17 The important role of the south Arabian kingdom of Himyar (Yemen) in early-sixth-
century religious and diplomatic history has been strikingly revealed in the epigraphy of the
region in addition to the texts already well-known: further below.
18 Proc., Wars VIII.17.1–8; Geoffrey Greatrex and Samuel N.C. Lieu, The Roman Eastern Fron-
tier and the Persian Wars, Part II, AD 363–630. A Narrative Sourcebook (London: Routledge,
2002), 129.
19 See Fowden, Barbarian Plain, 149–73 (a ‘tribal church’ functioning also as an audience
chamber); other Ghassanid churches and sites, including Jabiya in the Hauran, ibid.,
143–4.
20 Fowden, Barbarian Plain, 172; John Eph., HE III.6.4.
21 For similar dealings with Arab tribes under Justinian, see Procopius, Wars I.19.8–13 (Abu-
karib), with M. Sartre, Trois études sur l’Arabie romaine et byzantine, Coll. Latomus 178 (Brus-
sels: Revue d’études latines, 1982).
22 Cyril of Scythopolis, Lives of the Monks of Palestine, tr. R.M. Price (Kalamazoo, MI: Cistercian
Publications, 1991), 18.24–25. Both passages are cited by Robert G. Hoyland, ‘Arab kings,
Arab tribes and the beginnings of Arab historical memory in late Roman epigraphy’, in
Hannah M. Cotton, Robert G. Hoyland, Jonathan J. Price and David J. Wasserstein, eds.,
From Hellenism to Islam. Cultural and Linguistic Change in the Roman Near East (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2007), 374–400.
23 Life of Sabas 14, in Price, Lives of the Monks of Palestine, 106.
24 Robert G. Hoyland, ‘Epigraphy and the linguistic background to the Qur’an’, in G.S. Rey-
nolds, ed., The Qur’an in its Historical Context (London: Routledge, 2008), 51–69, with id.,
‘Arab kings Arab tribes and the beginnings of Arab historical memory’. Hoyland argues for
a widespread use of both spoken and written Arabic across the Near East by the seventh
century; on the issue of identity, see also Fisher, Between Empires. The origins of the Arabic
script are the subject of much debate, but Hoyland provides a clear introduction to the
question, and see M.A. Macdonald, ed., The Development of Arabic as a Written Language, sup-
plement to the Proceedings of the Seminar for Arabian Studies 40 (Oxford; Archaeopress,
2010).
25 The papyri are still in the course of publication, but have already yielded important results
for the working of law as well as for the social and linguistic milieu of pre-Islamic Petra:
see the review article by H. Sivan, Journal of Late Antiquity 1.1 (2008), 197–9; for late antique
Petra, including the evidence from the papyri, see the comprehensive article by Zbigniew
T. Fiema, ‘Late-antique Petra and its hinterland: recent research and new interpretations’,
in J.H. Humphrey, ed., The Roman and Byzantine Near East 3, JRA supp series 49 (Port-
smouth, RI: Journal of Roman Archaeology, 2002), 191–252, with 219 on the language of
the papyri.
26 L. Casson, E.L. Hettich, Excavations at Nessana II. The Literary Papyri (Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1950); C.J. Kraemer, Excavations at Nessana III. The Non-Literary Papyri
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1958).
27 Fergus Millar, ‘Introduction’, in Cotton, Hoyland, Price and Wasserstein, eds., From Hellen-
ism to Islam, 1–12, at 2; Hoyland, ‘Arab kings, Arab tribes’, 375.
28 Especially in A Greek Roman Empire. Power and Belief under Theodosius II (AD 408–450) (Berke-
ley: University of California Press, 2006), but also in a series of powerful articles; for Egypt,
see Arietta Papaconstantinou, ‘“What remains behind”: Hellenism and Romanitas in Chris-
tian Egypt after the Arab conquest’, in Cotton, Hoyland, Price and Wasserstein, eds., From
Hellenism to Islam, 447–66.
29 For the latter, see J.N. Adams, M. Janse and Simon Swain, eds., Bilingualism in Ancient Society:
Language Contact and the Written Word (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002).
30 M. Gigante, ed., Sophronii Anacreontica (Rome: Gismondi, 1957).
31 See Glen W. Bowersock, Hellenism in Late Antiquity (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan
Press, 1990); M. Piccirillo, The Mosaics of Jordan (Amman: American Center of Oriental
Research, 1992); for pagan/classical themes in synagogue mosaics see Chapter 7.
32 Arietta Papaconstantinou, Languages and Literature of Early Christianity: Coptic (Paris:
NOTES TO CHAPTER 8