Chapter 6
ARABS: NATIVES
GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS
Arabs lived in or near Iraq throughout Classical and Late Antiquity,
but wherever they settled down they tended to become assimilated to
the local culture of the sedentary population. Since Iraq lay along the
northern edge of the Arab ethnic region, the Arab presence there
resulted from the natural interpenetration along the ethnic border,
from Arab involvement in the commercial and pastoral economy of
Iraq, and from the varying political fortunes of Arab border states.
The contribution of the Iraqi Arab population to continuity or change
in the early Islamic period was affected by several circumstances. First,
it is important to emphasize that the acculturation of Arabs to native
Iraqi traditions did not begin with the Islamic conquest. Arab settle-
ment in Iraq had always resulted in assimilation with the native in-
habitants. Consequently, indigenous Iraqi Arabs were especially im-
portant in the transmission of Iraqi culture to the Arabs who came as
conquerors and immigrants from the peninsula in the seventh century.
Second, such cultural influences and opportunities were not re-
stricted geographically to Iraq. The presence of Persians in Bahrayn,
Uman, and Yaman and their indirect influences in the Hijaz in the late
Sasanian period meant that the Arabs who came from the peninsula
in the seventh century were not necessarily strangers to the culture
they found in Iraq. To a certain extent, such circumstances are reflected
in the use of Aramaic and Persian terms in pre-Islamic Arabic poetry.1
Third, the Arab population was not homogeneous but ranged from
sedentary peasants and townsmen to seminomadic and fully nomadic
pastoralists. Thus, it is logical to expect that Arabs with a sedentary,
urban background would be likely to acquire the culture of other
sedentary populations more easily than would pastoralists. Theoret-
ically, Arabs with a pastoral background could be expected to move
most easily into the patterns of pastoral economy they found in Iraq.
Ease of assimilation could also be affected by geographical origin,
since Arabs already in or near Iraq and those who came from Bahrayn,
1 I. Goldziher, "lslamisme et Parsisme," RHR 43 (1901),22-25; J. Oberm!lnn, "Early
Islam," in The Idea of History in the Ancient Near East, ed. R. C. Dentan (Yale, 1955),
p.244.