CENTRAL ARABIA

In many ways, the history of central Arabia during the Pre-Islamic Period parallels and intersects with that of northern Arabia. The history of the Early Pre-Islamic Period (ca. 400 BCE-400 CE) is similarly shrouded in a kind of Arabian Dark Age, with distinct groups and specific historical details slowly emerging until we reach the relatively well-documented Later Pre-Islamic Period (ca. 400-969 CE). As mentioned in reference to northern Arabia, the Arabic language first arose in northern Arabia (i.e., Old Arabia) during the Arabian Bronze Age (3200-1300 BCE), and an early form of the Arabian language and protean cultural elements spread throughout the Arabian Peninsula by the end of the Arabian Iron Age (1300-400 BCE)—excepting only the agrarian kingdoms and highland tribes of the southern quarter and eastern Persian Gulf littoral of the peninsula. Then, during the Pre-Islamic Period (400 BCE-969 CE), there was rapid acculturation between the Hellenized Arabo-Aramaean groups of northern Arabia, the so-called Saracens of northern and central Arabia, the highland peoples of southern Arabia, and the Hellenized Syro-Persian groups of eastern Arabia, particularly after southern tribes (Qahtanites and Kahlans) began to migrate into central, northern, and eastern Arabia in large numbers from about 100 BCE to 600 CE. This process led to the ethnogenesis of the Arab peoples as we know them today, fostered by the development of an idealized and homogenized form of the Arabic language and Arab culture under the umbrella of Islam. Unlike northern Arabia, central Arabia was clearly dominated by nomadic and semi-nomadic peoples (Arabic, badawi), with only a minor role played by sedentary peoples living in oasis regions. This is due to two factors—the relative lack of large oases (most of central Arabia is taken up by the aptly named "Empty Quarter"), and the tendency of major trading powers (Persian, Greco-Macedonian, Roman, Hellenized Syrian, southern Arabian, eastern Arabian) to try to bypass the dangerous and expensive trade routes across central Arabia in favor of traveling along the coasts (via both camel caravans and merchant fleets). To this end, the great southern Arabian kingdoms put great efforts into dominating the Plain of Tihama on the west coast, while the Israelites, Nabataeans, and Romans did the same in the Hijaz. Persia did much the same in southern Mesopotamia and Bahrayn. 

 

The Banu Lakhm (100-268 CE) and the Lakhmid Kingdom (268-602 CE)

The Banu Lakhm were a Kahlan coalition of tribes that migrated from the Najd Plateau to southern Mesopotamia between the early second and late third centuries CE (ca. 100-294 CE). They initially settled in the area of southern Mesopotamia that is today part of the Iraqi Province of Najaf (they settled between the Euphrates to the north and the fringes of the Dahna Desert to the south), although they eventually came to dominate the Arab tribes to the west and northwest, in the region the Persians called Arabiya ("Arab-land," once the domain of the Arabo-Aramaean city-state of Hatra, encompassing the regions known today as the Jazira and Anbar Province, both in Iraq), and those tribes to the east (modern Muthanna Province, Iraq). The Lakhmids were initially attracted to the wealth of the trade caravans that originated in the Persian Gulf ports of Persia (the Marzubanate of Meshan), traveled up both banks of the Euphrates (and the river itself) to Arabiya, and then continued across the Samawah Desert to Roman Palmyra, Emesa, and Antioch.

 

With the wealth and power that came with seizing control of the middle portions of this trade route, one of the chiefs of the Lakhm, Amr ibn Uday (268-295 CE), was able to unify the formerly disparate tribes of the Lakhm and become king (Arabic, malik). He established his capital at the oasis-city of Hira/Hirah (near modern Kufa, Iraq). His son and successor, Imru al-Qays (295-328 CE), called Amorges in Persian sources, expanded Lakhmid control from Najaf into Muthanna, then built a fleet on the Euphrates to take control of the Euphrates river trade, as well as its adjacent caravan trade routes. He raided Persian Mesopotamia and, sailing down the Euphrates to the Persian Gulf, he also raided the Kingdom of Gerrha (an eastern Arabian coastal city-state) and the heartlands of Persia (Fars Province, Iran). Imru al-Qays made a marriage alliance with the childless Tanukhid king, Amr ibn Adi (268-295 CE), that allowed him to temporarily unite the thrones of the Tanukhid and Lakhmid kingdoms when Amr ibn Adi died (ca. 295 CE)—from that point, he was known as Imru al-Qays ibn Amr (ca. 295-328 CE). Imru al-Qays had converted to Christianity as a condition of his marriage to the Tanukhid princess, and the prospect of a large Christian Arab kingdom on the southern borders of Persia was viewed with growing alarm by the Sassanids. The Tanukhids were by that time the chief Arab federates of the Roman Empire, and Imru al-Qays ibn Amr assumed the title, "King of all the Arabs." The Romans seemed all too willing to support Imru al-Qays ibn Amr. Since the fall of Palmyra (ca. 273 CE), the empire had struggled to re-establish security along its Syrian frontier, and the Tanukhid-Lakhmid kingdom promised to be strategically invaluable in the interminable wars between Rome and Persia—not only could the Tanukhid-Lakhmid kingdom raid Persian Mesopotamia, it could support Roman invasions, and their control of the Euphrates would provide Roman traders with the ability to bypass Persian middlemen in the trade with India (they seemed to think the Arabs would give them better terms than the Persians). However, Rome was somewhat distracted at the time—Constantine I (306-337 CE) had fought a series of civil wars to secure his sole rule as emperor, and the empire was also wracked with religious strife—and unfortunately for Rome, the Sassanid Dynasty of Persia had just seen the assension of a shahanshah (Middle Persian, "king-of-kings," i.e., emperor), Shapur II (309-379 CE), who would prove to be one of Persia's greatest leaders. In 325 CE, the young Shapur (he was only 16 at the time) launched a massive campaign (his army likely numbered in excess of 60,000 men) to bring the Arab tribes of Bahrayn and southern Mesopotamia to heel. The coastal Kingdom of Gerrha was conquered, the tribes of the interior beaten, and Bahrayn was made part of the Marzubanate (i.e., military border province) of Meshan/Maishan (roughly corresponding to the former territories of the Arabo-Aramaean city-state of Charakene, centered in what is today Kuwait). Shapur's army then moved north along the Euphrates and defeated the Lakhmids and their allies, and Shapur placed a pro-Mazdayan Lakhmid puppet king on the throne in Hira—Aws ibn Qallam (325-328 CE). Imru al-Qays ibn Amr fled to Syria, and plotted to take back the Lakhmid Kingdom with Roman support, but he died before an opportunity arose (his epitaph, which lists his deeds, remains one of the most important pieces of evidence for the northern and central Arabian peoples during the late third and early fourth centuries CE). With the southern border of the empire secured, Shapur then launched another campaign across the steppe corridors of the Dahna Desert into the steppe-lands of Yamamah on the eastern edge of the Najd Plateau in central Arabia. The Banu Taghlib, Banu Bekr, and Banu Hawazin were defeated, and a vague sort of Persian overlordship was established in Yamamah—several defeated tribes were deported to southern Mesopotamia to bolster the numbers of the Lakhmids, but the Persians established no garrisons in Yamamah or at the oases in the Dahna, instead tasking the Lakhmids with maintaining order amongst the Arab tribes of the central Arabian frontier. The Lakhmid kings were to be assisted in this by a Persian warden of the desert fringes (marzuban al-badia), who commanded a Persian garrison that was billeted at Hira, and a ring of fortifications was built along the desert fringes to the south of Hira. Ironically, upon the death of Imru al-Qays ibn Amr, his son, Amr ibn Imru al-Qays (328-363 CE), repudiated his Christianity and his claim to the Tanukhid throne, defected back to Persia, and was made king of the Lakhmids (Roman sources for this period are not good, but it is believed that a chief known as Gadhimat al-Hawari became king of the Tanukhids). Aws ibn Qallam had proven unable to secure the support of the Lakhmid chiefs, but the son of Imru al-Qays had both close ties of kinship with the Lakhmid chiefs and the lustre of his father's name. As it was, Amr ibn Imru al-Qays justified the faith of his Sassanian overlord, who aquiesced in his taking back the throne of the Lakhmids, and Amr ibn Imru al-Qays carried out a highly successful attack on Roman Syria in 337 CE, and helped the Persians to defeat the army of the Roman emperor, Julian (361-363 CE), at the Battle of Tisfon/Ctesiphon (29 May 363 CE). Julian was slain, one of his sub-commanders, Jovian (363-364 CE), was hastily proclaimed emperor and forced to make a humiliating peace treaty with Shapur in return for safe passage of his troops back to Roman territory—much of Upper Mesopotamia was ceded to Persia, and the Romans were to sever diplomatic ties with their client kingdom of Armenia in the Caucasus. It is probably at this time that the Lakhmids were given authority over the Arab tribes of Arabiya. Thus, the short-lived Tanukhid-Lakhmid kingdom of Imru al-Qays (ca. 295-325 CE), which held such promise to Rome's strategic interests, gave way to a status quo that would last for almost three centuries, with the Lakhmids and Sassanids on one side, and the Romans and their Arab federates (Tanukhids, Salihids, and then Ghassanids) on the other.

 

The Lakhmid Kingdom became immensely wealthy, militarily powerful, and culturally influential. In particular, the Lakhmid court at Hira became a locus for the early development of written Arabic, the Lakhmid kings patronized many early Arab poets, and Lakhmid architecture would heavily influence the development of later Muslim architecture—Nu'man ibn Imru al-Qays al-A'war ("the one-eyed") al-Sa'ih ("the ascetic"), king of the Lakhmids between 390 and 418 CE, is famous for building two spectacular palaces near Hira—the Khawarnaq and Sadir palaces—both often being considered wonders of pre-Islamic Arab architecture. Numan ibn Imru al-Qays retired after his 28-year reign to become a wandering Christian ascetic (hence one of his sobriquets), and was succeeded by his son, Mundhir ibn al-Nu'man (418-461 CE). By this time, relations between the Persian court and that of the Lakhmids was very close, and the Sassanian emperor, Yazdegerd I (399-420 CE), even went so far as to send one of his sons, prince Bahram Gor, to be raised at the court of Mundhir ibn al-Nu'man. The Persian court had been racked with intrigue and religious tensions, and Yazdegerd believed his son would be safer at the Lakhmid court—like several of his predecessors, three of whom were assassinated for their efforts, Yazdegerd was a reformer who attempted to limit the power of the great noble houses of the Persian Empire (wuzurgan) and the Mazdean priesthood (magi), including a declaration of religious tolerance for non-Mazdayan groups (including Christians and Jews). Yazdegerd was murdered by a cabal of nobles while visiting the Sassanian province of Hyrcania (southeast of the Caspian Sea), and his eldest son and successor, Shapur IV (415-420 CE), later fell to a palace coup engineered by the same group, who then attempted to install Shapur's cousin as emperor (he is known as Khosrow the Usurper in Persian histories). Bahram Gor marched on the imperial capital of Tesfon/Ctesiphon with a Lakhmid army (ca. late 420 CE), defeated his cousin, and seized the imperial throne as Bahram V (420-438 CE). Ironically, Bahram V was neither a Christian nor a reformer, and although he seems to have maintained good relations with his Lakhmid supporters (most of whom were Christians), he ended his father's attempt at political reform and religious tolerance. He also faced an invasion of Persian Armenia by the Byzantines (ca. 420-422 CE), ostensibly in retribution for the persecution of Christians under Khosrow the Usurper, and an invasion of Soghdia (modern Tajikistan and Uzbekistan), Khorasan (modern Turkmenistan), and the Kushanshahr (modern Afghanistan) by the Hephthalite Huns (ca. 428-557 CE). With Persian forces tied down on these fronts, the Lakhmids took the lead in fighting the Romans-Ghassanids in Syria and Upper Mesopotamia (ca. 420-457 CE). The Lakhmids had by that time built up a formidible military machine, perhaps being able to field as many as 70,000 men (although this includes garrisons), with a core field army of royal Lakhmid units stationed around the capital backed by a Persian garrison that included at least three regiments of Sassanian heavy cavalry—the Shahba, the Dawsar, and the Waza'e—and numerous tribal auxiliaries from the interior of the Arabian Peninsula.

 

The last century of Lakhmid rule (ca. 503-633 CE) is the most well-documented. Immediately prior to this period, the Himyarite Kingdom (110 BCE-525 CE) had become the dominant power in southern Arabia and had established itself as a trade rival of Persia. To this end, the Himyarites supported the development of their own central Arabian proxy, the Kindite Kingdom, originally composed of southern Arabian nomadic Kahlans, which was tasked with driving the Lakhmids from central Arabia and helping the Himyarites to extend their dominions into eastern Arabia. The Kindite Kingdom (see below) was largely successful in central Arabia, and even managed to install a pro-Kindite Lakhmid king at Hira—Nu'man ibn al-Aswad (497-503 CE), son of the Lakhmid king, Aswad ibn al-Mundhir (462-490 CE), and a Kindite princess, Umm al-Mulk bint Amr ibn Hajar al-Kindi. At the time, the Sassanid Dynasty had been forced into a humiliating truce with the Hephthalites in which the Persians were forced to pay a large annual tribute to the Hephthalites (483-503 CE), there was continued conflict with the Byzantines in northwestern Mesopotamia and Armenia (440-451 CE), and the consequent strain on resources meant that Persian support for the Lakhmids temporarily faltered (for their part, the Lakhmids had also been stretched thin). Lakhmid power was, however, re-asserted by the vigorous king, Mundhir ibn al-Nu'man (503-554 CE), who threw off Kindite control of the Lakhmid court and embarked on a series of campaigns that wrested much of central Arabia from the Kindah—the later Muslim geographer Abul-Qasim Ubaydallah ibn Abdallah ibn Kordadbeh (820-912 CE) claimed Lakhmid hegemony was extended across the Dahna Desert, the Yamamah steppe, and the Najd Plateau as far as the city of Yathrib/Medina. The Sassanids also experienced a revival under Kavadh I (473-531 CE) and Khosrow I Anushirawan (531-579 CE), and the Himyarite Kingdom fell to an invasion by the Axumite Empire (the Axumites were an East African Christian kingdom allied to Byzantium). As Axum and Persia fought for power and influence in southern Arabia, and the support of the Himyarites evaporated, the Kindite Kingdom collapsed (ca. 528 CE), leaving the Lakhmids as the primary Arab power in central Arabia. They fought a long series of campaigns against the Byzantines and their Ghassanid federates in northern Arabia, and assisted the Persians in Upper Mesopotamia. Mundhir ibn al-Nu'man raided Syria, Palestine, and Egypt (503 CE) and fought the Byzantines and Ghassanids for control of Syria (526-529 CE), although he was killed by the Ghassanids under Harith ibn Jabalah (529-569 CE) at the Battle of Yawm Halima (June 554 CE). Mundhir ibn al-Nu'man was succeeded by his three sons in turn—Amr ibn al-Mundhir (554-569 CE), Qabus ibn al-Mundhir (569-573 CE), and Mundhir ibn al-Mundhir (that's not a typo)(574-580 CE). These three were not as successful as their father—Amr al-Mundhir was defeated (ca. 552 CE) by the Axumite viceroy of Himyar, Abraha al-Ashram (547-575 CE); Qabus ibn al-Mundhir suffered defeat (ca. 570 CE) at the hands of the Ghassanid king, Mundhir ibn Harith (569-581 CE); and Mundhir ibn al-Mundhir faced an uprising by the citizens of Hira when he tried to take the throne (ca. 574 CE), was temporarily replaced by a Persian governor named Suhrab (574-575 CE), regained the throne (ca. 575-580 CE), but then faced an invasion of southern Mesopotamia by the Ghassanid king (the same Mundhir ibn Harith who had defeated his brother), who sacked Hira. The Ghassanids went on to attack the Sassanian capital at Tesfon/Ctesiphon (580-581 CE) in coordination with a Byzantine army under the general and future emperor, Flavius Mauricius Tiberius, which failed to take the capital but devastated Mesopotamia and put the Persian court into turmoil. The last Lakhmid king, Nu'man ibn al-Mundhir (582-603 CE), also often known as Abu Qabus, was a staunch Nestorian Christian who tried to revive Lakhmid fortunes and return to the glories of the reign of Mundhir ibn al-Nu'man (his grandfather). He started out well, rallying the central Arabian tribes to drive the Ghassanids from southern Mesopotamia and helping the Sassanian emperor, Khosrow II Aparvez (590-628 CE), to put down an usurper, Bahram Chobin (590-591 CE), but thereafter the Sassanian and Lakhmid monarchs fell out. Mundhir ibn al-Nu'man was a strong proponent of relative Lakhmid independence as a client state, and when Khosrow II expressed his intention to marry the Lakhmid king's daughter, Hind bint al-Nu'man, which would have united the Sassanid imperial house and the Lakhmid royal house, Nu'man ibn al-Mundhir refused. Enraged by the temerity of his vassal, Khosrow had Nu'man ibn al-Mundhir arrested and imprisoned (602 CE), and after he continued to defy the emperor he was executed (603 CE), reportedly by being crushed under the feet of Khosrow's war elephant.

Khosrow abolished the Lakhmid Dynasty and invited Iyas ibn Qabisah al Ta'i (602-617 CE), of the Banu Tayy coalition, to take command of Persia's Arab clients in central Arabia, while he attempted to install a Persian bureaucracy and to establish Persian colonies in southern Mesopotamia, a process which continued under his successors with very little success (ca. 603-651 CE). In the immediate aftermath of the execution of Nu'man ibn al-Mundhir, a coalition of Lakhmid chiefs rebelled against the Persians, led by the chiefs of the Banu Bekr and Banu Shayban (ca. 603-624 CE). This coalition steadily lost ground to the Persians and their Tayy allies, especially after the Banu Bekr were badly defeated at the Battle of Dhi Qar (609 CE), but the rebellion and its aftermath severely weakened the hold of the Persians on their central Arabian allies. It is often stated by modern historians that the destruction of the Lakhmid Kingdom, the ensuing rebellion, and the consequent disruption of Persia's network of alliances in central Arabia, as well as the general ill-feeling that had been created amongst the Arab proxies of Rome/Byzantium and Persia, paved the way for the consolidation of Muslim control of central Arabia during the Ridda Wars (632-633 CE), fatally weakening the Mesopotamian frontier of Persia and ultimately leading to the fall of the Sassanids to the Muslim Arabs (ca. 633-651 CE). I can see no reason to argue with this conclusion.