Byzantium and the Arabs in the Fifth Century.

• Author: Barker, John W.

With this volume, Irfan Shahid continues the theme of his two publications of 1984: Rome and the Arabs: A Prolegomenon to the Study of Byzantium and the Arabs, and Byzantium and the Arabs in the Fourth Century, which together create a landmark in historical scholarship. With a fourth and final volume, the impending two-part study Byzantium and the Arabs in the Sixth Century, Shahid will have produced the first comprehensive study of the place of the Arabs in the late Antique and early Medieval world up to the coming of Islam.

To be sure, his actual focus is a special one, subject to some misunderstanding. Shahid makes no effort to comprehend the history of the total population of the Arabian peninsula; nor does he deal, other than glancingly, with Arabic population elements settled within, and integrated into, the eastern provinces of the Empire, the "Rhomaic Arabs," who had elements of their own cultural life within that setting. His specific subject is the "federate" Arabs of "the Byzantine administrative division known as the Diocese of Oriens"; that is to say, the Arabs established as frontier foederati of the Empire, serving as "the effective shield of Byzantium against the Arabian Peninsula" - the shield whose final shattering at the Battle on the Yarmuk in 638 "cost Byzantium the loss of Oriens in its entirety and terminated the proto-Byzantine period" of the Empire's history. In each of three successive centuries these federates were identifiable as three distinct groups, led successively by three distinct dynasties: in the fourth century, the Tanukhids (who were the subject of the previous volume); in the fifth century, the Salihids (the subject of this volume); and in the sixth century, the Ghassanids (to be treated in the final study).

As with the previous volumes, readers should not approach this one expecting anything like conventional narrative history. Shahid combines a synthesis of prior scholarship with a considerable degree of path-breaking investigation of his own. He divides the work into four major units. In part one, he scrutinizes the Greek and Latin sources to establish information, first on the military and political history of the federates under successive emperors of the fifth century (Arcadius, Theodosius II, Marcinn, Leo I, Zeno, Anastasius I), and, second, on their ecclesiastical and religious history. In part two he combs the Arabic sources for historical and cultural evidence. Part three is a short section...