PEOPLEmonks had to hide their books. The Arabs, however, continued to
come to Shobhalmaran for his miraculous cures. A woman blind in
one eye was said to be cured by exorcism of the demon who possessed
her; the concubine of an Arab was given an amulet to drive out her
demon; and even an expensive ill horse of one of the Arabs was
cured.^103 In the early eighth century, Arabs could be found pasturing
their camels in deserted parts of western Adiabene.^104
One of the best examples of encroachment is given by the career of
Iyas ash-Shaybani of the tribe of Dhiihl. He became storekeeper of
the grain of the monastery of Rabban Bar eIdta and of all of the
monastery's property in Margha in the early eighth century. He then
persuaded the monks to grant him permission to build a hostel along-
side the old royal highway in fields belonging to the monastery. He
went on to seize the surrounding fields, killed the steward of the
monastery, and forced the head of the monastery, Rabban ]oseph, to
flee to Balad where he founded a new monastery.105
In general, the dislocations among the pre-Islamic pastoral Arab
population of Iraq resulting from the conquest were comparable to
those experienced by the Persians: the Arab allies of the Persians who
resisted the conquest suffered death or deportation, and some of the
Arab captives who had been carried off to the Hijaz made their way
back to Iraq and settled in the garrison cities. One of the more de-
structive aspects of the conquest was the disruption of the pastoral
economy of central Iraq. This, combined with the settlement of the
local Arabs who joined the Muslims, like the Persian defectors, in the
new garrison cities after the fighting was over, contributed to a decline
in pastoralism in lower Iraq. It also contributed to an intensification
of urbanizing tendencies already under way among pre-Islamic Arabs
and to the new concentration of population in lower Iraq. On the
other hand, the distribution of the Arab tribes in the Iraqi countryside
remained roughly the same as it had been under the Sasartians. The
most important changes in tribal distribution were the end of the
presence of Namir and Taghlib south of the Euphrates as a result of
the conquest itself, the arrival of the Qays, and the movement of
pastoral Arabs across the upper Tigris towards the end of the seventh
century.
103 Ibid., pp. 250-5I.
\04 Thomas of Margha, Governors, I, 130-33; 11, 273-78.
105 Ibid., 1,104-5,11,231-34. For the subsequent movement of pastoral Arabs into
Adiabene and the surrounding districts, see Fiey, Assyrie chretienne, I, 146-47, 248;
11, 337; Ill, 36.