Between Empires: Arabs, Romans, and Sasanians in Late Antiquity by Greg Fisher (review)

Abstract

Reviewed by: Between Empires: Arabs, Romans, and Sasanians in Late Antiquity by Greg Fisher George Bevan Greg Fisher. Between Empires: Arabs, Romans, and Sasanians in Late Antiquity. Oxford Classical Monographs. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011. Pp. xvi + 254. $120.00. ISBN 9780199599271. The present monograph is a revised version of the author’s dissertation at Oxford University, prepared under the primary supervision of Averil Cameron, with evident input from Michael Macdonald and Sir Fergus Millar, among other distinguished scholars of late antique Arabia. Some chapters, as duly noted, have already appeared in part as conference presentat ions or publications. Fisher stakes out as his territory the “Arab” tribes on the interface between the Roman and Sasanian Empires in the fourth through seventh centuries, the most important of which were the Jafnids and Nasrids, formerly known as the Lakhmids and Ghassanids, terms that the author explains are no longer appropriate (3–4); this change in terminology will cause some initial confusion for the unprepared reader. Despite their importance in both peace and war along the frontier, relatively exiguous narrative sources for these groups have come down to us, a scarcity that Fisher confronts head-on in his first chapter. The Islamic sources, a body of evidence central for Irfan Shahid, whose work provides a counterpoint throughout Beyond Empires, is bracketed, and contemporary textual and archaeological sources are prioritized. A bounty of Semitic epigraphy [End Page 124] attests to the scope of their reach, the linguistic and geographic diversity of which present serious interpretive problems for the historian of these Arab groups. The author presents a very useful conspectus of the sources that will undoubtedly help those relatively new to the field get their bearings. Fisher’s second chapter, “Aspects of Arab Christianisation in Late Antiquity,” discusses how the conversion of the Arab groups placed them viz. Sasanian Empire on the East and orthodox Christianity of the Romans to the West. It should be noted that while the author follows the blandishments of Sebastian Brock by carefully using the term Miaphysite to denominate anti-Chalcedonian believers in the “one incarnate nature of Christ,” he does not provide an anodyne alternative for the term Nestorian to designate the Christians of Persia.1 While recognizing the role of Christianity in sedentarization and the formation of new social hierarchies, Fisher essentially dismisses the significance of Miaphysitism. The religious belief of the groups was driven largely, Fisher argues, by political exigencies and not by any real commitment to the underlying details of the Christological controversy. While this may be true—that the leaders converted as a political expediency to facilitate diplomacy with the Christian Roman Empire—the significance of their beliefs should not be downplayed. Did sectarian differences within the empire that led to violence and centuries-long schism cease to have any real meaning on the frontiers? This may be hard to swallow for historians of doctrine. It should be added that Miaphysitism was defined not only by abstruse points of Christology for the elites and clergy, or the slogans like the “one incarnate nature” for common believers, but by a shared history that went back to the episcopacy of Cyril of Alexandria and the contested results of the Council of Chalcedon in 451. It is plausible that the history of Miaphysitism played a vital role in the identity formation of the Arab tribal confederacies; that this was not the orthodoxy of the emperor, and not the church that he cultivated, would only have affirmed their liminal status. The third chapter is trenchantly argued and an important original contribution. With a command of the archaeological and epigraphic evidence, Fisher argues for the progressive sedentarization of the “nomadic” Arabs, as well as their assimilation to the social hierarchies of the Romans. Fisher’s equally nuanced discussion of the terminology used in diplomacy with Nasrids and Jafnids is similarly valuable. Chapter 4 on linguistic diversity among the frontier groups examines principally the role of Arabic as part of the incipient identity among the Jafnids and Nasrids. Here the work of Michael Macdonald (of necessity) bulks large on the question of the Old Arabic. One wishes, however, that the author had further defined his own stance on some...