54 Arabia
In 1137, Duke William X (d. 1137) assigned all his
domains and his heiress, his eldest daughter ELEANOR,to
the wardship of the French king Louis VI (r. 1108–37).
The title duke of Aquitaine was taken by Eleanor’s two
husbands, King Louis VII (r. 1137–80) of France until
1152 and HENRY II Plantagenet, duke of NORMANDY,
count of ANJOU, and king of England from 1154 onward.
Her sons, including RICHARDI LIONHEART, successively
governed Aquitaine in conjunction with her. The Duchy
of Aquitaine remained from then until 1453 a possession
of the PLANTAGENETor English state. The territories of
this “English” Gascony varied from almost the whole of
the Garonne basin and part of the Massif Central to only
the surroundings of the cities of Bordeaux and Bayonne.
In July 1362, when King EDWARDIII of ENGLANDmade
Aquitaine a principality, he gave it to his son, EDWARDthe
Black Prince. In 1371 the Black Prince, sick and dying,
left for England, and this principality disappeared at his
death in 1376. The area was lost forever to the English at
the end of the HUNDREDYEARS’ WARin 1453 and became
part of the kingdom of France.
Further reading:Janet Martindale, Status, Authority
and Regional Power: Aquitaine and France, 9th to 12th Cen-
turies(Aldershot: Variorum, 1997); Linda Seidel, Songs of
Glory: The Romanesque Façades of Aquitaine(Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1981); Anat Tcherikover,
High Romanesque Sculpture in the Duchy of Aquitaine, c.
1090–1140(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997); Malcolm G.
A. Vale, English Gascony, 1399–1453: A Study of War, Gov-
ernment and Politics during the Later Stages of the Hundred
Years’ War(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1970).
Arabia(Djazirat al-Arab [the Island of the Arabs]) See
ARABS, PRE-ISLAMIC.
Arabic art and architecture SeeART AND ARCHITEC-
TURE,ISLAMIC.
Arabs, pre-Islamic(al-Arab) The Arabs were the
inhabitants of the arid Arabian Peninsula and Syrian
Desert long before the rise of Islam. They spoke a Semitic
language, and a written language probably appeared in the
sixth century. Before the fourth century, the caravan trade
to Syria gave rise to the Nabataean Kingdom with its capi-
tal at PETRA, succeeded by the kingdom of PALMYRA,
whose Arab queen, Zenobia, was conquered by the
emperor Aurelian (r. 270–275) in 273. Roman policy
focused on protecting the empire’s Syrian border against
raids of nomadic Bedouins, or “desert dwellers.” They
were considered troublesome raiders who did not threaten
real conquest. To this end, frontier fortifications were
erected in Syria, and Arab client states were cultivated as
military allies of the empire. By the sixth century, the
Christian GHASSANIDSof Syria were the most important
Arab allies of the Byzantines, and the LAKHMIDS were
clients of the Persians. However, both the Romans and the
Persians abandoned these alliances in the late sixth cen-
tury, leaving the way into their respective empires open to
the south. At the same time many Arabs left nomadic lives
based on the domestication of the CAMEL, settled in towns,
and became important participants in a north-south trade
from the southern part of the Arabic Peninsula as caravan
stops became towns, such as MECCA,MEDINA, and al-Taif.
Even in towns they tended to maintain the traditional
social organization of clans and tribes. Numerous fairs
developed to assist trade. By then many Christians and
Jews were living among them, most of them polytheistic
pagans with a vague concept of monotheism.
Under the new banner of ISLAMin the seventh cen-
tury, the Bedouin tribes and city-dwelling Arabs burst
through the Syrian frontier, conquering most of BYZAN-
TIUM’Seastern possessions, including EGYPTand North
Africa, and destroying the SASSANIANEmpire. In ANATO-
LIAthe Byzantine-Arab struggle that began in 646 contin-
ued for centuries.
See also ISLAM;ISLAMIC CONQUESTS;MUHAMMAD;
SHIA;SUNNA.
Further reading:Section IX of the Bibliography for
the post-Islam period; Patricia Crone, Roman, Provincial,
and Islamic Law: The Origins of the Islamic Patronate
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987); Robert
G. Hoyland, Arabia and the Arabs: From the Bronze Age to
the Coming of Islam(New York: Routledge, 2001).Aragon In the Middle Ages, Aragon was a region and a
kingdom in north-central Iberia. By about 720, during
their conquest of the Iberian Peninsula, Muslims had
occupied the lands of the Ebro Valley and the central
Pyrenees region, reaching the northern parts of present-
day Aragon. On the arrival of Islam, the peoples of this
region were already partially Romanized and Christian-
ized. Under the occupation, Mozarabic communities per-
sisted in urban centers with a hierarchical episcopal
organization, as well as churches and monasteries. The
area was, however, at least partially Islamized since sev-
eral elite families converted.
Toward the middle of the eighth century, the upper
part of Andalus was a battlefield as ABD AL-RAHMANI
tried to impose his power on the local Muslim lords in
Aragon. They even asked for aid from the FRANKSand
CHARLEMAGNE, who intervened with marginal success.
He did manage to establish a Spanish March, which put
Frankish counts near enough to intervene in what
became Aragon. They also established monasteries to per-
petuate Christianity among the local population and to
protect the passes across the Pyrenees Mountains.
In the early 10th century the county of Aragon
became part of the kingdom of Pamplona. Sancho García
III the Great of Pamplona (r. 1000–35) solidified his