Chapter 7
ARABS: IMMIGRANTS
MILITARY MIGRATION
The single most important ethnographic change in seventh-century
Iraq was the arrival of large numbers of Muslim Arabs from the
Ara.bian peninsula and the foundation of new urban centers as garrison
cities where they settled. In order to understand the nature of this
change, it is important to begin with the identification and location
of the peninsular tribes that entered Iraq in this period, to note their
settlement patterns and the form of social organization they intro-
duced, and to consider the extent to which they allowed themselves
to become assimilated into native Iraqi society.
Khalid's raid did not bring very many Arabs from distant parts of
the peninsula into Iraq. His own force appears to have been rather
small, although it included Arabs who joined him between the Ya-
mama and Iraq, and his success was largely due to the mobilization
of pastoral Arab groups that were already in or near Iraq. When Abu
Bakr ordered Khalid to relieve the Muslim forces fighting in Syria in
634, Khalid divided his army and, according to one account, took half
of it, amounting to between five hundred and eight hundred men,
leaving Muthanna ibn I:Iaritha as his lieutenant in Iraq with the rest.^1
Early in 635, 'Umar sent Abu 'Ubayd with a force of one thousand
men from the Hijaz to the Iraqi front. Abu 'Ubayd was joined by
Arab bedouin along the way. After he was defeated and killed by the
Persians at the Battle of the Bridge, some of the survivors joined
Muthanna.^2
Between the defeat at the Battle of the Bridge and the victory at
Buwayb, 'Umar was able to forward contingents of Arab tribesmen
to Muthanna in Iraq. It was during this period that Arabs belonging
to the tribes of Bajila, 'Abd al-Qays, Tayyi', the clans of Banu Qabba,
'Amr, and I:Ian~ala, plus one thousand additional Tamimis, and seven
hundred men of the tribes of Kinana and Azd arrived in Iraq.3 They
1 Baladhuri, Futu~, p. 110; Tabari, Ta'rtkh, I, 2109, 2111; Ya'qiibi, Ta'rtkh, Il, 150.
2 Baladhuri, Futu~, p. 250; Tabari, Ta'rtkh, I, 2164. Dlnawari (Akhbiir at-!iwiil, pp.
118-19) says that Abii 'Ubayd had five thousand men.
3 Tabari, Ta'rikh, I, 2187-89, 2202, 2218; Ya'qiibi, Ta'rikh, n, 163. The 'Amr and
l:lan~ala clans of Tamim were led by Rib'iyya ibn 'Amir ibn Khalid, while an additional
one thousand Tamimis were led by al-l:lu~ayn ibn Ma'bad ibn Zurara.