Beate Dignas & Engelbert Winter - Kaveh Farrokh

c h a p t e r 5
Arabia between the great powers
After the foundation of the Sasanian Empire in the year 224 the two powers
had to deal with and administer an Arab world that was divided into
three different groups. The first group was the Arab population in the
Sasanian Empire, who had already lived in the Parthian kingdom during the
Arsacid period and who now inevitably formed part of the Sasanian Empire.
They settled in the eastern coastal area of the Persian Gulf, in northern
Mesopotamia, where the desert fortress Hatra was the most important
centre (map 1) and in southern Mesopotamia, where Hīra, which was
located c. 100 miles to the west of the Sasanian capital Ktēsiphōn on the
edge of the Arabian desert, had become a new centre (map 2). 1 The second
group comprised the Arab population in the Roman Empire, and the third
group was formed by the Arabs who lived beyond the Sasanian and Roman
territories on the Arabian Peninsula.
The following events and developments illustrate an ‘Arabia policy’ of
the great powers that remained an important component of the foreign
relations between Rome and the Sasanian Empire into the seventh century
and that both powers designed in a similar way: the inhabitants of Hatra
joining the Rome side after 224, the ambitious political activities of the
trade metropolis in the Syrian desert, Palmyra, and finally the creation of
a system of Arab vassal states. 2
22: Hatra
During the course of the Roman imperial period one caravan route, which
took travellers through the steppes of central Mesopotamia to the north
1 During the Muslim period a distinction was made between al-Irāq (The South of Mesopotamia)
and al- ˘ Gazīra (The North of Mesopotamia).
2 Funke 1996: 217–38 (esp. 225–35) discusses the role of individual Arab dynasts and dynasties in the
political considerations of the rivalling powers and the systematic creation of vassal states; see also
Parker 1986b; Shahîd 1984a, 1984b and 1995a.
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