulers with the personal
influence and power of a Shapur or Chosroes.THE LAST
RULERS
Hormizd IV, son of Chosroes and a Turkish princess given in
marriage to the Sasanian monarch to promote good relations
between the two states, inherited the war with Byzantium.
Attempts by Tiberius to end the war between the two empires
failed, mainly because the Persians refused to surrender the city
of Dara and also demanded a large annual subsidy. The
Byzantine general Maurice was successful against the Persians
in Mesopotamia, but in 582 the death of Tiberius caused
Maurice to go to the capital to mount the throne, and he was
replaced by incompetent generals who were defeated, and the

war continued with attacks and counter-attacks. More
threatening, however, was an invasion of the Turks into the
northeastern part of the Sasanian Empire. Fortunately Iran had a
brilliant general of the Mihran family called Bahram Chobin
who decisively defeated the Turks at a great battle near Herat in
589, reported in a number of sources. The chronology and
events in this period have been studied in detail with few large
problems remaining, except the usual details of chronology and
verifiability, so unlike most of ancient Iranian history. After his
defeat of the Turks Bahram Chobin is reported to have crossed
the Oxus and secured much booty, but so much fable is
intertwined with the deeds of Bahram that it is difficult to tell
fact from fiction, and furthermore stories about Bahram Chobin
and Bahram Gor are exchanged in the tales about both Bahrams.
It is unlikely that the ruler killed by Bahram in the east was the
king of the Western Turks, but more likely a subordinate ruler.
Whether the Turkish attack on Iran was a well-coordinated plan
together with Byzantine and Arab diversions in the west with
the aim of ending a Sasanian monopoly on east-west trade is
possible but mere surmise. The popular general was then sent to
the Caucasus area, and although Theopylactus says that the
Persians were the aggressors, the hostilities between the two
empires had not been resolved, and Bahram's initial success was
a continuation of the struggle. But in a minor engagement
Bahram was defeated by the Byzantines, and this led to his
revolt in Iran.
Hormizd suppressed the great nobility and protected the weak,
which indicates a continued opposition to the policies of
Chosroes, and it seems clear that internal affairs in Iran were
most unsettled. Bahram's demotion and revolt, attributed to the
jealousy of Hormizd in the sources, surely had deeper roots in
the unhappiness of the nobility with their ruler, for Bahram was
supported by the nobility on all sides. Troops sent to attack
Bahram deserted to him, and Bahram marched on Ctesiphon late
in the year 589. The aristocracy did not support Hormizd, and
the religious leaders also were not happy with the tolerance and

even friendship of Hormizd towards Christians and other non-
Zoroastrians, so the ruler was abandoned. A palace revolt freed
the nobles Hormizd had imprisoned, and the rebels were led by
two brothers-in-law of the monarch, called Bindoe and Bistam;
Hormizd was seized and blinded. In February 590 Chosroes
Abarvez or Parviz 'the victorious' was raised to the throne, and
shortly thereafter Hormizd was put to death. Bahram, however,
was not reconciled to the son of Hormizd, and hostilities broke
out at Hulwan, but Chosroes, seeing that he could not defeat the
experienced general, fled to Ctesiphon and then to the
Byzantine frontier, and at Circesium in March 590 he was
received by the governor who communicated the request of
Chosroes for asylum and aid to regain his throne to Emperor
Maurice in Constantinople. Chosroes was granted asylum in
Hierapolis until a decision about aid to him could be reached.
Both Bahram and Chosroes promised the ceding of a number of
frontier towns to the Byzantines, if they would support one or
the other.
The course of events leading to the restoration of Chosroes II
are known from Theophylactus and Theophanes as well as from
Arabic sources, and the rule of Bahram lasted only a year.
Legitimacy of the house of Sasan played a role in the erosion of
support for the usurper Bahram, and Nisibis was the first
important city to defect to Chosroes and his Byzantine allies.
Bindoe the uncle of Chosroes, who had accompanied him into
exile, was sent with an army to Armenia to outflank Bahram,
who was defeated in the lowlands and lost Ctesiphon. He
retreated to Azerbaijan but was finally defeated and fled to the
Turks in Central Asia where he received asylum, until he was
assassinated after a year. Thus ended the reign of Bahram who,
more than his soverign, captured the emotions of Persian bards
and story tellers, but peace did not return to the land.
Chosroes had to cede territory to Byzantium, reward hls
supporters and punish his uncles, who had been instigators of
the d:ath of his father. He put to death Bindoe, but Bistam
escaped and became a rebel in the Elburz mountains. Gathering

former partisans of Bahram Chobin around him, Bistam was
able to maintain independence and even expand his authority,
striking coins and ruling the northeastern part of Iran. It was not
until 601 that the rule of Chosroes was restored over all of the
empire which had been greatly weakened by the civil wars.
Peace and good relations were maintained with the Byzantines
tnoughout the rule of Maurice in spite of raids of the Ghassanid
Arab clients of the Byzantines into Sasanian territory in 600,
but the murder of the Byzantine emperor and the seizure of the
throne in Constantinople by Phokas, an officer, in 602 changed
the situation. Chosroes used this as a pretext for opening
hostilities and, when an emissary from the new Byzantine
emperor arrived, he was imprisoned. Phokas was faced with
revolts all over the empire, and Edessa, which had replaced
Antioch as the most important city in the general area of
northern Syria, was besieged by an army sent by Phokas.
Chosroes in 604 sent an army against the forces besieging
Edessa who were defeated, and the Persians briefly occupied the
city. Dara also fell after a siege in 605, and Chosroes resolved
to carry the war into the heart of enemy territory. One army sent
into Armenia was completely successful and continued
westward invading Cappadocia, while in 607 a renewed
Sasanian invasion of the west captured more towns. In 610
Phokas was overthrown and killed, and Heraclius became
emperor with the resolve to make peace at once with Chosroes.
The latter refused, however, and war continued with more
Persian successes. In 613 Damascus was captured and in the
following year Jerusalem, where among other booty the true
cross was taken to Ctesiphon. In 615 a Persian general marched
to Chalcedon opposite Constantinople, while in 617 the king of
the Avars appeared before the land walls of the Byzantine
capital. Emperor Heraclius almost left the city in despair for
north Africa, especially after Egypt, the main source of grain
for the empire, was occupied by the Persians in 619.
Although Chosroes had succeeded in extending the frontiers of
the Sasanian Empire almost to the limits of the Achaemenid

Empire, Heraclius had not been crushed, and indeed he made a
number of radical changes in his empire, dividing it into large
military zones, the theme system, each under a military officer,
and local people rather than mercenaries were enrolled in the
armies. A crusade began, supported by the populace as well as
by contributions of the church. Since the Byzantines controlled
the seas, Heraclius resolved on a bold stroke, and in 622 he
sailed into the Black Sea with an expeditionary force which
penetrated into Armenia where Sasanian forces were defeated.
The Avars were constrained to a peace by payment of a large
tribute, but Chosroes still refused to make peace. In the
following year Heraclius repeated his previous feat and defeated
Sasanian detachments led by Shahin who formerly had reached
Chalcedon, and Shahrbaraz, anther top general of Chosroes.
Heraclius penetrated into Azerbaijan and captured and
plundered the Sasanian fire temple and sanctuary Adur
Gushnasp at Ganzak or Shiz. Heraclius did not leave Azerbaijan
in the winter as expected but retired northwards into winter
quarters_ Chosroes decided to copy the bold stroke of
Heraclius, and outdo the audacity of the Byzantines, by
capturing Constantinople with the aid of the Avars. But
Byzantine sea power prevented any success of the allies;
Heraclius did not return, and the gamble failed. Heraclius, still
on Iran's territory, was not idle but had made an alliance with
the Turkish Khazars, who had established a state north of the
Caucasus, and in late 627 the Khazars and Byzantines moved
south through Azerbaijan reaping booty with little opposition.
Heraclius moved farther south to the plains of Mesopotamia,
and in desperation Chosroes recalled all of his forces from
Anatolia. Before any opposition to Heraclius could be
organized, the latter captured Dastagird in 628, east of
Ctesiphon, where Chosroes had a large palace complex and
much riches. Then Heraclius again withdrew north in
Mesopotamia to winter quarters.
Chosroes had failed but whether he sought a scapegoat in
Shahrbaraz,who revolted, or whether a large conspiracy

dethroned the ruler, the king was imprisoned and killed with the
connivance of his son Shiroe at the end of February 628. Shiroe
took the name Kavad and ascended the throne as Kavad II. He at
once began peace negotiations with Heraclius and the stalus quo
before the war was restored with prisoners exchanged, relics
and booty restored, and Sasanian troops evacuated from all
Byzantine possessions. Kavad's reign had lasted less than a year
when he died, probably in an epidemic, to be succeeded by his
infant son Ardashir III. Shahrbaraz, head of a large army,
decided to seize the throne himself, and he marched on
Ctesiphon, defeated forces sent against him and killed the
young king. Shahrbaraz himself was murdered after less than
two months' rule. Since no son of Chosroes was alive, the
nobles raised his daughter Boran to the throne, but she died
after ruling little more than a year. A succession of rulers
followed, each ruling only a few months, including
Azarmedukht, sister of Boran, Peroz II, Hormizd V and
Chosroes IV (since a Chosroes III had ruled for a short time in
the eastern part of the empire). At the end, the nobles found a
grandson of Chosroes alive, a certain Yazdagird son of
Shahriyar, in Istakhr in a fire temple. He was to be the last of
the Sasanian kings and, ascending the throne in 632, he had
little time to rule.
The long reign of Chosroes II was not only known for the
internal as well as external strife but also for the luxury, or
even decadence, of the court. For example, the throne of
Chosroes II was famous in legend for its luxury and the rock
carving of a hunting scene of the king at Taq-e Bustan indicates
the sumptuousness of even such a mundane affair. His palaces
at Dastagird and at Qasr-e Shirin, supposedly named after his
queen, are noted in legends for their opulence. The famous
musician Barbad lived at his court, and a certain degeneracy
appears from accounts of life at the court, and that more than
patronage of the arts or philosophers seem to have been the
hallmark of Chosroes II.
The revolts of Bahram Chobin and Bistam reveal weaknesses in

the system of Chosroes I, since the nobility was basically
unwilling to support the throne, although they were still
conservative enough to demand a Sasanian prince as ruler rather
than a usurper to the throne. One mistake of Chosroes II, which
was to have future consequences, was the imprisonment and
execution of Nu'man III, king of the Lakhmids of al-Hira about
600, presumably because of the failure of the Arab king to
support Chosroes on his flight to the Byzantines. Afterwards the
central government took over the defense of the western
frontiers to the desert and the buffer state of the Lakhmids
vanished. Soon the Arabs of the peninsula invaded lower Iraq
and it was only four years after the accession of Yazdagird that
his chief general Rustam was declsively defeated and killed at
the battle of Qadisiyya near al-Hira. The following year
Ctesiphon was taken by the Arabs. Attempts to rally forces on
the plateau failed and in 642 the rest of the imperial Sasanian
army was destroyed at the battle of Nihavend. Just as with the
last of the Achaemenidsl so Yazdagird fled to the east and took
refuge with the marban of Merv; the latter, however, resolved to
be rid of an unwelcome guest, but Yazdagird fled and hid in a
mill where he was murdered in 651. Thus the Sasanian Empire
went on the same road as the Achaemenid, and to the outside
observer, removed from both by many centuries, the similarities
in their final years strike one more than the differences. Details
of the fall of the Sasanian Empire however, belong to the
history of Islam and the Arab conquests, of which we have a
veritable plethora of sources in comparison with Sasanian
history.
The last century of the empire saw an increase in converts to
Christianity, and the expansion of bishoprics to the east can be
found in the acts of the Nestorian synods. Not only did the
richest part of the empire, the lowlands of the Tigris-Euphrates
become predominantly Christian, with Monophysites gaining
ground against the Nestorians at the end of the empire, but the
plateau too saw an increase in churches. Thls does not mean,
however, that the Sasanian state was becoming Christian just

before the Islamic era, as some have suggested. The state
religion was still upheld by all of the rulers, even though it had
become a faith primarily of rituals and taboos. It had a great
disadvantage in comparison to Christianity and Islam in that it
was not an oecumenical religion actively seeking converts, and
it was bound too closely to the Sasanian state and its fortunes.
One might say that in the later years of the Sasanian Empire the
state dominated the church, whereas in the west the reverse
seems more true, or perhaps one could say 'used' rather than
'dominated' in both cases. The organization of minority
religions in the Sasanian Empire served to protect
Zoroastrianism after the Arab conquest, when the change from
dominant, state religion to one of minority status was made, and
this enabled Zoroastrianism to survive to the present. The status
of Jews and Christians changed little under Islam, except that
the model of an imperial state and religion, which influenced
their organizations and outlooks, changed to a 'democratic'
model, which the Islamic state under the early caliphs was in
comparison. In Judaism the end of the Sasanian Empire meant
the decline and fall of the exilarchate and the triumph of the
rabbinate, much like the 'ulama of Islam. For Manichaeans the
end of the Sasanians gave them a chance to come into the open
in Iraq and Iran, until later in the 'Abbasid Caliphate they fell
vlctims of a persecution. The Nestorian church, on the other
hand, experienced a revival with missionaries penetrating to
China. Only Zoroastrians soon withdrew into ghettoes, to be
followed later bx other minority religions in the Islamic world.
It was mainly the Zoroastrian clergy which preserved the
Middle Persian writings which explains the loss of so much
secular literature. The latter, however, was translated, or
paraphrased, into Arabic and later New Persian, but with an
Islamic reworking of texts, which makes reconstruction of
originals difficult. But in these later, secular writings the
heritage of the Sasanians was preserved, and it was a powerful
force in the making of Islamic culture.
The last holdout of Sasanian Iran was in the east, and it is to

this little studied part of the world that scholars need next to
approach--for it seems certain to me that the small states of
Central Asia, too, were part of the ancient Iranian world, and
their role in bringing Iranian influences to China and to Russia
should not be forgotten.
nHST 372 Middle East: Muhammad to 1800
Shahid, "BYZANTINISM AND ARABISM: INTERACTION"
Of the three constituents of Byzantinism -- the Roman, the
Greek, and the Christian --it was the last that affected,
influenced, and sometimes even controlled the lives of those
Arabs who moved in the Byzantine orbit. Something has been
said on this influence in the fourth century, and these
conclusions may be refined and enlarged with new data for the
fifth.
1. Christianity presented the Arabs with new human types
unknown to them from their pagan and Peninsular life -- the
priest, the bishop, the martyr, the saint, and the monk -- and the
Arab community in Oriens, both Rhomaic and federate, counted
all of them among its members. In the fourth century, it
contributed one saint to the universal Church -- Moses, whose
feast falls on the seventh of February -- and in the Roman
period it had contributed Cosmas and Damian. In the fifth
century the Arab episcopate grew in number, both Rhomaic and
federate, as is clear from conciliar lists and from the number of
Arab bishops compared to those of the fourth century. As a
result, the Arab ecclesiastical voice was audible in church
councils, and was at its most articulate at Ephesus in defense of
Cyrillian Orthodoxy.
2. The priesthood and the episcopate subjected the Arabs to a
new form of authority and discipline to which they had not been
accustomed. It was a spiritual form of authority, to which even
the powerful federate phylarchs and kings were subject, and it
thus induced in the Christian Arabs a new sense of loyalty

which was supra-tribal, related not to tribal chauvinism but to
the Christian ecclesia. This new loyalty was to find expression
on the battlefield. The federate troops under their believing
phylarchs fought the fire-worshiping Persians and the pagan
Lakhmids with a crusading zeal, and they probably considered
those who fell in such battles martyrs of the Christian faith.
3. Christianity influenced the literary life of the Arabs in the
fifth century as it had done in the fourth. The conclusions on
this are mainly inferential, but less so for poetry than for prose.
If there was an Arabic liturgy and a biblical lectionary in the
fifth century, the chances are that this would have influenced
the development of Arabic literary life, as it invariably
influenced that of the other peoples of the Christian Orient. It is
possible to detect such influences in the scanty fragments of
Arabic poetry and trace the refining influence of the new faith
on sentiments. Loanwords from Christianity in Arabic are easier
to document, and they are eloquent testimony to the permanence
of that influence in much the same way that other loanwords
testify to the influence of the Roman imperim.
4. By far the most potent influence of Christianity on the Arabs
was that of monasticism. The new type of Christian hero after
the saint and the martyr, the monk who renounced the world and
came to live in what the Arabs considered their natural
homeland, the desert, especially appealed to the Arabs and was
the object of much veneration. The monasteries penetrated deep
in the heart of Arabia, into regions to which the church could
not penetrate. Thus the monastery turned out to be more
influential than the church in the spiritual life of the Arabs,
especially in the sphere of indirect Byzantine influence in the
Peninsula. The monastery was also the meeting place of two
ideals -- Christian philanthropia and Arab hospitality.
According to Muslim tradition, the Prophet Muhammad met the
mysterious monk Bahlra in one of these Byzantine monasteries.
5. The Christian mission to the Arabs, especially if it entailed
the translation of some books of the Bible such as the
Pentateuch, must have acquainted the Arabs with the biblical

concept of their descent from Ishmael. This marked them as a
biblical people, gave them a new identity, and, what is more,
affiliated them with the first patriarch himself, Abraham. This
was not an unmixed blessing to the Christian Arabs, since it
carried with it the implication that they were "outside the
promise." However, their allegiance to Christianity rid them of
this opprobrium, since it affiliated them spiritually with the new
people of God. There was, however, a pocket in Arabia where
the seed of Ishmaelism was sown, and where it had a different
meaning to its Arabs, who apparently harbored no regrets
whatsoever that they were descended from Hagar. In the
following century the Prophet Muhammad appeared in their
midst, and forty years after his birth proclaimed Islam as the
true religion of the straight path. In the Koran the first patriarch
appears as the founder of pure monotheism, and his son Ishmael
appears not as a biblical outcast but as a prophet.
6. One of the most fruitful encounters of Christianity with
Arabism took place in northwestern Arabia, in Hijaz, the sphere
of indirect Byzantine influence. The federate tribe of 'Udra
lived in this region and adopted Christianity quite early in the
Byzantine period. Among its many achievements was a special
type of poetry, known as 'Udrl or 'Udrite, which was inspired by
a special type of love, also called 'Udrn It is practically certain
that this type of love and poetry appeared under the influence of
Christianity in pre-Islamic times, although it may later have had
an Islamic component. It represents the fruitful encounter of the
chivalrous attitude toward women in pre-Islamic Arabia and the
spiritualization of this attitude through the refining influence of
Christianity. Through the Arab Conquests it appeared as amour
courtois in western Christendom, whose religion had inspired it
in the first instance.VIII. ARABS IN THE SERVICE OF
BYZANTIUM
The sources on the Arabs who were important for the Arab-
Byzantine relationship in this pre-lslamic period are neither
abundant nor detailed enough to make it possible to draw
sketches of the more outstanding among them. For the fourth

century, it was not possible to recover the features of more than
three figures: Imru' al-Qays, the federate king of the Namara
inscription; Mavia, the warrior queen of the reign of Valens;
and Moses, the eremite who became the bishop of the federates.
For the fifth century it is possible to discuss only four of the
figures who served both the Byzantine imperium and ecclesi.
1. Aspebetos/Petrus. The career of this Arab chief was truly
remarkable, as he moved through one phase to another. He
started as a military commander in the service of the Great
King, then became the Byzantine phylarch of the Provincia
Arabia, then that of Palaestina Prima, then the bishop of the
Palestinian Parembole. The climax of his career was his
participation at the Council of Ephesus, where he appears not
merely as a subscription in the conciliar list but as an active
participant in the debates and a delegate of the Council to
Nestorius.
2. Amorkesos. His is an equally remarkable career, and
reminiscent of Aspebetos in that he too had been in the service
of the Great King before he defected to Byzantium. But unlike
Aspebetos he remained a servant of the imperium, not the
ecclesia, although he used the latter in his diplomatic offensive.
The former chief in the service of Persia entered a second phase
of his life when he became a military power in North Arabia,
and a third when he mounted an offensive against the Roman
frontier which culminated in his occupation of the island of
Iotabe in the Gulf of Eilat. Ecclesiastical diplomacy followed
his military achievements and resulted in a visit to
Constantinople and royal treatment by Leo. He returned, having
concluded a foedus with the emperor, which endowed him with
the phylarchate of Palaestina Tertia. What is striking in the
success story of this Arab chief is his desire to become a
phylarch of the Romans in spite of the power base he had
established for himself in the Arabian Peninsula. The lure of the
Byzantine connection is nowhere better illustrated than in the
career of this chief, who preferred to serve in the Byzantine
army than to be an independent king or chief in the Arabian

Peninsula. This conclusion, which may be safely drawn from an
examination of his career, is relevant to the discussion of the
prodosia charge trumped up against the Ghassanid phylarchs of
the sixth century. All these Arab chiefs gloried in the Byzantine
connection and preferred it to their former Arabian existence.
3. Dawud/David. The Salihids were fanatic Christians, and they
owe this to the fact that their very existence as federates and
dominant federates was related to Christianity -- when a monk
cured the wife of their eponym, Zokomos, of her sterility and
effected the conversion of the chief. His descendants remained
loyal to the faith which their ancestor fully embraced, but of all
these Dawud is unique in that toward the end of his life his
religiosity increased to the point which possibly made him a
monk or an ascetic. He built the monastery which carried his
name, Dayr Dawud, and he had a court poet from Iyad and a
daughter who also was a poetess. The gentleness induced in him
by Christianity,apparently was taken advantage of by a coalition
of two of the federate tribes, who finally brought about his
downfall. His career presents the spectacle of an Arab federate
king who loyally served both the imperium and the ecclesia and
payed for this service with his life.
4. Elias. Entirely different in background from all the preceding
figures is Elias, the Arab Patriarch of Jerusalem towards the end
of the century. While the other three were federate Arabs, Elias
was Rhomaic, born in Arabia, either the Provincia in Oriens or
the Ptolemaic nome in the limes Aegypti, one of the many
Rhomaic Arabs in the service of the imperium or the elesia
whose Arab identity has been masked by their assumption of
either biblical or Graeco-Roman names. His, too, was a
remarkable career in the ecclesiastical rss. He started as a monk
in the desert of Juda, associated with St. Euthymius, then drew
the attention of Patriarch Anastasius, who ordained him priest
of the Church of Anastasia in Jerusalem; finally he became the
Patriarch of the Holy City, and engaged in a vigorous
administration of his patriarchate. He paid attention to both
churches and monasteries and laid the foundation of the Church

of the Theotokos in Jerusalem, the splendid church completed in
the reign of Justinian and dedicated in 543. He was a strong and
stern ecclesiastic who was unwavering in his Orthodoxy, to the
point of taking on the emperor Anastasius himself. He paid for
this by being exiled to Ayla in 516, where he died. It is possible
that he was associated with the translation of a simple liturgy
and biblical lectionary into Arabic for the benefit of the various
Christian Arab communities scattered in the three Palestines
which constituted his ecclesiastical jurisdiction.
These are the four large historical figures in the history of
Arab-Byzantine relations in the fifth century. Their careers call
for two observations.
(1) They were very different from one another: bishop,
phylarch, federate king, and patriarch, but all four were
involved in both the imperium and the elesia, a reflection of the
intimate and inseparable relationship that obtained between the
two in the Christian Roman Empire. Three of them were
federate Arabs and one was Rhomaic. The four different careers
are also a reflection of the wide range of Arab involvement in
the life of the empire and of the new opportunities open to
them.
(2) Their careers reflect the profound metamorphosis that each
of them experienced as a result of the Byzantine connection.
Perhaps that of Aspebetos is the most remarkable: from a pagan
chief to a Byzantine phylarch, to a baptized one, to a bishop of
the Parembole, to a participant at the Council of Ephesus and a
delegate to Nestorius expressing the strong voice of Arab
Orthodoxy. Thus his career represents the highest degree of
assimilation that a federate Arab could experience.IX. THE
IMAGE
Both streams of Byzantine historiography, secular and
ecclesiastical, continue to transmit images of the Arabs in the
fifth century. Although the negative image of the fourth century
is not dead, there is a marked improvement in that image in both
streams of fifth-century historiography.Ecclesiastical
A new generation of ecclesiastical historians appear in the fifth

century, emancipated from the bondage of the Eusebian image
of the Arabs as uncovenanted Ishmaelites, outside the promise.
These ecclesiastical historians expressed the true spirit of the
Christian ecclesia in their vision of the peoples of the
limitrophe, including the Arabs. Socrates, Sozomen, and
Theodoret remembered the exploits of Queen Mavia on behalf
of Orthodoxy and described the progress of Christianity among
the Arabs. It is, however, Theodoret who has the most
informative passages on the Arabs.
1. Historia Religiosa. The passage on the Arab Abbas, who
became the he-goumenos of the monastery of Teleda, occurs in
this work. The importance of this passage is that it enables
Theodoret to reflect theologically on the Arabs as a biblical
people, the descendants of Ishmael and ultimately of Abraham,
and provides him with occasion to describe the spiritual
metamorphosis of Abbas from an unredeemed Ishmaelite outside
the promise, to participation in the patrimony of Abraham, to
membership in the New Israel, the gateway to the Kingdom of
Heaven. The spiritual path of Abbas is that traversed by all the
Christianized Ishmaelites.
2. Curatio. In this work, "The Cure of Pagan Maladies,"
Theodoret projects an image of the Arabs in the context of a
pagan world peopled by Greeks and barbarians, and tries to
argue for the unity of the human species affirmed by Scripture.
He reviews the various peoples and tries to discover their
respective virtues. When he comes to the Arabs, he grants them
"an intelligence, lively and penetrating . . . and a judgment
capable of discerning truth and refuting falsehood."
The strong affirmative note sounded by Theodoret is supported
and fortified by the ecclesiastical documents of the century,
especially those of the two ecumenical councils of Ephesus and
Chalcedon, in 431 and 451 respectively. The number of Arab
bishops, both Rhomaic and federate who participated is
remarkable, and they expressed the strong voice of Arab
Orthodoxy, first Cyrillian Orthodoxy at Ephesus and then
Leonine at Chalcedon. Especially prominent in this expression

was Petrus I, the bishop of the Palestinian Parembole, who
participated actively at Ephesus and was one of the delegates
whom the Council sent to negotiate with Nestorius.
The two evaluations of the Arabs in Theodoret are striking,
coming as they do from a distinguished theologian and church
historian, and so is the evidence from the Acta of the two
ecumenical councils. But even as the image of the Arabs was
being improved by the Greek ecclesiastical writers, it continued
to suffer at the hands of a Latin church father.
1. Jerome, who inherited his image of the Arabs from Eusebius,
continued to write about them as unredeemed Ishamelites, a
concept from which, as a biblical scholar and exegete, he could
not liberate himself. There was another reason behind Jerome's
fulminations against the Arabs. He had lived in the monastic
community of the desert of Chalcis and later at Bethlehem. Both
were subject to Saracen raids that spelt ruin to monasteries,
especially at Bethlehem which was actually occupied by the
Saracens. Consequently, he fell back on biblical texts which
enabled him to refer to these Saracens as servorm et ancillarm
nmerus. His older contemporary, St. Augustine, followed in the
steps of those who had written on heresies in the East, and
naturally the Arabs appear in his De Haeresibs (sec. 83).
2. On the other hand, another Latin author, Rufinus, spoke in
complimentary terms of the Arabs in his Ecclesiastical History,
as upholders of Orthodoxy. Indeed, he heralded the new
generation of ecclesiastical historians in the East -- Socrates,
Sozomen and Theodoret -- who were sympathetic to the world
of the barbarians, including the Arabs. But the voice of Rufinus
was drowned out by those of the two immensely influential
ecclesiastics of the West, Jerome and Augustine, and
consequently the image of the Arabs remained dim in the West
even before they reached it in the seventh century as conquerors
of North Africa and Spain.Secular
As Rufinus opened a new chapter in the history of the image of
the Arabs in ecclesiastical historiography, so did Synesius in
secular historiography:

1. In one of his letters, written in 404, Synesius praises the
courage of the Arabs, soldiers who had been withdrawn most
probably from the Ala Tertia Arabum in the limes Aegypti to
fight in Pentapolis. In another passage in the same letter he
describes the despair of the passengers on the stormtossed ship
that was sailing to Pentapolis and lauds the attitude of the Arab
soldiers who were prepared to fall on their swords rather than
die by drowning. He even grows lyrical and refers to them as
"by nature true descendants of Homer."
That a Greek who was nursed in a tradition that viewed mankind
in terms of Greek and barbarian should be so emancipated and,
what is more, refer to the Arabs as descendants in spirit of the
Homeric heroes is surely extraordinary and calls for an
explanation. His city, Cyrene, had no Arabs in it and so there
was no friction between his community and the Arabs; as a Neo-
Platonist he may have remembered that some important Neo-
Platonic figures, such as Iamblichus, were Arab; his anti-
German sentiments, which he expressed while he was at
Constantinople around 400, may have inclined him toward the
Arabs, who had saved Constantinople from the German Goths in
378 after Adrianople; and finally, his literary models on the
Arabs, most probably, were authors such as Diodorus iculus,
who spoke well ot the Arabs, rather than Ammianus, of whom
he was probably unaware.
2. Not only in the works of a Neo-Platonist but also in official
imperial documents, the image of the Arabs appears reasonably
bright and no longer that of raiders of the frontier or traitors to
the Roman cause, undesirable as allies or as enemies. In one of
the novellae of 443, Theodosius and Valentinian instruct that
the limital dues should not abstract anything from the annona of
the foederati, especially the Saracen ones. This could only
imply that the central government was happy with their
performance and loyalty to the state. The date of the novella,
coming so close after the end of the Second Persian War of the
reign of Theodosius 11, suggests that the Arab foederati had
performed creditably in that conflict. Their performance was

consistently satisfactory on the battlefield. The prodosia theme
elaborated by Procopius in the sixth century was without any
foundation and the satisfaction of the imperium was to find
expression in the seventh, in the victory bulletin which
Heraclius addressed to the Senate after his victory at Nineveh.
3. This bright image in the secular sources was somewhat
dimmed later in the century when Malchus of Philadelphia,
himself most probably a Rhomaic Arab, wrote and almost
neutralized what Synesius had said about the Arabs. In a long
and detailed fragment on the emperor Leo in the penultimate
year of his reign, Malchus relentlessly criticized the emperor
for his relations with the Arab chief Amorkesos, and by
implication gave an uncomplimentary picture of the Arabs even
though they became foederati of the empire.
The background of this attack on the Arabs, especially as it was
voiced by one of them, is as complex as that which inspired
Synesius to draw his picture of the Arabs in bright colors. Four
main reasons may be detected behind Malchus' hostile attitude.
First and foremost comes Kaiserkritik. The historian was not an
admirer of the emperor, and expressed his disapproval of Leo's
administration by criticizing his Arab policy. Malchus also
wrote as a concerned Rho-naios and an analyst of Roman
decline. For him, the barbarians had brought about the downfall
of the empire in the West in 476. Leo had depended on another
group of barbarians, the Isaurians, and now he was also
employing the services of the Arabs, represented by Amorkesos.
Malchus wrote not in his native Provincia Arabia, but in
Constantinople and under Anastasius. He was an assimilated
Rho-maios, like others who came from the Provincia and are
hardly recognizable as Arabs. Hence he acquired the
ethnocentricity of those who belonged by birth to the Graeco-
Roman establishment and voiced their racism with a vengeance.
Finally, it is possible, judging from his phraseology, that he was
w.iting with a literary model in mind -- Ammianus, whose anti-
Arab outbursts, expressed in vivid and graphic phrases, have
riveted the attention of posterity, endured throughout the ages,

and with staggering tenacity retained their hold on those who
have dealt with the image.
In spite of the negative image that secular and ecclesiastical
historiography, represented by Malchus and ]erome projected,
the image of the Arabs experienced a marked improvement.
Toward the end of the century, in the reign of Anastasius, there
arose another group of foederati, who possibly became involved
from the beginning in Monophysitism. This completely
blackened the image of the' Arabs in the sixth century during
which both secular and ecclesiastical historiography combined
to project a most uncomplimentary image which damned them
as traitors to the imperim and heretics to the eclesia. Thus the
fifth century is the golden period in the history of the Arab
image, unlike the fourth and the sixth, during which it was
tarnished mainly by sharp friction with the central government
on doctrinal grounds. The coin of Arab identity looked good on
both of its sides. To the imperim the Arabs appeared as faithful
guardians of the Roman frontier; to the elesia they appeared as
conforming Orthodox believers.The Arab Self-lmage
The significance of two ecclesiastical historians, Sozomen and
Theodoret, is immense for the Byantine perception of the Arabs
in the fifth century. In addition to the improved image that their
works provide, they also, especially Theodoret, have preserved
data on the Arabs which strongly suggest that the Arabs of this
period perceived themselves as descendants of Ishmael.
Whether this perception was indigenous among the Arabs or
adventitious, having reached them from the Pentateuch either
directly through the spread of Judaism in Arabia or mediated
through the Christian mission, is not entirely clear. Its reality,
however, is clear and certain, and the idiom of Theodoret even
suggests that their perception was mixed with pride in the fact
of their descent from Ishmael.
This is the important new element that appears in the fifth
century and adds a second mirror to the one that reflects the
Byantine perception of the Arabs. In this new mirror, Ishmael is
rehabilitated. He is no longer a figure that embarrasses the

Arabs through certain biblical associations but a revered
ancestor of whom they are proud. This image became a most
important element in Arab religious life in the seventh century,
which witnessed an even more complete rehabilitaion of
Ishmael. In the Koran, Ishmael appears not as the pater
eponymous of the Arabs but as the son of the First Patriacrh;
Ahraham, and a prophet. The precious passage in the Historia
Religiosa of Theodoret proves beyond doubt that the eponymate
of Ishmael is rooted in the pre-lslamic Arab past and that it goes
back to at least the fifth century.EPILOGUE
The Sallhids endured for almost a century in the service of
Byzantium. They represent the golden period in the history of
federate-imperial relations. Unlike the Tanukhids and the
Ghassanids, the Sallhid doctrinal persuasion was that of the
imperial government in Constantinople. Consequently federate-
imperial relations were not marred by violent and repeated
friction such as vitiated these relations in the fourth and sixth
centuries.
The Salihids fought for Byzantium on the Persian front and
distinguished themselves in the two Persian Wars of the reign of
Theodosius II. It is also practically certain that they participated
in Leo's Vandal Expedition, taking part in the battle of Cape
Bon, during which their numbers must have been thinned. This
is the most plausible explanation for their ineffectiveness in the
defense of the limes Arabic around A.D. 470. Finally, the law of
generation and decay which governed the rise and fall of Arab
polities before the rise of Islam caught up with them. Powerful
Peninsular groups such as the Ghassanids and the Kindites had
hewn their way through the Arabian Peninsula and had reached
the Roman frontier. The Sallhids, already weakened
considerably by their participation in the Vandal War, could not
withstand the impact of the combined force of the two new
powerful tribal groups. They succumbed in the contest for
power and the Ghassanids emerged as the dominant federate
group in the sixth century.
Although no longer supreme in federate history in Oriens, the

Sallhids remained an important political and military fact in the
structure of the federate shield. Their history is divisible into
the following phases:
(1) 502 to 529, when they constitute one of the federate groups
in Oriens, who obeyed their own phylarchs and the dx of the
province to whom they were ultimately subordinate;
(2) 529-580, when they were most probably subordinate to the
Ghassanid supreme phylarch, who was installed in that position
by Emperor Justinian around 529, and must have continued in
that subordinate relationship until ca. 580, when Ghassanid-
Byzantine relations soured considerably and the Arab
phylarchate of Oriens was decentralized;
(3) 580 to 610, during the period of much eclipse for the
Ghassanids, when the power of the Sallhids may have been
revived or at least made independent of the former, since one of
their phylarchs appears fighting with the Byzantines in 586
during the siege of Mardm. Not much is known about them after
this period until they appear fighting together with the other
federates against the Muslim Arabs. The last mention of them
during the Muslim Conquest of Oriens occurs in connection
with the capitulation of Chalcis. The Muslim commander asks
them to accept Islam, but they refuse.
Unlike other federate groups such as the Iyadis, the Salihids
remained staunch Christians throughout the Muslim period. This
explains why they attained no prominence in Islamic times.
Usama ibn Zayd was the exception: he served four Umayyad
caliphs in important administrative roles, his durabil- ity in
their service being testimony to his talent. After him the sources
are silent on the Sallhids, who dispersed in various parts of the
Fertile Gescent and possibly affiliated themselves with other
tribes. They appear in one of the verses of Islamic times as an
example of dispersion and evanescence worthy of the classical
lament of the Arab poet: "ubi snt qi ante nos in mundo fere?"
The other tribes of the federate shield took part in the defense
of the limes orientalis and in the Persian Wars. They also
protected the caravans that moved along the arteries of

international trade in north and northwestern Arabia. The
Sallhids did not control these tribes as the Ghassanids were to
do in the sixth century. The Arabic sources record feuds among
these federate tribes. Two of them, Kalb and Namir, united
against the dominant group Sallh, brought about the downfall of
the Sallhid king Dawud, and must have weakened the power of
Sallh, thus contributing ultimately to the victory of the
Ghassanids over them and the emergence of a new federate
supremacy, the Ghassanid, which controlled most or all of the
other tribes of the federate shield in Oriens for almost half a
century.
In addition to their military role, these federate tribes made
some important contributions to Arabic culture in pre-lslamic
times. The names of Iyad, Kalb, and 'Udra stand out in
connection with the rise of the Arabic script in Oriens in the
fifth century and of a new type of love and love poetry, called
'Udrite in Arabic, which represented the confluence of the pre-
lslamic chivalrous attitude with Christian ideals of chastity and
continence.
All these federate tribes fought on the side of Byzantium in the
period of the Arab Conquests. After the crushing defeat at
Yarmuk in 636, they dispersed and their history as foederati
came to an end. Some of them emigrated to Anatolia, some
stayed on in Oriens, now Arab Bilad al-Sham, and formed part
of the Umayyad ajnad system. While the Sallhids remained
staunchly Christian, some of the other federate tribes accepted
Islam, which enabled them to participate actively in the shaping
of Islamic history.
Before they made their Byzantine connection, these tribes had
moved in the restricted and closed orbit of the Arabian
Peninsula. In all probability they would have continued to move
in that orbit, and history would not have taken notice of them
and their achievements. It was the Byzantine connection that
drew them into the world of the Mediterranean and gave an
international dimension to their history. One of the three
constituents of Byantium, Christianity, termmated their

isolation and peninsulailsm by making them members of the
large world of Christendom and its universal ecclesia.
Islam was to do what Byzantium had done but in a more
substantial way. It made the tribes assume a more active role in
shaping the history of the Mediterranean world in both East and
West. In the East they formed part of the ajnad, participated in
the annual expeditions against the Byzantine heartland,
Anatolia, and took part in many sieges of Constantinople. In the
West some of them settled on European soil, but their more
important role in Spain was cultural. One of these tribes, Iyad,
produced the talented family of the Zuhrids, known to medieval
Europe as physicians and to Arabic scholars as composers of
strophic odes. The influence of another, 'Udra, crossed the
Pyrenees, and either gave rise to, or formed one ingredient in,
the rise of that attractive type of love known to medievalists as
amour courtois. Few readers of the medieval literary works that
this type of love inspired realize that they are owed to an
Arabian tribe which in the fifth century defended the southern
approaches to the limes orientalis of Byzantium as a tribe of the
outer shield. And it is mainly to the well-known Iyric of the
German-Jewish poet with its haunting couplet that modern
Europe owes its vague recollection of that Arab tribe of the fifth
century which inspired the rise of this love and gifted it with its
own name:
Und mein Stamm sind jene Asra,
Welche sterben, wenn sie lieben.
n nHST 372 Middle East: Muhammad to 1800
John Haldon, "Pre-industrial States and the Distribution of
Resources: the Nature of the Problem," in Averil Cameron (ed),
The Byzantine and Early Islamic Near East, vol. III, States,
Resources and Armies (Papers of the Third Workshop on Late
Antiquity and Early Islam), The Darwin Press, Princeton, NJ,
1993, pp. 1-24.
That states need armies, and that they must in consequence
dispose of effective means of recruiting, equipping and

maintaining them, hardly needs to be demonstrated. But
different states have adopted different means of achieving this,
and the papers in the present volume seek to explore some
aspects of the mechanisms through which the late Roman/early
Byzantine and the early Arab Islamic states organised the
distribution of resources and structured their armies. The
relationship between states and their armies is important both
for the state centre, as well as for the state as a wider political
and territorial entity. In pre-modern states this is generally
mediated through the relationship between the centre and its
bureaucracy and administrative apparatus, on the one hand, and
between the centre and the dominant social-economic elite(s)
and/or locally-rooted power structures, on the other.
Bureaucratic elites and dominant local power elites may or may
not overlap or be drawn from the same social sources.
Depending upon the variations in the equation represented by
the three or four elements: state - administrative apparatus -
social elite locally legitimate non-central powers - a wide range
of possible state formations and legal-constitutional systems has
evolved. But the key issue is state power, that is to say, the
degree to which the centre can achieve or maintain a monopoly
of coercive force, and hence exercise direct control over the
resources necessary to its own reproduction and of the
administrative machinery through which this is achieved. There
is also the question whether states necessarily need to maintain
this sort of control or authority in order to survive as states. In
addition, certain social-economic and ideological interests are
built into this relationship, which will be represented through
the factional and political identities evident in the sources.
How do we define a "state"?
[Note: See Haldon's The State and the Tributary Mode of
Production (London, 1993); also his "The Army and the
Economy: the Allocation and Redistribution of Surplus
Wealth", Mediterranean Historical Review, VII/1992, pp. 133-
153.]
It seems almost impossible to arrive at a universally accepted

general definition which has any real analytic value. But we
need to do it, since although our definitions may vary, the idea
of the state is central to our attempts to explain how the
political formations with which we are concerned evolved.
Historians and anthropologists tend to define the state in terms
of the questions they wish to ask. As with any definition,
therefore, the notion of "the state" must be used as a heuristic
tool, rather than as a conceptual strait-jacket which ignores the
fundamentally dynamic and dialectical nature of human social
praxis. A useful reminder that this is the case is suggested by
the fact that forms of rulership reflect the already socially
inscribed nature of power relations: whether we describe these
relations in terms of Weber's notion of patrimonial or
professional bureaucratic structures, for example, should make
no difference.
Debate on the state in the last fifteen or so years has tended to
place greater emphasis on the autonomy of state structures and
institutions to function independently of, or on occasion in
opposition to, other elements in the social structure as a whole.
At the same time, the non-bounded nature of many aspects of
social power has been stressed, so that states can no longer be
seen as entirely co-terminous with "societies". This is the more
important in view of recent challenges to traditional
assumptions about how "societies" are themselves to be
conceptualized, according to which the notion of a limited and
limiting pool of social practices, forming a distinct social-
structural entity, or "society", is being eroded by the suggestion
that societies in this monolithic sense rarely exist, that they are
more heterogeneous and diffuse in their structuration, and that
they should be seen rather as sets of "sociospatial networks of
power which overlap and intersect", in which blocks of social
power and social-cultural identity are in a constant process of
coalescence, consolidation and dissolution. For some scholars,
the state has been conceptualised as the key explanatory
variable in the historical development of Western society since
the late medieval period, particularly where the examples

chosen have been of "strong" states, which have evolved
interests of their own, not necessarily in accordance with those
of the rest of society, and which are able successfully to impose
their priorities over those of other social and economic
interests, hence forming distinct, bounded socio-political
entities. For others, this view has seemed too state-centred, so
that an alternative approach has been elaborated, in which state
institutions are seen as more closely enmeshed in social-
economic structures and the vested interests inscribed in these
structures. This approach has led in turn to the suggestion that
these relationships are always contested, and that tensions and
contradictions existing between the various interests mark out
an arena for the resolution of a struggle between a range of
(potentially) mutually antagonistic social-economic powers.
Particularly important in this context is the notion that states
may be autonomous only in certain restricted domains or areas,
thus leading to the position that different aspects of state power
will come into conflict with each other within the framework of
a single state. This is relevant in considering the function of
armies in bureaucratic-administrative states such as those under
consideration here.
Such reflections are especially important for the question of
how preindustrial or pre-modern states have evolved, since
patterns of exchange between centres of production at the local
and international levels may not necessarily observe political
frontiers, nor be easily subordinated to systems of political
(fiscal) control. 'Me relation between "centres" and
"peripheries" becomes interesting at this point. "Dependency
Theory" and "World-Systems Theory" have been evolved to
attempt to relate the development of particular centres of
political and economic power at certain times to the wider
history of the regions which they either colonised. or otherwise
dominated and exploited, whether economically, militarily or
both. Much of the work in this respect has dealt with the early
modern and modem world (taking its cue from the work of
Wallerstein, for example), in which the notion that

underdevelopment is generated as an effect of the political and
economic primacy of a particular zone (a "centre") has been
very important, although much criticized when applied to the
pre-modern era.
[note: See Eric Wolf, Europe and the People without History,
Berkeley, 1982.]
In particular, the much lower levels of technological
specialisation and control over exchange and production,
especially as regards transport and communications, have been
cited as constraints on the ability of centres to exploit
dependent and/or peripheral zones as intensively or as
effectively as European states have done since the seventeenth
and eighteenth centuries. Nevertheless, empirical examination
of the ways in which peripheries have reacted back upon centres
as the result of a complex process of primary exploitation, the
re-siting of centres of production, and the parasitism of the
original centre upon its outer margins, has informed a number
of recent interpretations of the evolution of ancient empires,
exemplified in the work of Hopkins and Whittaker on the
imperial economy of Rome.
[note: See C.R. Whittaker, "Late Roman Trade and Traders," in
P. Garnsey, K. Hopkins, C. R. Whittaker (eds), Trade in the
Ancient Economy, Berkeley, 1983; K. Hopkins, "Taxes and
Trade in the Roman Empire (200 B.C. - A.D. 400)", Journal of
Roman Studies, LXX/1980, 101-25.]
It has also played an important part in the ideas on the
"legionary economy" outlined by Michael Mann, and the
strategy of the Roman state argued (much more contentiously)
by Luttwak, and in this respect is directly relevant to the issues
concerning this colloquium in respect of the ways in which
states can extract, control and redistribute resources.
[note: N. E. Luttwak, The Grand Strategy of the Roman Empire,
Baltimore, 1976; for criticism, B. Isaac, The Limits of
Empire: The Roman Empire in the East, Oxford, 1990.]
Although our prime concern in these papers is the role of the
systems evolved to resource armies and warfare in the context

of state or political formations which had already come into
being, war-making and military organisation have themselves
been considered by some to be constitutive elements in the
process of state formation. For example, it has been argued that
warfare and war-making are the main mechanisms through
which states come into being and consolidate their power,
although I would prefer a more open-ended approach in which
these elements are part of a context- and conjuncture-
determined set of generative factors in which warfare and
military organisation are elements in a complex totality of
interacting mechanisms. But especially important is the fact
that, while the state, on the one hand, as identified and
perceived by its members through a specific political ideology,
can be understood as existing in a situation of potential conflict
with neighbouring political formations, its requirements in
terms of manpower and resources may equally bring it into
conflict with elements in the society in which it is itself rooted
unwilling to contribute to this effort. Conflict with external
powers is thus not the only route by which states acquire power
over the social networks on which they are founded, although
this has been emphasised by several recent writers. Consensus,
co-option, coercion or temporary bargaining may result from
this, with all the consequences for the evolution of state-social
relations and inter-factional conflict which this may produce in
each specific social formation.
[note: See especially the work of Hintze, edited in F. Gilbert
(ed), The Historical Essays of Otto Hintze, New York, 1975,
who stressed the role of early modern European states in
compelling and coercing support through the (military) mass
conscription of the opulation; and contrast especialy with F.
Lane, profits from Power, Albany, 1979 and R. Lachmann,
"Origins of Capitalism in Western Europe: Economic and
Political Aspects", Annual Review of Sociology, XV/1989, 47-
72, who emphasise economic relations between states and elites
and the ideological and consensual aspects of the problem in the
same period.]

For the purposes of the present debate, drawing on both the
older and and the more recent historical and social
anthropological work, a state can be understood at the most
basic level to refer both to a relatively shortlived grouping of
tribal or clan communities united under a warlord or chieftain
who is endowed with both symbolic and military authority - in
anthropological terms, a "big-man" confederacy; as well as to a
more-or-less territorially unified political entity, with a "centre"
(which may be peripatetic) from which a ruler or ruling group
exercises political authority, and which maintains its existence
over more than a single generation. A key element seems to be
that the authority of the ruler is recognised as both legitimate
and exclusive, and that it is more than simply a reflection of the
personal attributes of an individual. In more concrete terms,
states might be defined in the first instance as territorially
demarcated regions (although there is always the possibility that
lands were geographically dispersed and frontiers ill-defined or
fluctuating) controlled' by centralised governing or ruling
establishments of some sort, which may have a monopoly over
the use of coercion, and which may have the power to assert
their authority over the territories they claim. How exactly such
central authorities achieve these ends varies enormously from
state to state and society to society. In most historical states
there have been gaps in the extent of state authority - border or
mountainous regions, for example, difficult of access and
untouched by state supervision; "tribal" groups nominally owing
allegiance and occupying territory claimed by the state, but not
always easily brought under the state's authority or control.
Thus in areas where geography favours a tribal pastoral and/or
nomadic economy, the latter have generally formed important
elements in the armies of conquest states, certainly in the initial
stages of their evolution; but this has also meant that, because
of the mobility of such pastoralists, their internal social
cohesion and self-sufficiency, and the fact that their wealth is
generally easily moved away from the reach of state officials,
they are both able and sometimes inclined to resist any central

authority that does not directly favour their own interests.
While ideological commitment can overcome this at certain
times, it remains a short-term means of cementing such power-
relationships.
[note: This is not only a pre-modern phenomenon: see, for
example, U. Fabietti, "Sedentarization as a Means of
Detribalization: Some Policies of the Saudi Government
Towards the Nomads", in T. Niblock (ed), States, Society and
Economy in Saudi Arabia, London, 1982.]
The very different configuration of power-relationships within
the Byzantine, Sasanian and Umayyad states which forms part
of the subject of the papers of this colloquium, provides striking
examples of the ways in which these features combined.
Perhaps most importantly of all states tend to erect, or try to
erect, more complex ideological and legitimating systems for
themselves, more impersonalised and institutionalised modes of
surplus extraction than, for example, do clan or tribal
groupings. They tend to move away from administration based
on kinship and lineage relationships and the exploitation of kin-
based modes of subordination - necessarily, if they are to
maintain their supra-tribal existence and cohesion, on the one
hand, their authority on the other. This is a point made by Ibn
Khaldun, for example, who saw this process as generally
following the initial formation of a supra-tribal political entity
from tribal elements under a chieftain of some sort, in which a
crucial role was played by religion as a unifying element
providing a new, supra-kinship set of relationships, identities
and loyalties.
Too precise and prescriptive a definition of what constitutes a
state will exclude features found in some state formations but
perhaps not in others, however, and so a relatively open-ended
account is to be preferred to a closed and descriptive
formulation. It is clear that there exist many different shades of
"state-ness", both in respect of the degree of actual physical
control, in their longevity and in the degree of ideological
integration of the varying and often antagonistic elements

occupying the territory claimed by a given central authority. As
Charles Tilly has pointed out, the differences between the some
500 or so minor or less autonomous political units of Europe in
the year 1500, and the major "states", are not so great as to
exclude all of the former from being defined under certain'
conditions as state-like.
[note: Charles Tilly, "Reflections on the History of European
State-Making", in Charles Tilly (ed), The Formation of National
States in Western Europe, Princeton, 1975.]
Some historical states have been represented by claims to
legitimacy based on consensus, having little or no power of
coercion, and have survived generally for only a relatively short
time. Those which have military coercion at their disposal, at
least in their early stages, may remain relatively isolated from
the social structures they live off, surviving only as long as they
are able effectively to coerce or persuade support and resources.
Others may move towards the establishment of a permanent and
self-regenerating body of administrators, which draws its
recruits from either specific groups within the state (tribal
groups, for example) or from those of a particular social or
cultural background (which includes the establishment of slave
bureaucracies and armies, deracinated from their original social
and cultural context and dependent entirely on the system to
which they owe their position). They tend thus to evolve
institutional structures - fiscal systems, military organisations
and so forth - which establish their own sets of roles and
discourses, divorced from the daily practices of "ordinary"
society. The state becomes a specialist, and dominant, set of
institutions, which may even undertake the creation ab initio of
its own administrative personnel, and which can survive only by
maintaining control over the appropriation and distribution of
surplus wealth which this specialized personnel administers. It
is the processes of elimination and selection between different
sets of institutions and practices through which this occurs,
processes which further or hinder the generation of state power
along with the institutional and legitimating characteristics

described above, and permit some political formations to
survive and evolve into states, and others not, which it is the
historian's task to elucidate.
[note: There has been a great deal of discussion in recent years
on the nature and form of state power in pre-modern state
formations. See in particular, Mann, The Sources of Social
Power, who discusses the ways inwhich structures of social
power are generated within the institutional framework of state
apparatuses, on the one hand, and social praxis, on the other.]
This last point is especially important in respect of the potential
for state formations to reproduce themselves, compared with the
potential of a particular dynasty with its retinues based upon
personal loyalties and notions of honour, obligation and
reciprocity, to maintain itself in power over a number of
generations. 'Me evolution of a bureaucratic elite which has a
sense of its own function within the state/society, identifies
with a particular set of ideological and symbolic narratives, and
can recruit and train its personnel into the institutional roles and
behavioural patterns relevant to the maintenance and even
expansion of these structures is a crucial factor, as both Marx
and Weber, in the course of very different analyses, long ago
pointed out. The relative success of the Roman and Byzantine,
Chinese and Ottoman states in this regard, to name just a few
examples, provides good illustrations of the ways in which some
states evolved stable yet flexible structures sufficient to permit
their survival over a long period regardless of often major shifts
in dynastic arrangements and the nature of the central authority
itself; the failures of the Frankish kingdoms illustrate the fate of
political formations which failed to generate such structures. In
both cases, the relations between the state in all its forms and
the social-economic structures which support it were crucial. In
some states problems of both regional and lineage identities
(however spurious or artificial the latter may usually in fact
have been) dramatically vitiated attempts by a central authority,
even when supported by elements of a permanent civil or
military bureaucracy, to maintain itself as an effective power

with real coercive potential over more than a few generations.
The 'Abbasid Caliphate itself can be understood from this
perspective, for already by the later ninth century the central
power was heavily compromised by the growing autonomy of
provincial governors and by generals commanding armies in the
central lands. It could be argued that it was only the need to
attain ideological legitimacy within Islam which held the wider
polity together, and successful religious -ideological opposition
in Africa, Egypt and the Arabian peninsula threatened even this.
It is important to understand that this was not simply a factor of
geography and distance (although they certainly played a role).
A whole complex of social, cultural and ideological issues were
also involved. A number of medieval and early modern Indian
states exemplify similar structural developments (the
Vijayanagar empire in the Deccan from the fourteenth to
seventeenth centuries, for example); while the Sasanian
kingdom, whose Iranian element proved so powerful an
influence in the development of Islamic culture and political
structures, provides a good example of a remarkably successful
dynasty in which these features combined very clearly. For the
actual power of the Sasanian royal house depended very largely
on two key factors. In the first place, there was an ideological
commitment by a powerful group of regional clan or dynastic
chiefs (the Sasanian "aristocracy", from whom the royal house
was itself drawn) to the legitimacy of the dominant dynasty
(which claimed also a certain politicoreligious authority
sanctioned both by a claim to ancient lineage and military
leadership). In the second place, and as can be found in all state
formations, this dominant elite supported the claims to
legitimate power and followed the authority of that dynasty as
long as the results of Sasanian rule were not in contradiction to
their own interests, whether ideological, political or economic.
Personalized dynastic rivalries, questions of honour, shame and
competition are inevitably also part and parcel of such a picture.
Here we may return to the formula expressed at the beginning of
this introduction: namely, that the success or failure of states to

Unit 2 - Sasanian Empire and the Middle East WA 2 Answer the f.docx

Unit 2 - Sasanian Empire and the Middle East WA 2 Answer the f.docx

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Unit 2 - Sasanian Empire and the Middle East WA 2 Answer the f.docx