The Arabs

The early history of the Arabs is still obscure. Their origin is unknown, and the best-known sources are the Assyrian records, the classical writers and, for the last three centuries before Islam, Muslim tradition with some pre-Islamic Nabataean and Arabic inscriptions. The Aramaean Bedouins who interfered in the upper Euphrates about 880 BC were forerunners of the Arabs. The Arabs first appear in the light of history in 854 BC, when an Arab commander brought a thousand camel troops from the land of Aribi to join Bir-'idri of Damascus against Shalmaneser III at Karkar. ¹

Between the eighth and the early seventh century BC, Assyrian kings dealt with a series of Arab queens and chiefs. Tiglath-pileser III received tribute from Zabibe, queen of Aribi, and in 732 BC subdued Samsi, whose coalition included Mas'a, Tema, Khayappa, Badana and the Sabaeans. Sennacherib routed the Arab clans of Queen Te'elkhunu in 689 BC, and Assarhaddon recognised Khaza'il as chief of all the Kedar. The Assyrian kings called many chiefs 'kings', but the title meant little more than a local chief or shaykh; a really kingly power came much later. ²

In the Neo-Babylonian and Achaemenid periods Arab camel troops served the Persian king, and some Arabs fought with the kings of Asia Minor. Taymaʾ was occupied by Nabonidus, and Arab warriors helped to take Babylon in 539 BC. The Lihyanites of northern Hijaz, the Minaeans' colonists, and then the Nabataeans, took over the trade routes. Alexander's conquests brought the Arabs into the Greek armies, and at Raphia in 217 BC the majority of Arabs fought for Antiochus III. ³

After Alexander's death the majority of the Arabs joined Antiochus; they are probably the forerunners of the Nabataeans. Arab colonies at the foot of Lebanon and in Syria served the great caravan route from Petra through Damascus to Mesopotamia, and Tigranes settled nomad Arabs along it. Arabs fought with the Romans in the Mithridatic war, and with Cassius and Crassus against the Parthians. Roman and then Byzantine policy won Arabs as allies against their kin and against Persia. The Syrian border was ruled by the Ghassanids as phylarchs, and the Euphrates border in southern Babylonia by the Lakhmids of al-Hira, until 602 AD. ³

By the fourth century Arabs had infiltrated southern Arabia, where Sabaean inscriptions call them A'rab. The Arab kings of northwest Arabia fought the South Arabian kings. In the late fourth and early fifth centuries the family of Dadja'ima, leaders of the Banu Salih, were Byzantine vassals on the Syrian border. About 350 AD the tribe of Kinda left the Yaman for Nejd, and its real kingdom began with Hudir Akil al-Murar, who was linked to the Himyarite power. His son 'Amr al-Maqsur lost his father's claims, and his successor fell with Kulayb Wa'il of Taghlib about 490 AD. With al-Harith ibn 'Amr the Kindite kingdom reached its greatest power; he was known to the Byzantines as Arethas, allied himself with Rome against Persia and the Lakhmids, and about 503 AD he took al-Hira and became master of the Arabs of Iraq for a time. After al-Harith's death about 528 AD his sons divided the kingdom and fought each other, and the family's power collapsed. Hujr's son, the poet Imru' al-Qays, tried in vain to regain power with Byzantine help and died at Ankara before 554 AD. ⁴

The disputes between the nomad tribes are listed under the Ayyam al-'Arab, and an expedition to Khaybar in 567 AD is recorded in the Arabic inscription of Harran dated 568 AD. Individual tribes also had kings, as a Nabataean inscription from about 250 AD shows for the tribe of Tanukh. ⁵

The expansion of the Arabs was a continuous process. It usually meant the emigration of nomadic groups, large or small, sometimes as soldiers in foreign or their own armies, sometimes through trading colonies; its extent depended on particular circumstances and on the recurrent pressure of population in Arabia, which grew as cultivation and the caravan and pilgrim trade declined. It was facilitated by the taming of the camel in the second half of the second millennium BC. The first Arabs to expand northwards reached the north of the Syrian desert by the ninth century BC, and both edges of the Fertile Crescent later, as camel breeders, oasis dwellers and traders. In the first century BC the Scenites crossed the arable land as far as Apamea and Thapsacus. Tanukh and Asad came from eastern Arabia and entered the steppe of the lower Euphrates before Sasanian times; the Nizar followed from central and western Arabia, and were absorbed by the Euphrates frontier, while the Tanukh went to northern Syria and the Asad south of the Hauran. In the sixth century the kings of Kinda pushed the tribes north. ⁶

Expansion in early Islam came first through the enlistment of Arabs in the armies and auxiliaries of the conquests, to Iraq, Syria and al-Jazira, and then through the campaigns that reached Iran, Egypt, North Africa and Spain. Tribes moved from Transjordan to Palestine, parts of Bali and Juhayna from the Hijaz to Egypt, families settled in the garrison towns and al-Jazira, and people of Kufa and Basra resettled in Khurasan. The enrolment of 400 families of Sulaym and other Kaysites as colonists in Lower Egypt, followed by three times their number, ends the first period of expansion. ⁷

Asad and Tayyi' moved north-east into Iraq from the ninth century, and in the tenth century the Asad penetrated the cultivated land of Khuzistan. The Qarmatian campaigns sent Khafaja and Muntafiq (both of 'Uqayl) to the steppe of the lower Euphrates, and tribes from 'Uman filled their places in eastern Arabia. Around 1200 the Ghaziyya (Tayyi') and the Banu Lam appeared on the Transjordanian and Iraqi frontiers, and in the seventeenth century Shammar moved from Jabal to the Iraqi frontier, with 'Anaza, accompanied by the Banu Sakhr, reaching Transjordan and the Syrian desert. The Wahhabi campaigns pushed the Shammar-Jarba over the Euphrates in 1802, and other parts of 'Anaza followed. Since 1911 the progress of agriculture in northern Arabia, and in the last two decades the oil resources, have ended the expansion for the time being. ⁸

Some Arabs were in Iran before Islam, on the coast east of the Euphrates and Tigris mouths. In early Islam Arab settlers increased there: the 'Abd al-Qays came from the coast of Oman to the southern Iranian coast, and Arab settlements stayed along the coast and at places inland, such as Mahan in Bardsir, until at least the Mongols. A second flow came from Mesopotamia in the seventh century. Arab colonies formed at Kashan, Hamadan and Isfahan; Qumm became a mainly Arab and Shi'ite town. Settlements in Azerbaijan were much smaller. The main body of settlers in Khurasan came from Basra; settlement in the late seventh century was by large groups, perhaps 25,000 each from Basra and Kufa in 52/672, and Wellhausen estimates 200,000 Arabs in the early eighth century. They lived in towns and scattered over the countryside, as at Marw, where they took land and adapted to the dihqans' way of life. ⁹

The tribal divisions of Basra were carried into Khurasan: the Rabi'a (Bakr and 'Abd al-Qays), with the Yamani Azd, on one side, and the Tamim and Kays, called Mudar, on the other. Their feuds, which began with the civil war of 683, went on until about 701, and the governor's attitude often decided the outcome. Qutayba ibn Muslim, the conqueror of Transoxania, tried to remain neutral, and his position helped the Arabs settle in Samarqand, Bukhara and Khwarazm. Under Nasr ibn Sayyar Umayyad rule had lost its credit. The 'Abbasid revolution, largely caused by the Arabs' conduct, passed them by; its victory brought new conditions. Many Arabs had had friendly relations with Iranians from the start, shared in festivals such as Nawruz, married Iranian women, and turned to the Islamicised Iranians. From about 720 religious feeling and a pan-Arab unity grew above tribal feuds; Umayyad politics, built on the tribes, were doomed, and the 'Abbasid movement, in which Arabs and Iranians worked together, prevailed. ¹⁰

Arabs who would not assimilate were pushed out of Khurasan in the 'Abbasid campaigns; the others, no longer hostile, lost political weight, and tribal warfare ceased. Assimilation went on until many Arabs merged completely with the Iranians. ¹¹

At the end of 18/639 an Arab army appeared on the Syro-Egyptian frontier, and a treaty of 9 April 641 wrested the country from Byzantine rule; Alexandria held out for a further eighteen months. The Greek papyri of the time show requisitions for billeting and supplying the troops, and an army well equipped with armoured cavalry, infantry and a flotilla for Upper Egypt, with teams of smiths for weapons. 'Amr ibn al-'As relied mainly on a first contingent of Yemenites, nearly all from the 'Akk, and the names of the districts of Fustat show that most groups were Yemenite; contingents of Judham and Lakhm, who had been in the Ghassanid kingdom, joined too. The largest figure for the Arab warriors is 15,000. After the conquest the Arabs stayed in tribal groups, and the military formed a de facto aristocracy forbidden to acquire land. The garrisons were spread between Fustat, Alexandria and the frontiers, and were organised in tribes whose members were divided into sections of seven or ten. In 109/727 an important part of the Kays was settled at Bilbays. The first Coptic revolt, in 107/725, led the Muslim Copts to be seen as second-class Muslims. Arab tribal identity was kept for more than two centuries, and funeral steles at Aswan and Fustat name the tribe after the dead person. In the third/ninth century tribal surnames gave way to geographical ones, and the Arab soldiers, struck off the military rolls, turned to the land, acquired estates and mixed with the autochthonous population. Arabs reappeared in Egyptian history as tribes, mobilised in crises, and from time to time punished by governments. The Banu Hilal and Banu Sulaym passed through Egypt in the fifth/eleventh century before their attack on North Africa. Egypt's Bedouin were estimated at about 50,000 in recent times. ¹²

From 27/647 Arab forces entered North Africa, first as long-distance raids, then with 'Uqba ibn Nafi, who founded al-Qayrawan in 50/670. Reinforcements followed every failure and every Berber revolt. Under the Umayyads the Syrian djunds, and under the 'Abbasids the Khurasani militia, took the place of the Arabian recruits; the groups were distributed among the towns of the conquered land, and their arrogance and indiscipline troubled the governors of Ifriqiya. ¹³

The Hilali movement was a different kind of migration. In the middle of the fifth/eleventh century al-Mu'izz, amir of the Zirids, broke with the Fatimid caliph al-Mustansir, and the caliph, on the advice of al-Yazuri, sent the Arab nomads east of the Nile against him, granting them any towns and lands they could take. The Banu Hilal and the Banu Sulaym, of the Mudar line, had earlier lived in Najd and then in Upper Mesopotamia and the Syrian desert; they had plundered pilgrims, taken part in the Qarmatian revolt, and were moved to Upper Egypt by al-'Aziz in 368/978. Their bands reached al-Qayrawan and brought down the Zirid kingdom; the Riyah occupied the Tunisian plains, and the Hammadid kingdom was pushed back to Bijaya. From the end of the twelfth century the Banu Sulaym, who came from Tripolitania, allied with the Hafsids, and their Ifriqiya became the region where the Arabs were most numerous. The Almohad al-Mansur transferred Arab tribes in 583/1187 to the Atlantic plains of Morocco. The whole economy of the Maghrib was overturned, and Ibn Khaldun regarded the expansion as an irreparable disaster. ¹³