PEOPLEstroyed Hatra. They also attempted to clear pastoral Arabs out of the
potentially productive agricultural districts along the middle Tigris.
The general effect of this was to divert the Taniikh migration towards
upper Mesopotamia and Syria. The Qu<;la'a who did not wish to
remain under Persian rule were driven out of upper Iraq to the desert
border, where they founded the settlement of Hira. Thereafter the
Taniikh who stayed on the border of Iraq occupied the territory west
of the Euphrates, between Hira and Anbar, living as pastoralists in
tents of camel and goat hair.3 The desert to the south was dominated
throughout the Sasanian period by Arabs of the Tayyi' tribe from their
base on the modern Jabal Shammar.4 Syriac writers considered them
to be so typical of the bedouin population that they called all pastoral
Arabs Tayyaye.
An indication of the nature of Arab relations with the sedentary
Jewish Aramaean population in the Euphrates districts adjoining the
region occupied by the T aniikh in the third and fourth centuries is
provided by the Babylonian Talmud. Many of the thieves in Nehardea
were Arabs, and that town was subject to such frequent raids that
R. NaQman (d. 320) allowed local Jews to carry weapons on the
Sabbath. In the early fourth century, Arabs forced people at Pumba-
ditha to turn over the title deeds of their landed property to them. A
degree of more peaceful integration is also indicated in the case of an
Arab who gave a gift of an animal sacrifice to Rav Judah (d. 299) and
that of an Arab market inspector who testified about coins for R. Papa
and R. Huna bar R. Joshua in the mid-fourth century.5 It was also
towards the end of the fourth century that Arabs began to settle down
in Beth 'Arbhaye.^6
As earlier Arab groups were settling down, new groups of pastor-
alists were moving into Iraq. During the minority of Shapiir I (309-
379), tribal groups belonging to the Iyad ibn Nizar migrated from the
Yamama to Mesopotamia. There they established themselves in a
transhumant pattern, moving back and forth from the summer pas-
tures in upper Mesopotamia (the Jazira) to the winter pastures in Iraq.
3 Dillernann, "Haute Mesopotarnie," p. 74; Frye, Golden Age, p. 24; l:Iarnza, Ta'rlkh,
pp. 83-84, 86; Nau, "Aboudernrneh," p. 28; TabarI, Ta'rikh, I, 821-22, 827; J. S.
Trirningharn, Christianity among the Arabs in Pre-Islamic Times (London, 1979), pp.
92-96,154.
4 Dillernann, "Haute Mesopotarnie," p. 74.
5 Baron, Social and Religious History, Ill, 62; Neusner, History, II, 30-35; IV, 63-
64; V, 303; Newrnan, Agricultural Life, pp. 43, 117.
6 HoHrnann, Persischer Miirtyrer, p. 22.