In the Arab genealogical tradition which developed during the early Islamic period, the Ghassanids were considered a branch of the Azd tribe of South Arabia/Yemen. In this genealogical scheme, their ancestor was Jafnah, a son of Amr Muzayqiya ibn Amir ibn Haritha ibn Imru’ al Qais ibn Tha’labah ibn Mazin ibn Azd, through whom the Ghassanids were purportedly linked with the Ansar (the Aws and Khazraj tribes of Medina), who were the descendants of Jafna's brother Tha'laba.[7] According to the historian Brian Ulrich, the links between Ghassan, the Ansar, and the wider Azd are historically tenuous, as these groups are almost always counted separately from each other in sources other than post-8th-century genealogical works and the story of the 'Scattering of Azd'.[8] In the latter story, the Azd migrate northward from Yemen and different groups of the tribe split off in different directions, with the Ghassan being one such group.[9]
Settlement in the Roman frontier
Per the "Scattering of Azd" story, the Ghassanids eventually settled within the Roman limes.[3][10] The tradition of Ghassanid migration finds support in the Geography of Ptolemy, which locates a tribe called the Kassanitai south of the Kinaidokolpitai and the river Baitios (probably the wadiBaysh). These are probably the people called Casani in Pliny the Elder, Gasandoi in Diodorus Siculus and Kasandreis in Photios I of Constantinople (relying on older sources).[11][12] The date of the migration to the Levant is unclear, but they are believed to have first arrived in the region of Syria between 250 and 300, with later waves of migration circa 400.[3] Their earliest appearance in records is dated to 473, when their chief, Amorkesos, signed a treaty with the Byzantine Empire acknowledging their status as foederati controlling parts of Palestine. He apparently became a Chalcedonian Christian at this time. By the year 510, the Ghassanids were no longer Miaphysites, but Chalcedonian.[13]
Near East in 565, showing the Ghassanids and their neighbors.
Byzantine period
The "Assanite Saracen" chief Podosaces that fought alongside the Sasanians during Julian's Persian expedition in 363 might have been a Ghassanid.[14]
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.[15][16] 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).[17]
Byzantine–Sasanian Wars
The Ghassanids fought alongside the Byzantine Empire against the Persian Sasanians and Arab Lakhmids.[6] 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.[18] 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 (reigned 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 poetsal-Nabighah and Hassan ibn Thabit at their courts.[3]
Early Islamic period
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.[19] 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.[20]
Umayyad and Abbasid periods
Significant remnants of the Ghassan remained in Syria, residing in Damascus and the city's Ghouta countryside.[21] 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.[21] 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.[22]
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.[23]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.[24]
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).[25] 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.[26]
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.[27]
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.[28] 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.[29] His great-grandsons Abd al-Rabb ibn Muhammad and Amr ibn Abd al-A'la also attained fame as Damascene scholars.[28]
Kings
Medieval Arabic authors used the term Jafnids for the Ghassanids, a term modern scholars prefer at least for the ruling stratum of Ghassanid society.[2] Earlier kings are traditional, actual dates highly uncertain.
The Ghassanids reached their peak under al-Harith V and al-Mundhir III. Both were militarily successful allies of the Byzantines, especially against their enemies the Lakhmids, and secured Byzantium's southern flank and its political and commercial interests in Arabia proper. On the other hand, the Ghassanids remained fervently dedicated to Miaphysitism, which brought about their break with Byzantium and Mundhir's own downfall and exile, which was followed after 586 by the dissolution of the Ghassanid federation.[30] The Ghassanids' patronage of the Miaphysite Syrian Church was crucial for its survival and revival, and even its spread, through missionary activities, south into Arabia. According to the historian Warwick Ball, the Ghassanids' promotion of a simpler and more rigidly monotheistic form of Christianity in a specifically Arab context can be said to have anticipated Islam.[31] Ghassanid rule also brought a period of considerable prosperity for the Arabs on the eastern fringes of Syria, as evidenced by a spread of urbanization and the sponsorship of several churches, monasteries and other buildings. The surviving descriptions of the Ghassanid courts impart an image of luxury and an active cultural life, with patronage of the arts, music and especially Arab-language poetry. In the words of Ball, "the Ghassanid courts were the most important centres for Arabic poetry before the rise of the Caliphal courts under Islam", and their court culture, including their penchant for desert palaces like Qasr ibn Wardan, provided the model for the Umayyad caliphs and their court.[32]
After the fall of the first kingdom in the 7th century, several dynasties, both Christian and Muslim, ruled claiming to be a continuation of the House of Ghassan.[33] Besides the claim of the Phocid or Nikephorian Dynasty of the Byzantine Empire being related. The Rasulid Sultans ruled from the 13th until the 15th century in Yemen,[34] while the Burji Mamluk Sultans did likewise in Egypt from the 14th to the 16th centuries.[35]
The last rulers to claim the titles of Royal Ghassanid successors were the Christian Sheikhs Al-Chemor in Mount Lebanon ruling the small sovereign principality of Akoura (from 1211 until 1641) and Zgharta-Zwaiya (from 1643 until 1747)[36] from Lebanon.[37][38][39]
↑ Arabic: الغساسنة, romanized:al-Ġasāsina, also Banu Ghassān (بنوغسان, romanized as:Banū Ġasān; Latin: Ghassanidae; Ancient Greek: Γασσανίδες, Gassanídes
↑ Maalouf, Tony (2005). Arabs in the Shadow of Israel: The Unfolding of God's Prophetic Plan for Ishmael's Line. Kregel Academic. p.23. ISBN9780825493638.
Athamina, Khalil (1994). "The Appointment and Dismissal of Khālid b. al-Walīd from the Supreme Command: A Study of the Political Strategy of the Early Muslim Caliphs in Syria". Arabica. 41 (2): 253–272. doi:10.1163/157005894X00191. JSTOR4057449.
Madelung, Wilferd (2000). "Abūʾl-Amayṭar al-Sufyānī". Jerusalem Studies in Arabic and Islam. 24: 327–341.
Millar, Fergus: "Rome's 'Arab' Allies in Late Antiquity". In: Henning Börm - Josef Wiesehöfer (eds.), Commutatio et Contentio. Studies in the Late Roman, Sasanian, and Early Islamic Near East. Wellem Verlag, Düsseldorf 2010, pp.159–186.
Mu'awiya I was the founder and first caliph of the Umayyad Caliphate, ruling from 661 until his death. He became caliph less than thirty years after the death of the Islamic prophet Muhammad and immediately after the four Rashidun ('rightly-guided') caliphs. Unlike his predecessors, who had been close, early companions of Muhammad, Mu'awiya was a relatively late follower of Muhammad.
The Banu Lakhm was an Arab tribe best known for its ruling Nasrid, or more commonly, 'Lakhmid', house, which ruled as the Sasanian Empire's vassal kings in the buffer zone with the nomadic Arab tribes of northern and eastern Arabia in the 4th—6th centuries CE from their seat in al-Hirah in modern Iraq. After their first ruler Amr ibn Adi ibn Nasr, nothing was mentioned of the Lakhmid kings in Iraq until the late 5th century when they emerged as commanders of Sasanian campaigns against nomadic Arab tribes and later the Arab allies of the Byzantine Empire. Their origin is thought to be Yemenite.
Al-Ḥārith ibn Jabalah, was a king of the Ghassanids, a pre-Islamic Arab Christian tribe who lived on the eastern frontier of the Byzantine Empire. The fifth Ghassanid ruler of that name, he reigned from c. 528 to 569, the longest of any Christian Arab ruler and played a major role in the Roman–Persian Wars and the affairs of the Syriac Orthodox Church. For his services to Byzantium, he was made patrikios and vir gloriosissimus.
Harith ibn Abi Shamir or Arethas is the name of an Arab Christian who reportedly governed Syria in the 7th century CE, according to Arabic narratives. Islamic traditions also relate that the Muslim prophet Muhammad sent a letter to Harith around 629 CE to invite him to Islam; which Harith reportedly rejected out of anger.
The Banu Kalb was an Arab tribe which mainly dwelt in the desert and steppe of northwestern Arabia and central Syria. It was involved in the tribal politics of the Byzantine Empire's eastern frontiers, possibly as early as the 4th century. By the 6th century, the Kalb had largely adopted Christianity and came under the authority of the Ghassanids, leaders of the Byzantines' Arab allies. During the lifetime of the Islamic prophet Muhammad, a few of his close companions were Kalbites, most prominently Zayd ibn Haritha and Dihya, but the bulk of the tribe remained Christian at the time of Muhammad's death in 632. They began converting in large numbers when the Muslims made significant progress in the conquest of Byzantine Syria, in which the Kalb stayed neutral. As a massive nomadic tribe with considerable military experience, the Kalb was sought as a key ally by the Muslim state. The leading clans of the Kalb forged marital ties with the Umayyad family, and the tribe became the military foundation of the Syria-based Umayyad Caliphate (661–750) from the reign of Mu'awiya I to the early reign of Abd al-Malik.
The Kingdom of Kinda also called the Kindite kingdom, refers to the rule of the nomadic Arab tribes of the Ma'add confederation in north and central Arabia by the Banu Akil al-Murar, a family of the South Arabian tribe of Kinda, in c. 450 – c. 550 CE. The Kinda did not belong to the Ma'add and their rule over them was likely at the confederation's initiative and engineered by the Kinda's South Arabian patron, the Himyarite Kingdom. The tribes may have sought a prominent, non-involved leader to bring stability to the Ma'add during a period of constant feuding among its constituents.
The Tayy, , also known as Ṭayyi, Tayyaye, or Taiyaye, are a large and ancient Arab tribe, among whose descendants today are the tribes of Bani Sakher and Shammar. The nisba (patronymic) of Tayy is aṭ-Ṭāʾī (ٱلطَّائِي). In the second century CE, they migrated to the northern Arabian ranges of the Shammar and Salma Mountains, which then collectively became known as the Jabal Tayy, and later Jabal Shammar. The latter continues to be the traditional homeland of the tribe until the present day. They later established relations with the Sasanian and Byzantine empires.
Jabala ibn al-Ayham was the last ruler, or phylarch, of the Ghassanid dynasty in Syria in the 7th century. He commanded Arab Christian tribal contingents on behalf of the Byzantine Empire against Arab Muslim forces during the Muslim conquest of Syria in the 630s.
The Quda'a were a confederation of Arab tribes, including the powerful Kalb and Tanukh, mainly concentrated throughout Syria and northwestern Arabia, from at least the 4th century CE, during Byzantine rule, through the 12th century, during the early Islamic era. Under the first caliphs of the Syria-based Umayyad Caliphate (661–750), the Quda'a occupied a privileged position in the administration and military. During the Second Muslim Civil War (683–692) they allied with South Arabian and other tribes in Syria as the Yaman faction in opposition to their rivals, the Qays confederation, in what became a rivalry for power and influence which continued well after the Umayyad era. In forging this alliance, the Quda'a's leaders genealogically realigned their descent to the South Arabian Himyar, discarding their north Arabian ancestor, Ma'add, a move which elicited centuries-long debate and controversy among early Islamic scholars.
Al-Mundhir ibn al-Ḥārith, known in Byzantine sources as Flavios Alamoundaros, was the king of the Ghassanid Arabs from 569 to circa 581. A son of al-Harith ibn Jabalah, he succeeded his father both in the kingship over his tribe and as the chief of the Byzantine Empire's Arab clients and allies in the East, with the rank of patricius. Despite his victories over the rival Persian-backed Lakhmids, throughout Mundhir's reign his relations with Byzantium were lukewarm due to his staunch Miaphysitism. This led to a complete breakdown of the alliance in 572, after Mundhir discovered Byzantine plans to assassinate him. Relations were restored in 575 and Mundhir secured from the Byzantine emperor both recognition of his royal status and a pledge of tolerance towards the Miaphysite Church.
Jabalah IV ibn al-Ḥārith, known also by the tecnonymic Abū Shammar, known in Byzantine sources as Gabalas, was a ruler of the Ghassanids. At first an enemy of the Eastern Roman Empire, he raided Palestine but was defeated, becoming a Byzantine vassal in 502 until circa 520, and again in 527 until his death a year later.
Dumeir, also Dumair, Damir and Dumayr is a city located 45 kilometers north-east of Damascus, Syria.
Amr III ibn al-Mundhir, more commonly known by the matronymic Amr ibn Hind, was the king of the Lakhmid Arabs in 554–569/570. He was a client of the Sasanian Empire. In around 550 AD he clashed with Aksumite Empire over southern Arabia and was instrumental in the downfall of Aksumite power in southern Arabia. He was famous for his bellicosity and his patronage of poets. He was killed over an insult to Amru ibn kulthum's mother the chief of the taghlib tribe.
Yawm Halima is the name given to a battle fought between the rival Ghassanid and Lakhmid Arabs in the 6th century.
Jabiyah was a town of political and military significance in the 6th–8th centuries. It was located between the Hawran plain and the Golan Heights. It initially served as the capital of the Ghassanids, an Arab vassal kingdom of the Byzantine Empire. Following the Muslim conquest of Syria, it early on became the Muslims' main military camp in the region and, for a time, the capital of Jund Dimashq. Caliph Umar convened a meeting of senior Muslim figures at the city where the organization of Syria and military pay were decided. Later, in 684, Jabiyah was the site of a summit of Arab tribes that chose Marwan I to succeed Caliph Mu'awiya II. Jabiyah was often used by the Umayyad caliphs as a retreat. Its significance declined when Caliph Sulayman made Dabiq the Muslims' main military camp in Syria.
Banū al-Qayn were an Arab tribe that was active between the early Roman era in the Near East through the early Islamic era, as far as the historical record is concerned.
The Salīḥids, also known simply as Salīḥ or by their royal house, the Zokomids were the dominant Arab foederati of the Byzantine Empire in the 5th century. They succeeded the Tanukhids, who were dominant in the 4th century, and were in turn defeated and replaced by the Ghassanids in the early 6th century.
Yahya ibn Yahya ibn Qays al-Ghassani was the Umayyad governor of Mosul during the reign of Caliph Umar II, a transmitter of hadiths in Damascus, where he spent the majority of his life. He was a member of an elite family of the Ghassanids in Damascus and his descendants were also hadith transmitters in Damascus as late as the 9th century.
The Kinda, or Kindah, were an Arab tribe from South Arabia. Originating in the region to the west of Hadramawt, the Kinda tribe is known to have served the Sabaean Kingdom as Bedouin auxiliaries as early as the 3rd century, later allying themselves with the Himyarite Kingdom under the Jewish king Dhu Nuwas.
Jafnah ibn 'Amr or Jafna was the first of the Ghassanid rulers. He was succeeded by his son Amr ibn Jafnah who converted to Christianity.
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