had resisted Rome; but Mesopotamia was overrun, Niṣībis and
Carrhae being taken (233). It was immediately, indeed, recovered
by Alexander Severus, and retained, whateverSassanian Period.
was the precise success of the war; but Niṣībis and
Carrhae were retaken by the Persians in the reign of
Maximin. Under Gordian III. in 242 Mesopotamia was entered
by a great Roman army which recovered Carrhae and Niṣībis, and
defeated the Persians at Rhesaena; but when Gordian, after a
difficult march down the Khābūr, was murdered at Zaitha below
Circesium, Philip the Arabian (244) made the best terms he could
with Shapur I. Whatever they were, the Roman garrisons seem
not to have been really withdrawn. A rest for Mesopotamia seems
to have followed; but in 258 Shapur, tempted by the troubles in
the Roman empire, overran the country taking Niṣībis and
Carrhae, and investing Edessa, and when Valerian invaded
Mesopotamia he was eventually made prisoner, by Edessa (260).
After Shapur’s cruel victories in Syria, however, he was defeated
by Odaenathus, who relieved Edessa, and Mesopotamia became
for ten years practically part of an Arabian Empire (see Palmyra),
as it was to be four centuries later. In consequence of the
revolt of Zenobia Mesopotamia was lost to Rome, and the
Euphrates became the frontier. Aurelian overthrew the
Palmyran rule; but he was assassinated before he could carry
out his intended expedition against Persia, Probus was assassinated
before he was able to do anything (or much), and
although Carus easily overran Mesopotamia, which became
Roman again, and even took Ctesiphon, the Romans retreated
on his death (283–4). The next incident is the defeat of
Galerius, between Carrhae and Callinicus, where he had entered
Mesopotamia (about 296), in the war provoked by Narses in
consequence of his relations with Armenia. When it was
retrieved by a signal victory, Diocletian advanced to Niṣībis.
and thence dictated terms of peace by which Mesopotamia to
the Tigris was definitely ceded to Rome (298).
One result of the connexion with Rome was, naturally, that Mesopotamia came within the range of the Decian, and later the Diocletian persecutions (see Edessa: § Sassanian Period). At the Nicene Council there were bishops from Niṣībis (Jacob), Rhesaena, Macedonopolis (on the Euphrates, west of Edessa), and Persia (Harnack, Mission and Expansion of Christianity, ii. 146; see generally 142–152).
After a forty years’ peace the struggle was resumed by Shapur II. Niṣībis thrice endured unsuccessful siege (338, 346, 350), although meanwhile Constantine had suffered defeat at Singara (348). Then Mesopotamia enjoyed two short rests (separated by a sharp struggle) while the rivals were engaged elsewhere, when in 363 Julian (q.v.) made his disastrous attempt, and Jovian bought peace at the price, among other things, of Singara and Niṣībis—i.e. practically all eastern Mesopotamia.
The surrender of Niṣībis, which had been in the possession of Rome for so many generations, caused consternation among the Christians, and Ephraem (q.v.) moved to Edessa, where his “school of the Persians” soon became famous (see Edessa). In the war of 421, in which the north-east of Mesopotamia was chiefly concerned, the Romans failed to take Niṣībis, and it became a natural rallying point for the Nestorians after the decision of Ephesus (431). Matters were still more complicated when the Western Christians of Edessa found themselves unable to accept the ruling of Chalcedon against Monophysitism in 451 (see Monophysites), and there came to be three parties: Nestorians (q.v.), Jacobites (see Jacobite Church) and Melchites (q.v.).
In the beginning of the 6th century there was another severe struggle in Mesopotamia, which found an anonymous Syriac historian (see Edessa), and in infringement of agreement the Romans strongly fortified Dārā against Niṣībis. The Persian invasion of Syria under Kavadh I. (q.v.) was driven back by Belisarius; but the latter was defeated in his pursuit at Raḳḳa (531). The peace begun by Chosroes I. (532) was not long kept, and Roman Mesopotamia, except the pagan Ḥarrān, suffered severely (540), Edessa undergoing a trying siege (544). The fifty years’ peace also (562) was short lived; the Romans again failed in an attempt to recover Niṣībis (573), whilst Chosroes’ siege of Dārā was successful. Mesopotamia naturally suffered during the time of confusion that preceded and followed the accession of Chosroes II., and the Romans recovered their old frontier (591).
With the accession of Phocas (602) began the great war which shook the two kingdoms. The loss of Edessa, where Narses revolted, was temporary; but the Roman fortress of Dārā fell after nine months’ siege (c. 605); Ḥarrān, Rās al-ʽAin and Edessa followed in 607, many of the Christian inhabitants being transported to the Far East, and Chosroes carried the victorious arms of Persia far into the Roman Empire. Finally Heraclius turned the tide, and Kavadh II. restored the conquests of his predecessor. The Syrian Christians, however, found that they had only exchanged the domination of a Zoroastrian monarch for an unsympathetic ecclesiastical despotism. In the confusion that followed, when men of letters had to live and work in exile, Niṣībis set up for a time (631–632) a grandson of Chosroes II. Finally all agreed on Yazdegerd III.; but, while Chosroes II. and Heraclius had been at death grips with each other a great invasion had been preparing in Arabia.
The Arab tribes in Mesopotamia were Christian, and Heraclius at Edessa hoped for their support; but Ḳarḳāsiyā and Hīt succumbed (636), and then Tekrīt; and Heraclius retired to Samosāta. When in 638 he made another attempt, it is said at the entreaty of the Mesopotamian Christians, Arab forces appeared before Raḳḳa, Edessa, NaṣībīnThe Caliphate. and other places, and all Mesopotamia was soon in the hands of the Arabs. Henceforth it looked to Damascus and to Kūfa and Baṣra, instead of to Constantinople or Ctesiphon. The new régime brought welcome relief to the Christian part of the population, for the Arabs took no note of their orthodoxies or heterodoxies. (Moawiya is said to have rebuilt the dome of the great church at Edessa after an earthquake in 678.) Fortunately for Mesopotamia the seats of the factions which immediately broke the peace of Islam were elsewhere; but it could not escape the fate of its geographical position.
The men of Raḳḳa were compelled to help ʽAli, after his march across Mesopotamia from near Mosul, in getting a bridge made at Raḳḳa to convey his men to Ṣiffīn. Not long afterwards there was a new excitement in Moawiya’s incursion across to the Tigris. The discontent under Yazīd III. was keen in Mesopotamia, where Merwān in fact got a footing, and when the troubles increased after he became caliph he abandoned Damascus in favour of his seat at Ḥarrān. His son was besieged by Daḥḥāk and his Khārijites and Ṣaffarids in Naṣībīn; but a fierce battle at Mārdīn ended in Merwān’s favour (745). The cruelties that accompanied the overthrow of the Omayyad dynasty excited a revolt, which spread to Mesopotamia, and Ḥarrān had to undergo a siege by one of Merwān’s generals. It was next besieged by al-Manṣūr’s brother; but the battle between the brothers was fought at Naṣībīn. It was decisive, but there were further risings, involving Mesopotamia.[1]
An inevitable effect of the reign of Islām had been that the kindred language of the Arabs gradually killed the vernacular Syriac of Mesopotamia (see Edessa) as the alien Greek and Persian had shown no tendency to do, and the classical period (4th to 8th centuries) of the only Mesopotamian literature we know, such as it is, useful but uninviting, came to an end (see Syriac Literature). This naturally encouraged grammatical study. Among the Aramaic-speaking people the revolution which displaced the Arabian court of Damascus in favour of a cosmopolitan world centred at the Babylonian seat of the civilizations dealt with in the preceding paragraphs naturally gave an impulse to the wider scholarship. Translations were made from Greek, as, e.g. by Thābit b. Q̣urra of Ḥarrān (d. 901), and from Pahlavi.
Manṣūr built a castle at Rāfiqa opposite Raḳḳa to control the country round, and his son Hārūn al-Rashīd actually resided during most of his reign, not at Bagdād but at Raḳḳa, where two generations later al-Battāni of Ḥarrān was making the astronomical observations on which his tables were based (see Albategnius) Abu Qurra, bishop of Ḥarrān, and acquaintance of the caliph Ma’mūn, who was one of the earlier Aramaean Christians to use
Arabic, has been thought to have contributed to the influences
