OTHER ETHNIC GROUPSAnushirvan transported the entire captive population of Antioch in
Syria to Iraq, where he built a new city for them southeast of Mada'in
and patterned it after Antioch. This New Antioch, or Rumiyya as the
Arabs called it, was a Syrian city in the heart of Iraq, complete with
public baths and a large hippodrome. It also became a place of asylum
for escaped Greek slaves, and by about 580 it was a city of thirty
thousand people. The appointment of a chief of artisans (M.P. qarujbadh)
to be in charge of this city suggests that the main purpose of its
foundation was to be a center of manufacturing.^8 Syrian captives were
also used as agriculturallabor, and on his return from his third invasion
of Syria in 642 Khusraw Anushirvan enslaved a great number of
farmers who had taken refuge at Callinicus.^9 They may have been
used to develop the region between Babil and Kaskar. When Jerusalem
fell to the Persians in 614, thirty-five thousand prisoners, most of
whom were craftsmen, were deported to Iran.Io Later the Monophysite
population of Edessa was deported and resettled mostly in eastern
Iran, although some of them were settled east of Mada'in at Oastagird
and Oaskara along with captives from Jerusalem and Alexandria. The
presence of these captives in this part of Iraq was only temporary,
however. When Heraklios took Oastagird, they were liberated or took
advantage of the situation to flee,u
The people at Rumiyya survived into the Islamic period by coming
to terms with Khalid ibn 'Urfuta in 638. According to these terms,
they could either leave or stay. If they chose to stay, they had to
recognize the political authority of the Muslims, give them advice, pay
khariij, and act as trustworthy guides.^12 There is little information
about the Byzantine settlement at Rumiyya after that. Some of the
people may have settled in Kufa, where a Oar ar-Rumiyyin and a
Roman alley are mentioned in 680 and 685. But they may not have
survived there very long since BaladhurI identifies the Oar ar-Rumiyyin
as a dunghill where the Kufans threw their rubbish.13
8 Dinawari, Akhbiir at-tiwiil, pp. 70-71; I:!amza, Ta'rtkh, p. 51; John of Ephesus,
Historiae Eeclesiastieae, CSCO, Ser. Syri, 54: 314-15; 55: 238-39; Prokopios, Wars,
Il.xiv; Tabari, Ta'rtkh, I, 898, 959-60; Tha<alibi, Ghurar, pp. 612-13; Ya<qubi, Les
pays, p. 163; idem, Ta'rtkh, I, 186; Yaqut, Buldiin, H, 130; IV, 446-47.
9 Prokopios, Wars, Il.xxi, 32.
10 Stratos, Byzantium, p. 110.
11 Adams, Baghdad, p. 69; Guidi, Chroniea Minora I, I, 28; 11, 24; Nau,
"AlJoudemmeh," p. 58; Stratos, Byzantium, pp. 215-16.
12 Baladhurl, Futu~, p. 263.
13 Ibid., p. 281; Tabari, Ta'rtkh, Il, 257, 630, 632.