Extant references to ‘Arabs’ begin in the ninth century bc,10 and in ensuing
centuries attest their presence in Arabia, Syria and Iraq, and their interaction
with the peoples of adjacent lands. This interaction was encouraged in
part by the Roman and Persian policy of using Arab groupings to protect
their desert flanks and to perform military functions as confederates and
auxiliaries. In Syria, an Arab presence was prominent all along the fringe
between the desert and the sown,11 and inscriptions and literary sources
confirm that many Arabs took up settled life in rural villages.12 The hinterlands
of inland Syrian cities were partly populated by Arabs, and major
cities such as Damascus and Aleppo had significant Arab populations. In
such situations Arabs certainly knew Greek or Syriac – possibly both – and
perhaps as their first languages.13 Arabs were also to be found throughout
the pastoral steppe lands of northern Mesopotamia, where monks in the
Jacobite and Nestorian monasteries occasionally mention them.14 In Iraq
there were large groupings of Arabs; settled Arabs lived as both peasants
and townsmen along the western fringes, and al-Hira, the focus of Arab
sedentary life in the area, was deemed an Arab town (see map 9). Most
were converts to Christianity, many spoke Aramaic and Persian, and they
were largely assimilated into Sasanian culture.15
The sources referring to the Arabs describe them in various ways. In
Greek and Syriac they were most usually called Sarak¯enoi and t.ayy¯ay¯e, terms
which refer to their tribal origin or to their character as travellers to the
inner desert.16 In Arabic, interestingly enough, the terms ‘arab and its plural
a‘r¯ab are generally used to refer to tribal nomads. Although the settled folk
of Arabia shared much in common with the nomads, they nevertheless
drew a sharp distinction between themselves and the bedouins; and rightly
so, for a tribesman is not necessarily a nomad. It is true that by the sixth
century the Arabic language had spread through most of Arabia – if not so
much in the south – and engendered a common oral culture based largely
on poetry of often exceptional quality.17 But in none of this should one see
evidence of a supposed archetype for Arab unity in any ethnic, geographical
or political sense.
The basis for Arab social organisation was the tribe.18 Genealogical studies
in early Islamic times were already elaborating the lineages and interrelationships
of the tribes in great detail. The Arabs comprised two great
groupings, northern and southern; the formerwere traced to an eponymous
founder named ‘Adnan and the latter to a similar figure called Qahtan, and
both were further divided into smaller sections and sub-groupings. Ancient
Arab history is routinely presented in the sources as determined by these
tribal considerations,19 but modern anthropology has cast doubt on this
and has raised the question of whether such a thing as a ‘tribe’ even exists.
While the term is problematic, it seems excessive to resolve a conceptual
difficulty by denying the existence of its object.20 The notion of the tribe,
however ambiguous, has always been important in traditional Arab society;
in pre-Islamic Arabia there can be no doubt that kinship determined social
organisation.21 The problem can perhaps best be formulated as revolving
around the questions of how far back this was meaningfully traced, and
how stable perceptions of kinship were.
Individuals were very often aware of their primordial tribal affiliations,
and took pride in the achievements, glories and victories of their ancestors.
Similarly, personal enemies often vilified the individual by calling into
question his tribe as a whole. In practice, however, the vast tribal coalitions
rarely acted as a unified whole, and the socially meaningful unit was the
small tenting or village group tracing its origins back four or five generations
at most. The perception of common descent was not unimportant to the
cohesion of such groups, but even more vital were considerations of common
interest. In order to maintain itself, the group had to be able to defend
its pasturing grounds, water supplies and other resources from intruders,
and its members from injury or harm from outsiders. Dramatic changes
in kinship affiliations could occur when, for example, the requirements
of contemporary alliances or client relationships dictated a reformulation
of historical genealogical affinities.22 Such shifts could even occur at the
level of the great tribal confederations,23 and were facilitated by the fact
that no loss of personal or legal autonomy was involved – a ‘client’ tribe
was not in the state of subservience implied by the western sense of the
term.24
Through most of Arabia, the welfare of the individual was secured by
customary law and the ability of his kin or patron to protect him. If a
member of a group were molested or killed, this dishonoured the group as
a whole and required either retaliation or compensation. Individuals thus
adhered to at least the minimum standards required to remain a member of
their group, since an outcast could be killed with impunity.25 This system
provided security and guaranteed the status of tradition and custom.26
Violence in the form of warfare, feuding and raiding did occur, but the last
of these has given rise to much confusion, and its scope and scale have often
been exaggerated:27 there was no glory in raiding a weak tribe or ravaging
a defenceless village, and fatalities on either side posed the immediate risk
of a blood feud. Prowess in battle was without doubt a highly esteemed
virtue, and Arabian society was imbued with a martial spirit that elevated
the raid (ghazw) to the level of an institution.28 Still, this usually involved
one powerful tribe raiding another for their animals,29 and the violence
involved was limited by considerations of honour, by the ordinarily small
size of raiding parties, and – where weaker groups were concerned – by
networks of formal arrangements for protection.
Headship of a tribal unit was vested in a sheikh (‘chief’ or ‘elder’, although
other terms were also used), but the powers of this office were seriously limited,
and the sheikh remained in power as long as the tribe felt this was to
their benefit. He was expected to lead the tribe, protect its prerogatives and
interests, mediate among its members and with other tribes, and serve as an
exponent of muruwwa, an ethic of masculine virtue bound up in such traits
as courage, strength, wisdom, generosity and leadership.30 While the chief
had no power to enforce his decisions, it was not in the group’s interest to
maintain a leader in power and yet regularly defy his decisions. The sheikh
led by example and by exercise of a quality of shrewd opportunistic forbearance
(h.
ilm): he was a mouthpiece of group consensus whose reputation
required assent to his judgement.31
The exception to all this was the south, where plentiful rainfall, carried
by monsoon winds, allowed for levels of agriculture, population and
sedentary development not possible elsewhere. The numerous small towns
of the region thrived on the spice trade and enjoyed the stability of a highly
developed agrarian economy with extensive terrace farming and irrigation.
The towns were closely spaced settlements of tall tower-dwellings, often
with a distinct ‘centre’, and their organisation tended to promote commercial
and professional bonds at the expense of large-scale kinship ties. Out
of this stability there arose a number of coherent regimes with identifiable
political centres:Ma‘in, Saba’,Qataban andHadramawt, based respectively
at Qarnaw, Ma’rib, Tamna‘ and Shabwa. The most dynamic of these was
Saba’, which by the third and fourth centuries had managed to annex the
territories of all the others.
The early south Arabian entities were ruled by figures called ‘federators’
(mukarribs). It has long been held that this office was hereditary and
had a distinctly religious function, but this now seems unlikely.32 Not
unexpectedly, social differentiation reached levels unknown in lands to the
north. The sedentary tribes were led by powerful chieftains known as qayls,
and at the other end of the spectrum both serfdom and slavery were wellestablished
institutions.Nomads were held in check by granting them lands
in exchange for military services, thus rendering them dependent upon the
regime.