ARABS: NATIVESdid not bring new pastoralist groups into the borderland along south-
western Iraq to displace those already there. This serves to explain
why pastoral Arab groups survived in approximately the same loca-
tions as before the conquest. However, the conquest did bring new
pastoralist groups into the region between Syria and Iraq, starting a
chain reaction that ultimately led to the movement of Arab pastoralists
across the upper Tigris into Adiabene and neigh boring districts. The
destructiveness of the conquest along the middle Euphrates and the
subsequent arrival of the Qays 'Aylan in this region, especially around
Qarqisiyya (where they replaced the Taghlib and Namir), drove the
Rabi'a tribes further to the north and east. The Qays were well es-
tablished by 665.^99 By the late seventh century, the Qays had begun
to move across the Euphrates into the Jazira, where elements of the
Banu Sulaym also arrived along the Khabur river at about the same
time. During the second fitna, the Qays supported the ZubayrIs and
detained 'Ubaydullah ibn Ziyad for an entire year when Marwan sent
him against the ZubayrIs in Iraq in 685.100 Both the Qays and the
Sulaym expanded their hold on the western Jazira during the second
fitna in tribal warfare with the Taghlib.^101
The movement of some groups across the Tigris was due largely to
the dislocations among the pastoral Arabs of the Jazira during the
second fitna. Pastoral Arabs first appeared east of the Tigris in Adi-
abene when Mar Y6\:lannan was head of the monastery of Sabhrish6'
(675-692/3). The Arabs pitched their tents near the monastery and
from the beginning relations were ambivalent and abrasive. They treated
the head of the monastery with all the superstitious respect due to a
saint and holy man while subjecting him to all sorts of indignities.
Once, Mar Y6\:lannan was obliged to brave the dogs of an Arab camp
to return the visits of the shaykh, and only a miraculous disaster served
to dislodge an Arab shaykh from the cells of the anchorites where he
had taken residence.^102 Under Mar Y6\:lannan's successor, Sh6bhal-
maran (693-729), the encroachment became even more serious. The
Arabs forced the people around the monastery off their lands, and the
99 Tabari, Ta'rtkh, 11, 72.
100 Ibid., 11, 643.
101 A. A. Dixon, The Umayyad Caliphate 65-86/684-705 (A Political Study) (Lon-
don, 1971), pp. 99, 102.
\02 Mingana, Sources syriaques, pp. 247-48. The latter was the birth of Siamese twins
to the wife of the shaykh who appealed to Mar Y6i).annan to bring about the death of
the "monster." When this was accomplished by a word from the saint, the Arab im-
mediately evacuated the cells he was occupying.