The Lakhmids

During the first half of the first millennium CE, an empire arose in Persia that extended its power and influence to Mesopotamia in the east, Arabia in the south, the Caucasus Mountains in the north, and as far east as India. This empire, known alternatively as the Sasanian Empire or Sassanid Empire, was the last of three great dynasties in Persia – the Achaemenid and the Parthian being the first two dynasties – before the rise of Islam. In fact, many scholars consider the Sasanian Empire to be the last great empire of the ancient Near East because once it had been obliterated, Islam became the standard religion of the region, ushering in the Middle Ages.

The Sasanian Empire was important for a number of reasons. Besides being the last of three great Persian dynasties, they carried on many Persian cultural traditions relating to religion and kingship. The Sasanians fostered and promoted the native religion of Zoroastrianism to the point of persecuting other religions from time to time. It was during the Sasanian period that the numerous Zoroastrian hymns, prayers, and rituals were collected under one book, known as the Avesta.

However, as the Eastern Roman Empire and Sasanian Empire began to expand in the region through a combination of warfare, trade, and diplomacy, a number of Arab tribes caught in the middle coalesced to form their own powerful dynasties and states, one of which was the Lakhmid Dynasty. The Lakhmid Dynasty formed in the Mesopotamian city of al-Hira in the late third century or fourth century from an Arab tribe that was searching for a home, yet within 100 years, the Lakhmids had carved out a sizable state in southern Arabia that included parts of the modern nation-states of Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain, and Oman. The Lakhmids were able to build this dynasty through a combination of brute force and skillful diplomacy, walking a political tightrope between the Eastern Roman Empire to their west and the Sasanian Empire in the east. Eventually, the Lakhmids threw their lot in with the Sasanians, and the fate of the two became intrinsically intertwined, so much so that when one was strong, so too was the other, and vice versa. The Lakhmid Dynasty lasted for more than 300 years, which is an incredible span of time, considering how few states at the time came close to that.

The Lakhmid Dynasty was able to survive and thrive for so long by being an effective middleman and power broker in the ever-changing geopolitical landscape of the Near East, always aligning with the winning side in major regional wars, but never making themselves too conspicuous and thereby becoming a target. In that sense, the Lakhmids were smart and used their military strength only when necessary, typically backed by allies and usually augmented by a fair amount of diplomacy.

Ultimately, despite their deft handling of the delicate situation in the Near East, the Lakhmids were not clever or strong enough to stave off the wave of cultural change that flowed over the region in the early seventh century. When the new religion of Islam came out of the deserts of Arabia, it did so with a vigor that quickly overcame the Lakhmids and Sasanians, and it even threatened the Byzantines. These early Muslims extinguished the Lakhmid Dynasty, even as the historical memory of the pre-Islamic Arab state continued into the modern era.