Vll. 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. Some-
thing has been said on this influence in the fourth century, and these conclu-
sions 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 trans-
lation 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 relation-
ship 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 impor-
tant 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.
