Al-Jazira (caliphal province)

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Al-Jazira
Province of the
Fatimids
and others new dynasties 		970s

Al-Jazira (

Abbasids
in 750.

Geography

The Jazira proper spanned the northern part of the area between the

Tharthar river emanates from Jabal Sinjar in the east and flows out into the Syrian Desert where it ends.[1]

To the west of the Jazira was the province of

Takrit in northeast.[1]

Tribal and ethnic composition

Before the

Rabi'a confederation and the Iyad tribe, all components of the Nizar group, whose members served as auxiliaries of the Sasanian Empire.[2] According to accounts in the history of al-Tabari (d. 923), the Christian Iyad tribe fled north into Byzantine Anatolia during the Muslim conquest, but Caliph Umar (r. 634–644) compelled the Byzantines to expel most of them back to the Jazira. The Taghlib had stayed on and largely retained their Christian faith as other tribesmen embraced Islam.[3] The Taghlib formed a large part of the old-established Rabi'a tribes in the Jazira, but other Rabi'a tribes there, namely those of the Banu Bakr confederation, also retained their Christianity in the first few years following the conquest.[4]

The Byzantine–Sasanian wars of the early 7th century, followed by the Muslim conquests, had left an abundance of abandoned cultivable lands in the Jazira.[5] These lands were occupied by the nomadic components of the Muslim armies, mainly from the Qays tribes, over whom the commanders appointed by Medina had little to no control, and who paid the minimal tithes to the caliphs.[6] According to the historian Muhammad Abdulhayy Shaban, "these few thousand men treated a whole province as their private property and as such established their rule there".[5] The Muslim tribesmen played a key military role in defending the eastern flank of Syria from Byzantine incursions, and benefited from the lucrative raids into Armenia.[7] The conquering tribes of the Muslim armies attempted to limit further tribal immigration to the Jazira, but the vast area and wealth of the province, and the pressures of immigration from Arabia into the conquered Fertile Crescent necessitated the opening of the Jazira to newer arrivals.[8]

Caliph

First Muslim Civil War (656–661), further immigration to the Jazira took place; the new arrivals were tribesmen who had settled in the Muslim garrison cities of Kufa and Basra in Iraq in earlier decades but opposed Ali's rule and abandoned settled life for nomadism in the Jazira.[6][a]

Besides Arabs the Jazira contained a significant Aramean component, particularly in the Tur Abdin area. The area of Mosul was also home to Kurds, while north of the upper Tigris were communities of Armenians.[1]

Administrative divisions

The Jazira was divided into three districts, with the

Monophysite Christianity. The larger Diyar Rabi'a, on the other hand, had less well-defined boundaries, and had been the principal zone of conflict between the Byzantine and Sasanian empires in the pre-Islamic period.[14] In the sources, the city of Mosul was at times considered part of Diyar Rabi'a—including as its capital—but for most of the Umayyad period, it was its own province.[14]

History

Early administration

The Jazira was conquered by the Muslims during the caliphate of Umar, in 638/639 or 639/40.

Samosata, and Muslim garrisons were installed in the last two cities.[16]

Following the conquest, the Jazira likely formed a single administrative unit with

Mu'awiya ibn Abi Sufyan's jurisdiction; Mu'awiya was already governor of Jund Dimashq (military district of Damascus) and Jund al-Urdunn (military district of the Jordan) at the time.[21]

Mu'awiya established the Umayyad Caliphate in 661 and ruled as caliph until his death in 680, after which he was succeeded by his son Yazid I (r. 680–683). During Mu'awiya's or Yazid's reign, the Qinnasrin and the Jazira were separated from Jund Hims and became the Jund Qinnasrin district.[6][22] The separation may have been a response to the influx of Arab immigrant tribesmen during Mu'awiya's governorship and caliphate.[6] The Jazira's association with the Syrian districts was a continuation of Roman and Byzantine-era arrangements, where the two regions formed the Diocese of the East.[23] Nonetheless, the composition of the Arab tribes in the Jazira in the post-conquest period, characterized by the predominance of the Mudar group (e.g. Qays, Asad, Tamim), made it "a somewhat separate entity", according to the historian Khalid Yahya Blankinship.[23] Although the original Qaysi conquerors tolerated the flow of immigrants during Mu'awiya's lifetime, they resented that their territory was singled out for the resettlement of outside tribesmen, rather than Syria proper where the tribes who later constituted the Yaman faction and were closely allied to the Umayyads held sway.[24]

Independent province and super-province

During the

Qarqisiya (Circesium), located near the confluence of the Euphrates and Khabur rivers.[26] Between about 686 and 689 Zufar and his Qaysi ally Umayr ibn al-Hubab al-Sulami engaged the Kalb in the Palmyrene steppe and the Taghlib and its Rabi'a allies throughout the Jazira in a series of raids and counter-raids, known in the Arabic sources as the ayyam ([battle]-days).[27] The Taghlib, whose conflict with the Qays stemmed from the latter's encroachments on their grazing pastures and water sources,[28][29][30] were generally bested during these battles, but killed Umayr in 689, while the Kalb were driven out of the Palmyrene steppe where the Qays became the dominant power.[31]

Muhammad ibn Marwan, the son of Caliph Marwan I (r. 684–685), founder of the Marwanid ruling house of the Umayyad dynasty, was appointed by his father to the military command of the Jazira to keep the Qaysi rebels in check.[32] After a number of Umayyad sieges against Qarqisiya, Zufar surrendered to Caliph Abd al-Malik (r. 685–705) in 691, abandoning Ibn al-Zubayr's cause and obtaining military and courtly privileges for himself and his sons.[33] The civil war ended with Ibn al-Zubayr's slaying in 692, but raids and counter-raids between the Qays, mainly represented by the Banu Sulaym tribe, and the Taghlib continued from that year until coming to an end in 694 after Abd al-Malik's interventions.[34] Abd al-Malik separated the Jazira from Jund Qinnasrin in 692, possibly making it into a jund (military district). According to Blankinship, this change of status may have been related to the settlement reached with Zufar and the Qays in 691.[23] According to the historian Hugh N. Kennedy, it was done at the request of Muhammad ibn Marwan, Abd al-Malik's brother, and thenceforth the tribal troops of the province "lived off its revenues".[22]

Mosul became a dependency of the Jazira in 721–725, a period in which the Jaziran troops had attained prominence among the Umayyad armies for their suppression of the major rebellion of

Khazars in the two frontier regions prompted Hisham to reassign control of them to the Syrians in 727, but the destruction of this Syrian army by the Khazars at Ardabil in 730, paved the way for the restoration of Jaziran dominance from that point onward.[36]

The Jaziran super-province became a power base of Muhammad ibn Marwan's son, the future Umayyad caliph Marwan II, in 732.[36] Following the death of Caliph Yazid III in 744 Marwan attempted to build a new center of power in Harran with his Jaziran army against the established Syrian army. With his mainly Jaziran troops he defeated Sulayman ibn Hisham, the son of Caliph Hisham, near Damascus and became caliph. Under Marwan II the Jazirans were in the ascendant over the Syrians, hitherto the principal military element of the Umayyad Caliphate.[37]

Although the Jazirans were largely able to suppress the renewed dissensions against the Umayyads in Iraq, the main challenge to the dynasty emanated from the far eastern frontier province of Khurasan. In the words of Kennedy, there ensued what "can be seen as the struggle of one frontier army, Marwān's men from the Jazīra and the Caucasus [Adharbayjan and Arminiya], against another, the pro-Abbasid troops from Khurāsān. The Syrians and Iraqis, whose rivalries had dominated so much of early Islamic history, were little more than spectators."[38] The Abbasids and their troops from Khurasan captured Kufa in 749 and proceeded to assault the Jazira in 750, where they inflicted a decisive defeat against Marwan's troops, gathered from the Jazira and Syria, at the Battle of the Zab.[39]

Notes

  1. First Muslim Civil War were the following tribal nobles: Zufar ibn al-Harith al-Kilabi and the family of Rabi'a ibn Asim al-Uqayli, both chiefs of the Banu Amir in Basra, moved to the Jazira after the Battle of the Camel in 656.[10] Hatim ibn al-Nu'man and his family, the Banu Hatim, of the Bahila were expelled from Basra by Caliph Ali.[11] Adi ibn Amira al-Kindi and most of his small Kindite clan of Banu Arqam, migrated from Kufa at the start of the civil war, established themselves in Edessa and later may have become associated with the Qays unlike the bulk of the Kindites, who were associated with the rival Yaman faction.[12]

References

  1. ^ a b c Canard 1965, p. 523.
  2. ^ Donner 1981, p. 170.
  3. ^ a b Juynboll 1989, pp. 88–91.
  4. ^ Blankinship 1994, p. 56.
  5. ^ a b Shaban 1971, p. 82.
  6. ^ a b c d e f Hinds 1993, p. 264.
  7. ^ Shaban 1971, pp. 82–83.
  8. ^ a b c Shaban 1971, p. 83.
  9. ^ Donner 1981, p. 248.
  10. ^ Crone 1980, pp. 106, 108.
  11. ^ Crone 1980, pp. 104–105.
  12. ^ Crone 1980, p. 104.
  13. ^ Blankinship 1994, pp. 51–52.
  14. ^ a b c Blankinship 1994, p. 52.
  15. ^ a b Juynboll 1989, pp. 86–87.
  16. ^ Petersen 2013, pp. 434–435.
  17. ^ Madelung 1997, pp. 60–61.
  18. ^ Donner 1981, p. 252.
  19. ^ a b Humphreys 1990, p. 72.
  20. ^ Ritter 2013, p. 805.
  21. ^ Humphreys 1990, p. 73.
  22. ^ a b Kennedy 2001, p. 31.
  23. ^ a b c Blankinship 1994, p. 51.
  24. ^ Shaban 1971, pp. 83–84.
  25. ^ Shaban 1971, p. 92.
  26. ^ Kennedy 2004, p. 91.
  27. ^ Dixon 1969, pp. 167, 172.
  28. ^ Kennedy 2001, p. 33.
  29. ^ Dixon 1969, p. 172.
  30. ^ Shaban 1971, p. 106.
  31. ^ Dixon 1969, pp. 173, 183–184, 187–189, 191.
  32. ^ Kennedy 2004, p. 92.
  33. ^ Dixon 1969, pp. 173–177.
  34. ^ Dixon 1969, pp. 189–192.
  35. ^ Blankinship 1994, pp. 52–53.
  36. ^ a b Blankinship 1994, p. 53.
  37. ^ Blankinship 1994, p. 49.
  38. ^ Kennedy 2001, p. 50.
  39. ^ Kennedy 2001, pp. 50–51.

Bibliography

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