Ghassān

▪ ancient kingdom, Arabia

      Arabian kingdom prominent as a Byzantine ally (symmachos) in the 6th century AD. From its strategic location in portions of modern Syria, Jordan, and Israel, it protected the spice trade route from the south of the Arabian Peninsula and acted as a buffer against the desert Bedouin.

      The Ghassānid king al-Ḥārith ibn Jabalah (reigned 529–569) supported the Byzantines against Sāsānian Persia and was given the title patricius in 529 by the emperor Justinian. Al-Ḥārith was a monophysite Christian; he helped to revive the Syrian Monophysite Church and supported Monophysite development despite the disapproval of Orthodox Byzantium. Subsequent Byzantine distrust of such religious unorthodoxy brought down his successors, al-Mundhir (reigned 569–582) and Nuʿmān.

      The Ghassānids, who had successfully opposed the Persian-oriented Lakhmids of al-Ḥīrah, prospered economically and engaged in much religious and public building; they also patronized the arts and at one time entertained the poets Nābighah adh-Dhubyānī (Nābighah al-Dhubyānī, al-) and Ḥassān ibn Thābit at their courts. Ghassān remained a Byzantine vassal state until its rulers were overthrown by the Muslims in the 7th century.

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