Table Of ContentARABS IN THE
EARLY ISLAMIC
EMPIRE
Exploring al-Azd Tribal Identity
BRIAN ULRICH
ARABS IN THE EARLY ISLAMIC EMPIRE
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London (Chair)
Professor Tim Barrett, SOAS, University of London
Dr Evrim Binbas¸, The Institute of Oriental and Asian Studies, University
of Bonn
Dr Barbara M. C. Brend
Professor Anna Contadini, SOAS, University of London
Professor Michael Feener, University of Oxford
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Dr Rosie Llewellyn Jones, MBE
Professor David Morgan, University of Wisconsin- Madison
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Dr Alison Ohta, Director, Royal Asiatic Society
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ARABS IN THE EARLY
ISLAMIC EMPIRE
EXPLORING AL-AZD TRIBAL IDENTITY
2
Brian Ulrich
For my grandparents
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Contents
Acknowledgements vi
Notes on the Text viii
Introduction 1
1 The Azd in Pre- and Early Islamic Arabia 24
2 The Azd and the Early Islamic State 68
3 The Muhallabids: War, Politics and Memory 116
4 Eastern Conquests and Factionalism 169
5 The Azd of Mosul 194
Conclusion 215
Bibliography 219
Index 240
Arabs in the Early Islamic Empire
Acknowledgements
This book began as my doctoral dissertation at the University of Wisconsin.
For ably guiding my studies while allowing me the freedom to explore a
multitude of different issues, I thank my advisor, Michael Chamberlain.
David Morgan also played a crucial role during my graduate studies, so
much so that I think of him as a co-advisor. The other members of my
dissertation committee, André Wink, Thomas Spear and Samer Alatout,
also provided useful feedback and welcome support at different stages of
the process.
As a graduate student, my work was supported by various grants of
the University of Wisconsin History Department, as well as a Lemoine-
Midelfort Fellowship from the University of Wisconsin Medieval Studies
Program. The George L. Mosse Program in History allowed me to spend
two academic years at Hebrew University in Jerusalem, where I benefited
particularly from Michael Lecker’s generosity with his time, knowledge
and materials. A general research grant from the Gerda Henkel Stiftung
allowed me to significantly revise the project during the summer and
fall of 2014. For calling my attention to this funding source, I thank
my Shippensburg University colleague Mark Spicka. Further revisions
enabled by a Fall 2017 sabbatical moved the manuscript to almost its
final form. I thank Shippensburg’s Sabbatical Leave Committee for their
support.
Antoine Borrut, Jens Scheiner, and Jérémie Schiettecatte each read por-
tions of the manuscript and offered valuable feedback. Peter Webb gener-
ously allowed me to cite his forthcoming work. The anonymous reviewers
selected by the Royal Asiatic Society monograph series and Edinburgh
University Press both made many valuable suggestions and succeeded in
performing the peer reviewers’ legerdemain of making me appear smarter
than I actually am. I also thank Alison Ohta of the Royal Asiatic Society
and their monograph board for their support. At Edinburgh University
Press, Nicola Ramsey and Kirsty Woods provided useful assistance during
the commissioning and manuscript preparation processes, while Rebecca
vi
Acknowledgements
Mackenzie, Eddie Clark, Sarah Foyle and Emma Rees ably handled other
pre-publication matters. Helen Johnston of Saying and Beyond was a
capable copy editor.
At all stages of the project I have benefited from conversations with and
favours from others, and so would like to thank Ovamir Anjum, Giovanna
Benadusi, Michael Bonner, Lawrence Conrad, Michael Decker, Fred
Donner, Aisha al-Harthi, Hugh Kennedy, Derek Kennet, Robert LaFleur,
Ella Landau-Tasseron, Sterenn Le Maguer-Gillon, Walter Müller, Hassan
al-Naboodah, Molly Patterson, David Robinson, Ihab el-Sakkout, Scott
Savran, Uli Schamiloglu, Jonathan Skaff, and Paul Yule. Shippensburg
University’s Department of History and Philosophy has provided a col-
legial professional environment since 2009, as did Colgate University’s
Department of History during the 2008–9 academic year. The interlibrary
loan staff at Shippensburg University, first Diane Kalathas and more
recently Rebecca ‘Alexx’ Purcell, both ably filled many complicated or
challenging requests.
Portions of Chapter 1 are adapted from ‘The Azd Migrations
Reconsidered: Mālik b. Fahm and ʿAmr Muzayqiya in Historiographic
Context’, Proceedings of the Seminar for Arabian Studies 38 (2008):
311–18. I thank Archaeopress for permission to reuse this material.
vii
Arabs in the Early Islamic Empire
Notes on the Text
In accordance with house style, diacritics meant to indicate Arabic letters
in the Latin alphabet are omitted from the text and notes, but do appear in
the bibliography and index. However, ‘ʿayn’ and ‘hamza’ are represented
by ‘ʿ’ and ‘ʾ’ respectively. The exception is for those Arabic technical
terms which remain in the text, which are fully marked. In addition, ah
dates have generally been converted to the single ce year with which they
most overlap.
In order to eliminate redundancy, the definite article from ‘al-Azd’
and similar terms is omitted whenever the English seems to benefit from
having ‘the’. In addition, while ‘Yemen’ is used for the country, the
tribal block is referred to as ‘al-Yaman’ to avoid confusion. Similarly,
‘Baḥrayn’ occasionally appears to denote the historic region, as opposed
to the archipelago which is the modern country. Finally, authors of Arabic
primary sources appear in the notes with a commonly recognised brief
form of their name which usually omits definite articles; however, the
definite articles remain with modern authors of secondary sources.
viii
Introduction
Introduction
Explanation and Historiography of the Problem
Classical Arabic writers frequently portrayed the Arabs as a tribally
defined people. During the 1200s, Ibn Manzur’s Lisan al-ʿArab quoted
numerous prior authorities as saying that an ʿarabī was anyone descended
from the ʿarab.1 Peter Webb, however, notes that in al-Khalil b. Ahmad
al-Farahidi’s dictionary Kitab al-ʿAyn, which was finalised by a colleague
after his death in 791, ‘Arab’ (ʿarab) was defined on the basis of purity of
speech without reference to language, and was thus the opposite of ʿajam,
characterised by impure speech. Genealogical definitions of Arabness rose
to the forefront during the ninth century, though one suspects they drew
upon earlier antecedents.2 It was in the early ninth century that Hisham b.
Muhammad Ibn al-Kalbi (d. 819) wrote his works on genealogy, which
drew on earlier material from a culture in which descent was a common
way of characterising identity. Particularly in Nasab Maʿadd wa al-
Yaman al-Kabir, Ibn al-Kalbi presents what came to be the two branches
of the Arabs, often called ‘northerners’ (Qays or Nizar) and ‘southerners’
(al-Yaman).3
Al-Khalil b. Ahmad would have had reasons for finding congenial the
linguistic definitions of ‘ʿarab’ circulating in his day. Born in Oman, he
belonged to a tribal grouping called al-Azd.4 In Ibn al-Kalbi’s influential
genealogical work, al-Azd was a name applied to Diraʾ b. al-Ghawth,
one of the descendants of Qahtan, progenitor of al-Yaman.5 As Webb
demonstrates, ‘Arabness’ was a fluid and contested idea during the early
caliphate. On the basis of pre-Islamic Arabic poetry, he argues that no one
self-identified as an Arab in late pre-Islamic Arabia, and that the major
ethnic grouping for the poets was actually Maʿadd, later turned into a
key ancestor of the northerners.6 Robert Hoyland has argued that Webb
underestimated both the epigraphic and poetic evidence for a potentially
language-based Arab identity prior to Islam, saying ‘he operates with the
notion that either we have a coherent all-embracing Arab identity or no
1
