Cambridge Ancient Hi.. - Index of

syria, palestine and mesopotamia 597
the Lakhmid kings of al-H · īra, who performed a similar role on the desert
frontiers of the Persian empire. For fifty years the Ghassānids more or less
kept the peace on the desert frontier, defeated the Lakhmids of al-H · īra
(notably at Halima near Chalcis in 551), and formed an important contingent
in Byzantine armies fighting the Persians, as at Callinicum in 531. When
al-H · ārith died in 569, he was succeeded by his son al-Mundhir. In 581 the
emperor Tiberius ordered the arrest of the phylarch al-Mundhir b. al-H · ārith
because he feared the Monophysite sympathies of the Ghassānids and their
general unreliability. The Ghassānid system collapsed, and in 583 their supporters
attacked Bostra, the capital of Arabia, and ravaged the surrounding
area. 25 The defences of the desert frontier were left in disarray, and tribes
which had followed them dispersed. The Byzantines still retained allies
among the bedouin, some of whom, like the Judhām of southern Jordan,
fought vigorously against the first Muslim incursions. Members of the
Ghassānid ruling house fought in the armies of the empire at the battle of
the Yarmuk in 636, but there can be no doubt that the disappearance of the
Ghassānid system was one reason why Muslim forces were able to penetrate
Byzantine Syria so effectively from 632 on. 26
While the politics of the area were comparatively placid, the same cannot be
said of the religious history. The area was the birthplace of Christianity, its
bishoprics were amongst the oldest Chritian institutions in the empire, and
its monasteries and ascetics were rivalled only by those in Egypt. By 425 the
majority of the towns were at least nominally Christian, the public performance
of pagan rites had been outlawed and some of the major temples
destroyed. 27 Pagan cults persisted with considerable vigour in some places,
notably at Carrhae (Harran), right through the period. 28 In Edessa, in many
ways the spiritual centre of Syriac Christianity, sacrifices were still being
made to Zeus at the end of the sixth century. The magister militum per Orientem
Illus promised to restore pagan cults during his rebellion against the emperor
Zeno (481–8), and this attracted some support, though it is not clear
how widespread this was. 29 John of Ephesus says that the Christians of
Heliopolis were a small and oppressed minority and that when an imperial
agent came to put an end to the persecution they were suffering, he uncovered
a pagan network in which the vicarius of Edessa and the patriarch of
Antioch, no less, were alleged to have been implicated. 30 In the countryside,
25 John Eph. HE iii.40–5, 56; Sartre (1982) 189–94; Shahı - d (1995) (a different view).
26 For the situation at the time of the Muslim conquests, Kaegi (1992) 52–5; in general, Shahı - d
(1995), with ch. 22c (Conrad), pp. 695,700 below.
27 For the destruction of the temple of Zeus at Apamea (c. 390) and the Marneion at Gaza in 402
see Trombley, Hellenic Religion i.123–9 and i.187–245.
28 For Harran, where the pagan cult is well attested from Islamic times, see Green (1992). For the
cults of Syria in general: Drijvers (1982). 29 Trombley, Hellenic Religion 81–4, 93–4.
30 John Eph. HE iii.27–34; see Bowersock, Hellenism 35–40.
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