Ghassanids

Becoming clients of the Byzantines

After originally settling in the Levant, the Ghassanids became a client state to the Byzantine Empire. The Romans found a powerful ally in the Ghassanids who acted as a buffer zone against the Lakhmids. In addition, as kings of their own people, they were also phylarchs, native rulers of client frontier states.^[16][17] The capital was at Jabiyah in the Golan Heights. Geographically, it occupied much of the eastern Levant, and its authority extended via tribal alliances with other Azdi tribes all the way to the northern Hijaz as far south as Yathrib (Medina).^[18]

Military rivalry with the Persians and Sasanians

The Ghassanids fought alongside the Eastern Roman Empire against the Persian Sasanians and Arab Lakhmids.^[19] The lands of the Ghassanids also continually acted as a buffer zone, protecting Byzantine lands against raids by Bedouin tribes. Among their Arab allies were the Banu Judham and Banu Amilah.

The Byzantines were focused more on the East and a long war with the Sasanians was always their main concern. The Ghassanids maintained their rule as the guardian of trade routes, policed Lakhmid tribes and was a source of troops for the imperial army. The Ghassanid king al-Harith ibn Jabalah (reigned 529–569) supported the Byzantines against the Sasanians and was given in 529 by the emperor Justinian I, the highest imperial title that was ever bestowed upon a foreign ruler; also the status of patricians. In addition to that, al-Harith ibn Jabalah was given the rule over all the Arab allies of the Byzantine Empire.^[20] Al-Harith was a Miaphysite Christian; he helped to revive the Syrian Miaphysite (Jacobite) Church and supported Miaphysite development despite Orthodox Byzantium regarding it as heretical. Later Byzantine mistrust and persecution of such religious unorthodoxy brought down his successors, Al-Mundhir III ibn al-Harith (r. 569–582).

The Ghassanids, who had successfully opposed the Lakhmids of al-Hirah in Lower Mesopotamia, prospered economically and engaged in much religious and public building; they also patronized the arts and at one time entertained the Arab poets al-Nabighah and Hassan ibn Thabit at their courts.^[4]

The "Dissolution" period under Maurice (582–585 AD)

As the Ghassanids gained overwhelming power in the second half of the sixth century, having transitioned well past the level of disorganized raiders from earlier centuries, the Byzantine rulers began to see them as a dangerous force that could vie for independence.^[21]

The dissolution of the Ghassanid confederation came during the reign of the emperor Maurice, and materialized as negotiations aimed at settling the differences between the Byzantines and the Ghassanids failed. Upon the accession of Maurice to the Byzantine throne, the phylarch Al-Nu'man travelled to the Byzantine court at Constantinople. The Byzantines demanded Al-Nu'man resume the war against the Persians and accept the Chalcedonian doctrine (as the Ghassanids believed in Monophysitism). Al-Nu'man refused both. As he was travelling back, to the Oriens (Diocese of the East), he was arrested: Al-Nu'man was tried and sentenced for treason.^[22]

After the arrest of Al-Nu'man, the Byzantines announced the end of the Ghassanid phylarchate and tribal alliance. The confederation was dissolved into its 15 member tribes, with the tribe of Ghassan losing sway over a once large confederation of loyal tribes. Some of these tribes decided to remain allied with the Byzantines as individuals, whereas other dissatisfied groups joined the Persian constellation of power. Other groups chose other paths.^[21][23]

The restoration under Maurice (585–602 AD)

The dissolution of the Ghassanid phylarcate did not last very long. After two or three years, Maurice came to the realization that he was not able to defend the Oriens without the help of the Ghassanids, who the Byzantines had already relied on for this job for most of the sixth century up until that point. The Ghassanid confederation was restored (even though they remained Monophysite), and the Ghassanids returned to their military ventures against the Persians. Information about the Ghassanids becomes scarce for much of the remainder of the reign of Maurice until his death in 602 AD.^[24] The exception is some information about the phylarch Jafnah, brother of Al-Nu'man, active between 587 and 591 AD, preserved by Michael the Syrian.^[25] Greek sources no longer mention the Ghassanids after 593/594 AD, although they were still important at this time and begin to appear in Arabic poetry.^[26] The poetry of Al-Nabigha says Al-Nu'man was returned to the Ghassanids in the 590s, became active again as a Ghassanid chief, and passed before 600.^[27]

The reign of Phocas (602–610 AD)

The accession of Phocas to the Byzantine throne in 602 AD came with an immediate restoration in relations between the Byzantines and the Ghassanids. Al-Mundhir III, the father of Al-Nu'man, was immediately released from his exile in Sicily. Unfortunately, nothing else is known about the return of Al-Mundhir.^[28] Towards the end of Phocas' time, relations with the Ghassanids may have soured again, as Phocas became more tyrannically ardent in the Dyophysite doctrine and began to crush Monophysite uprisings in the Oriens. The reaction of the Ghassanids to this episode is unknown, but Shahid mentions that they temporarily withdrew their service to the empire when a similar event took place in 519.^[29]

During the reign of Phocas, the Byzantine–Sasanian War of 602–628 broke out, and the Ghassanids played an essential role on the side of the Byzantines. The only surviving record of the role of the Ghassanids in the Byzantine-Sasanian war, during the reign of Phocas, is a long and detailed poem by Hassan ibn Thabit. Eight to ten verses from the poem are about the Ghassanids, providing the name of Ghassanid commanders (ʿAmr and Ḥujr), speaking of the Ghassanid war cry ("Yāla Ghassān iṣbirū": "O Ghassān, endure, stand fast!"), and the weapons they used (including broad swords and spears).^[30]

The reign of Heraclius (610–641 AD)

In the time of the emperor Heraclius, relations with the Ghassanids dramatically improved, and they became as good as they were at their height in the time of Justinian I. The three main episodes for the Ghassanids in this time period is the joint Ghassanid-Oriens armies fighting against the invasion of the Persians, and then a withdrawal by the Ghassanids to Anatolia where they fight alongside Heraclius in his counteroffensive to deliver a decisive blow to the Persians at the Battle of Nineveh (627), and lastly their fight against the Muslims in the Oriens where they are defeated at the Battle of the Yarmuk (636).^[31]

Rashidun conquest of the Levant

The nascent Muslim state in Medina, first under the Islamic prophet Muhammad (d. 632) and lastly under the second caliph, Umar (r. 634–644), made abortive attempts to contact or win over the Ghassan of Syria.^[32] The last phylarch of the Ghassan, Jabala ibn al-Ayham, stories of whom are shrouded in legend, led his tribesmen and those of Byzantium's other allied Arab tribes in the Byzantine army that was routed by the Muslims at the Battle of Yarmouk in c. 636. After supposedly embracing Islam, Jabala left the faith and ultimately withdrew with his tribesmen from Syria to Byzantine-held Anatolia in 639, by which time the Muslims had conquered most of Byzantine Syria. Unable to make headway with the Ghassan, the Muslim administration in Syria under its governor Mu'awiya succeeded in allying with the Ghassan's old-established Syrian allies, the Banu Kalb. The latter became the cornerstone of Mu'awiya's military power in Syria, and later, when he became head of the Syria-based Umayyad Caliphate in 661, of the Islamic empire in general.^[33]

Umayyad and Abbasid periods

Significant remnants of the Ghassan remained in Syria, residing in Damascus and the city's Ghouta countryside.^[34] At least nominally and probably gradually, many of these Ghassanids embraced Islam, especially under Mu'awiya's rule. According to the historian Nancy Khalek, they consequently became an "indispensable" group of Muslim society in early Islamic Syria.^[34] Mu'awiya actively sought the militarily and administratively experienced Syrian Christians, including the Ghassanids, and members of the tribe served him and later Umayyad caliphs as governors, commanders of the shurta (select troops), scribes, and chamberlains. Several descendants of the tribe's Tha'laba and Imru al-Qays branches are listed in the sources as Umayyad court poets, jurists, and officials in the eastern provinces of Khurasan, Adharbayjan and Armenia.^[35]

When Mu'awiya's grandson, Caliph Mu'awiya II, died without a chosen successor amid the Second Muslim Civil War in 684, Umayyad rule was on the verge of collapse in Syria, having already collapsed throughout the caliphate, where the supporters of a rival caliph, the Mecca-based Ibn al-Zubayr, took charge. The Ghassan, along with their tribal allies in Syria, especially the Kalb, supported continued Umayyad rule to secure their interests under the dynasty, and nominated Mu'awiya's distant cousin, Marwan I, as caliph during a summit of the Syrian tribes in the old Ghassanid capital of Jabiyah.^[36] Dahhak ibn Qays al-Fihri, the governor of Damascus, meanwhile, threw his backing behind Ibn al-Zubayr. During the Battle of Marj Rahit, which pitted Marwan against Dahhak in a meadow north of Damascus, the scion of the Ghassanid family in Damascus, Yazid ibn Abi al-Nims, led a revolt there and secured control of the city for Marwan, who routed Dahhak and assumed office. In a poem attributed to him, Marwan lauds the Ghassan, as well as the Kalb, Kinda, and Tanukh of Syria, for supporting him.^[37]

The above tribes thereafter formed the Yaman faction, in opposition to the Qays tribes which backed Dahhak and Ibn al-Zubayr. The Qays–Yaman rivalry contributed to the downfall of Umayyad rule, with each faction supporting different Umayyad dynasts and governors in what became the Third Muslim Civil War. The Ghassanid Shabib ibn Abi Malik was a leader of the Yaman in Damascus and conspired to assassinate the pro-Qaysi Caliph al-Walid II (r. 743–744). After the latter was killed, the Ghassan marched on Damascus to help install his successor, the Yamani-backed Yazid III (r. 744–744).^[38] The toppling of the Umayyads and the advent of the Iraq-based Abbasid Caliphate in 750 "was disastrous for the power, wealth and status of the Arab tribes in Syria", including the Ghassan, according to the historian Hugh N. Kennedy. By the 9th century, the tribe had adopted a settled life, being recorded by the geographer al-Ya'qubi (d. 890) to be living in the Ghouta gardens region of Damascus and in Gharandal in Transjordan.^[39]

Scholarly families in Damascus

Two Damascene Ghassanid families in particular achieved prominence in early Islamic Syria, those of Yahya ibn Yahya al-Ghassani (d. 750s) and Abu Mushir al-Ghassani (d. 833). The former was the son of Caliph Marwan's head of the shurta, Yahya ibn Qays. Upon returning to Damascus after his stint as a governor of Mosul for the Umayyad caliph Umar II (r. 717–720), Yahya ibn Yahya took up scholarship and became known as the sayyid ahl Dimashq (leader of the people of Damascus), transmitting purported hadiths (traditions and utterances) of Muhammad, which he derived from his uncle Sulayman, who received the transmissions from Muhammad's Damascus-based companion, Abu Darda. Among some traditions sourced to Yahya ibn Yahya by later Muslim scholars are those regarding the discovery of John the Baptist's head in the Umayyad Mosque of Damascus and others which praise the mosque's splendor and the Umayyad dynasty in general. Yahya ibn Yahya's sons, grandsons, great-grandsons and great-great-grandsons continued their ancestor's interests in hadith scholarship and remained part of the Damascene elite into the mid-9th century.^[40]

Abu Mushir's grandfather, Abd al-A'la, was a hadith scholar and Abu Mushir studied under the famous Syrian scholar Sa'id ibn Abd al-Aziz al-Tanukhi. He became a prominent hadith scholar in Damascus, with special interest in the administrative history of Syria, its local elite's genealogies and local scholars.^[41] During the Fourth Muslim Civil War between the Abbasid dynasts, an Umayyad, Abu al-Umaytir al-Sufyani, took power in Syria in 811, in a bid to reestablish the Umayyad Caliphate. Abu Mushir, whose grandfather was killed by the Abbasids in 750, disdained the Iraqis represented by the Abbasids and supported the restoration of Umayyad rule. He served as Abu al-Umaytir's qadi (chief jurist), but was imprisoned by the Abbasids in the years following the rebellion's suppression in 813.^[42] His great-grandsons Abd al-Rabb ibn Muhammad and Amr ibn Abd al-A'la also attained fame as Damascene scholars.^[41]