PEOPLEBahrayn. The Banii Lakhm sought to control the pastoral Arabs and
to prevent their raids on caravans and the settled population by means
of tribal alliances, recruiting tribesmen for their own military forces,
keeping hostages, and granting property and privileges to the most
powerful chieftains. The leaders of groups that were too strong to be
coerced were given a set of privileges called ridafa (Ar.) to secure their
cooperation. The holder of ridafa enjoyed precedence at the royal court
of the Banii Lakhm, served as the king's viceroy (Ar. khaltfa) when
the latter went on campaign, and claimed a quarter of the booty. These
privileges were held hereditarily by the leaders of the Yarbii' in the
time of al-Mundhir ibn Ma' as-Sama' (506-54). Possession of the
ridafa was also held at different times by the pabba, Taymallat, Tagh-
lib, and the Sadiis clan of the Shayban.^29
The suppression of the Banii Lakhm and of their state and the
execution of Nu'man III by Khusraw II Parviz in 602 destroyed these
relationships. Following the defeat of the Sasanians and their Arab
allies by the Bakr ibn Wa'il at Dhu Qar in about 604, pastoral Arabs
were briefly free to encroach on the borderland of Iraq and occupied
some of the 'Uyun of Taff.30 But in the following decade the Sasanians
restored the desert frontier, subjected the former territories of the Banii
Lakhm to direct rule, protected them by a line of strongholds garri-
soned by Arab and Persian forces, and used their tribal allies to police
the desert. It was only during the Sasanian dynastic crisis that followed
the Byzantine victory and the deposition and execution of Khusraw
II Parviz in 628, when the Persians were preoccupied with succession
conflicts at Mada'in, that outlying Arab groups began to attack the
settled population on the border of Iraq once again. On the eve of the
Islamic conquest, elements of Shayban, 'Ijl, and Dhuhl had begun to
raid the dahaqtn around Hira and Ubulla, and in the vicinity of Kaskar.31
SEDENTARY ARABS: SASANIAN IRAQ
Arabs also formed a significant portion of the sedentary population
along the desert border of Iraq in the late Sasanian period. The nature
29 Donner, Conquests, pp. 51-52; Ibn Qutayba, Ma'iirif, pp. 99, 651; Kister, "al-
I:fira," p. 149; Mubarrad, al-Kiimil, p. 277; Nyberg, "West-grenze," pp. 319-20; Roth-
stein, La!Jmiden, pp. 128, 131.
30 Scher, "Histoire nestorienne," 11 (2), 539-40; Yaqiit, Buldiin, Ill, 539.
31 BaladhurI, FutulJ, pp. 241, 340; DInawarI, Akhbiir at-tiwii1, pp. 111-12, 116-17;
Kiifi, Kitiib al-FutulJ (Haydarabad, 1965), I, 88-90; Tabari, Ta'rikh, I, 2016, 2018.