The Ghassanids and the Lakhmids

The Ghassanids and the Lakhmids. The Ghassanids and Lakhmids were two Arab kingdoms that dominated the frontiers of the 6th-century Near East: the Ghassanids as clients (foederati) of Byzantium on the Syrian steppe, the Lakhmids as clients of Sasanian Persia at al-Hira on the desert edge of Iraq. Both were Arab tribal dynasties - the Ghassanids tracing their origin to emigrants from Yemen, the Lakhmids to the Tanukh - and their rivalry, fought out in proxy wars and poetry, was the Arabian theater of the great Roman-Persian duel.

The Ghassanids guarded Byzantium's desert frontier against raiders and against the Lakhmids, supplied elite cavalry to imperial armies, and were rewarded with royal titles; their greatest king, al-Harith ibn Jabalah (Arethas), was honored by Justinian himself and defeated the Lakhmids at the battle of Qinnasrin (554). Deeply loyal to Miaphysite Christianity, the Ghassanid court sheltered its theologians and monks, and their palaces, churches and camps - from Jabiya in the Golan to Sergiopolis (Resafa) - dotted the Syrian steppe.

The Lakhmids ruled at al-Hira for some three centuries as the shield of the Sasanian kings, keeping the desert Arabs in check and raiding Byzantine Syria. Their capital became the cultural capital of pre-Islamic Arabia: Arab poets sang at its court, Christian monks and bishops flourished under its protection, and it was there that Arabic, still largely a spoken language, began to be written down. In 602 Khosrow II treacherously deposed and killed the last Lakhmid king, al-Nu'man III, abolishing the dynasty - and the border Arabs, answering with their victory over the Persians at Dhi Qar, showed what the Persians had lost.

Both kingdoms crumbled before the Muslim conquests of the 630s: the Ghassanids fought for Byzantium at the Yarmuk (636) and faded into the new order, while Hira surrendered and its people joined the conquerors. Together they had carried Arab tribal society, language and poetry to the edge of statehood - the immediate prelude to the rise of Islam.

To read more about this topic:

Britannica: Ghassanid dynasty Britannica: Lakhmid dynasty Encyclopaedia Iranica: LAKHMIDS