Byzantium and the Arabs in the Sixth Century, vol. 1.

• Author: Kaegi, Walter E.

Publication of these two volumes brings Irfan Shahid back to the period and subjects with which he began his scholarly career more than forty years ago. This is the material that he knows the very best. Although he reviews topics and controversies that intrigued scholars in those decades, this is not a mere stringing together of those older materials. Where appropriate, he revisits those older debates in detail. In other cases he summarizes, refers to the decisive earlier scholarship, and turns his attention to problems that deserve more attention and may even require extensive debate. He tackles controversial and doubtful issues in exhaustive detail. His gathering and filtering of material is fundamental background for students of the rise of Islam, for those investigating the late Roman and early Byzantine historians, and also for those studying the Sasanian Empire. There is no comparable study in any language of the relationship of Byzantium to the Arabs in the sixth century C.E. It is comprehensive. The investigation required not only the skills of a Semiticist, but also familiarity with Byzantine Greek sources and that growing body of scholarship by modern Byzantinists and specialists on other aspects of Late Antiquity. Shahid is the first to have that dual mastery. This will be the fundamental reference work on the subject for a very long time. Coverage does not technically restrict itself to the years 500 to 600 C.E., for it covers the Byzantine reigns that stretch from Anastasius I, who started to rule in 491 C.E., to the end of the reign of Heraclius, in 641. The bulk of these volumes concentrates on the reigns of Justin I, Justinian I, Justin II, Tiberius II, and Maurice. The most detailed coverage concerns the middle decades of the sixth century, especially from the 530s through the 580s. Part one of volume one covers secular, that is, primarily political and military history, while part two is shorter and contains ecclesiastical history, again organized by imperial reign.

Shahid, in his earlier volumes on the fourth and fifth centuries, succeeded in collecting often very scattered references to the Arabs, subjecting them to analysis, and providing his reader with his own synthesis of the evidence. The reader again will find that in these two volumes. Shahid has read very attentively. Byzantium and the Arabs in the Sixth Century is a mine of information and many scholars will consult it in that fashion. The book contains not...