Byzantium and the Arabs in the Sixth Century, Volume II, Part 1: Toponymy, Monuments, Historical Geography and Frontier Studies (review)

Byzantium and the Arabs in the Sixth Century, Volume II, Part 1: Toponymy, Monuments, Historical Geography and Frontier Studies. By Irfan Shahîd. (Washington, D.C.: Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection. 2002. Pp. xxxvi, 448; 6 plates. $50.00.)

The epic continues. After BASIC I parts 1 and 2, in which we were given a narrative of the political, military, and Christian ecclesiastical history of the Ghassbnids, Byzantium's principal Arab allies against Persia, we come to the second volume, which deals with cultural history and the Ghassbnids' role as limitanei. Once again the very few items of evidence we have, of whatever kind, are squeezed to yield the last possible drop of extrapolation that can be got out of them. (Mark Whittow, "Rome and the Jafnids: Writing the History of a 6th-c. Tribal Dynasty," in The Roman and Byzantine Near East, ed. J. Humphreys,JRA Suppl. 31 [Oxford, 1999], 207-224, is, though outspoken, a salutary counterbalance.) Now Professor Shahîd presses into service archaeological remains (including churches and papyri) and Arabic texts, pre- and post-Islamic. On these small remnants, contemporary and later, he builds his imposing superstructure of narrative, doubling back and repeating earlier points, always with his aim in view. That aim is to convince the reader that the Christian Arabs were Byzantium's last best defensive hope, and that the Chalcedonian emperor Maurice's wrong-headed dismantling of the Monophysite Ghassbnids' federate "shield" helped bring about the disaster of the seventh century.

Sections I and II insist strongly and repeatedly that the Ghassbnids were sedentary, not nomadic; water-engineers and structure-builders, not pastoralists. (The bibliography does not include Warwick Ball, Rome in the East [London and New York, 2000], esp. pp. 101-105: a work nearly as Eastern in its emphasis as Shahîd's own.) Could sixth-century Semitic peoples have been both? In any case, the stress on their settled, civilized nature leads into Sections III and IV, a survey of the important places of "Ghassbnland" and a listing of the churches and monasteries associated with them (the fifteen maps are helpful). The latter is a poignant echo of a world that has hardly survived.

Section V brings to the eyes of Western readers what may be unfamiliar material (see also Robert Hoyland, Arabia and the Arabs [London and New York, 2001], pp. 117, 241, and elsewhere): recuperable evidence from eight Arabic-language poets, Christians of the sixth century (two of whom adopted Islam later). While Cheikho's old-time vision of a nest of Christian Arabic poetic singers at Christian courts has not stood up to critical scrutiny, still it is moving to encounter the pilgrimage to St. Sergius' shrine at Rusbfa or girls preparing garlands for Easter. Also mined are later Arabic prose writers, such as the tenth-century Hamza al-Isfahbnj and his Tarjkh. Though Shahîd occasionally mentions the problematic textual state of these works, this is an aspect of the source material the present reviewer wishes had been made plainer for non-Arabic-philologist readers.

Finally, the Epilogues and Appendix on the Ghassbnid-Umayyad continuity point the way to promising further research, such as that pursued by settlement-studies scholars (e.g., B. Geyer, "Des fermes byzantins aux palais omayyades," in Aux origines de l'archéologie aérienne: A. Poidebard [Beirut, 2000], pp. 109-122). When the study of Rina Talgam, "The Stylistic Origins of Umayyad Sculpture as shown in Khirbat al Mafjar, Mshatta, and Qasr al-Hayr West," is published, we will be able to see more of this tangible legacy.

This epic lifework has been written to raise consciousness, both inside and outside the scholarly community: to make people aware that not all Arabs are Muslims; some Arabs are Christians...