Introduction

In the century following the Arab conquest, the Byzantine Empire launched several campaigns aimed at retaking lost territory across the Middle East. Perhaps the most threatening of these relied on the muscle of a group known as Jarājima in Arabic and as Mardaites in Greek. These were mountain Christians who helped the Byzantines re-establish control over the coastal highlands between Antioch and Jerusalem at the end of the seventh century. Although their success was short-lived, the Jarājima managed to create a Christian guerilla zone on the doorstep of the Umayyads’ most important province. In the process, they terrified caliphs, gave hope to emperors, and left a deep impression on the historical record of the period.

The Jarājima are familiar to many students of Byzantine and early Islamic history. Indeed, there exists more than a century of serious academic research about them. Yet in significant respects, they have yet to be properly contextualised. In this article, I hope to give a fresh re-reading of the premodern sources about the Jarājima – Islamic and Christian alike, scattered across Arabic, Greek, and Syriac texts. I hope this rereading will be novel for several reasons. First, building on the work of Georges Chalhoub (whose book is the most comprehensive study to date), my aim is to establish a clear chronology for the Jarājima from the time they first appear in the historical record during the Arab conquest of the 630s, to their last gasp as a militarised movement during the little-studied revolt of Theodore in 759–60. Second, my goal is to explore the afterlife of the Jarājima until the tenth century, when for all intents and purposes, they disappear from our historical radar. Virtually nothing is known about this period, but a careful reading of Maronite and Byzantine sources reveals, if not a treasure trove of new information, then certainly a small haul which extends the story later than has been told before.

Third, I hope to use this article to weigh in on a few outstanding questions about the Jarājima which have piqued the interest of scholars before me: what was their confessional background? (Unclear, but possibly Chalcedonian.) What was their ethnic and cultural makeup?