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This final chapter investigates how the kind of political and historical ideas employed among Syriac‐speaking Miaphysites in Mesopotamia were exported elsewhere in the Roman world, focl1sing on the border zones of Rome's conflict with Persia, on Yemen (Himyar) and the lands controlled by the Ghassanid Arab federation (centred in modern‐day northern Jordan). The persecuted missionary church of Miaphysites exported a distinctive paradigm ofhistory, by which new Christian territories such as Himyar could repeat the defining moments of Christian nationhood, the experience of martyrdom and the overthrow of the Jews. Moreover, while this struggle was part of a wider struggle against the Jews, it did not tie Himyar into the political orbit of the Roman lfmpire. It is this evolution of a self‐sufficient political thought in the communities of the late Roman and post‐Roman east that is one of the most important achievements of Miaphysitism in the Syriac‐speaking world.

This chapter examines in detail the political relationship between the Romans and the Arabs, tracing the evident developments in political confidence exhibited by 6th century Arab elites as far back as the second century. Using the inscriptions of Ruwwafa and Nemara as its starting point, and making use of comparative material addressing the status of barbarians in the western Roman Empire, as well as material from other historical periods, it traces the increasing complexity of relations between Romans and Arabs which culminated in Justinian's elevation of the Jafnid al‐Harith in 527. It explores the importance of North Arabia to Rome and Iran, and the involvement of the kingdom of Himyar with the Hujrid dynasty. Finally, it uses the Treaty of 562 between Rome and the Sasanians to underscore the changes in status accorded to the Jafnids by the time that the Romans decided to eliminate their leader al‐Mundhir in 582.

This chapter examines the case of the first Almoravid amir, Yusuf ibn Tashfin (r. 1061–1106), a Lamtuna Sanhaja Berber, and the way that genealogy can legitimise political authority. More specifically, it considers how Yusuf ibn Tashfin claimed an Arab genealogy that drew on a textual heritage shared by Muslims in the East and the West. It begins with a discussion of the Almoravids and the role they played in the expansion and defence of Islam in the Islamic West; they controlled a territory, West Africa, where Islam was disseminated, as well as another region, al-Andalus, where it was necessary to defend the religion against the advances of the Christian kings from the north. The chapter then provides an overview of al-Andalus before looking at the origins of the Berbers, and in particular their relationship to the tribe of Himyar. It also analyses how genealogy enabled Yusuf ibn Tashfin to address his problems related to political and religious legitimacy.

This epilogue examines various strands of social history, religious affiliation and language in the Roman Near East in relation to the beginning of Muhammad's preaching in about 610. Muhammad was born, probably in about 570, in Mecca, where he began to receive divinely inspired messages in Arabic. After he died, Muhammad's followers invaded the nearest Roman provinces and conquered all of the Roman Near East, the Sasanid empire, Egypt and Roman North Africa. These are known as ‘the great Arab conquests’. This chapter considers whether the Arabian Peninsula can be properly treated under the title of ‘Arabia and the Arabs’. It also analyses evidence from the Mediterranean and Mesopotamian Near East, as well as the kingdom of Himyar. Finally, it looks at brief allusions to the life-history of Muhammad in a number of Christian sources to shed light on his preaching.

The first wave of Jewish and Christian pseudepigrapha reached Eritrea and Ethiopia in the wake of the Christianization of the Aksumite kingdom, in the middle of the fourth century of our era. Their Ethiopian acculturation was a part of the process of translating the ensemble of the Scriptures, including “apocryphal” texts, from Greek originals into Gǝʿǝz, or Classical Ethiopic. As a result, the pseudepigrapha were copied for centuries in the same manuscripts as other biblical texts. After a long period of relative isolation, the re-establishing of regular relations with Egyptian Christianity, in the thirteenth century, led to a complete re-examination and revision of Ethiopian Scriptures and other religious texts. The pseudepigrapha were scrutinized, discussed, edited, eventually newly translated from the Arabic or, in a few cases, abandoned. The theological debates about the status of some of these texts played a major role in their active preservation in Ethiopian culture.

The sources examined here describe the conquest of South Arabia and Arabia Deserta by Ḥimyar, and the relationship between Ḥimyar and the tribes of Arabia. The chapter also considers the role of Ḥimyar in the conflict between Rome and Persia, and provides an epigraphic perspective on famous events such as the massacre at Najrān in 523. The texts also shed light on the form of Judaism adopted by the kings of Ḥimyar in the fourth century, on the conflict between Ḥimyar and Aksūm, and on the rule of the last great king of Ḥimyar, Abraha. A number of these texts appear here in English translation for the first time.

This chapter focuses on the role played by Arab militia generally, and the Jafnids and Naṣrids specifically, in the sixth- and early seventh-century phase of Rome’s competition with Persia, played out in Mesopotamia and in South Arabia. A number of the texts discussed here complement the epigraphic material in Chapter 3, as well as the Arabic and Persian texts in Chapter 8.