Damascus and decimated its people by murder and captivity. In Jerusalem he left the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in ruins, and carried its treasures — including the bulk of the true cross — off as booty. The Byzantine emperor Heraclius, after six years of war with several reverses, in 628 succeeded in recovering the battered Syrian province, in 629 restored the cross to Jerusalem and was hailed as the deliverer of Christendom and the restorer of the unity of the empire.
One of the tactics used by both Greeks and Persians in this prolonged and mutually exhausting warfare was the maintaining of subsidized Arab kingdoms as allies and buffer states along the northern borders of Arabia. Against the Persian puppet monarchy — the Lakhmids of al-Hirah on the Euphrates — the Byzantines backed the Ghassanids, a South Arabian tribe which had settled in the Hawran plateau in the third century and been converted to Chris- tianity in the fourth. Its history is obscure, as Arabic chronicles are contradictory and vague, while Byzantine authors record only contacts with Constantinople. Only the last few monarchs, whose reigns cover the century pre- ceding the birth of Islam, are fairly well known.
First and greatest among these was al-Harith ibn- Jabalah, who makes his debut in 528 battling against the Lakhmids. In recognition of his services the emperor Justinian in the following year appointed al-Harith lord over all the Arab tribes of Syria. Loyal to the Byzantine crown, al-Harith continued his struggles against the Lakh- mids, contributed to the suppression of the Samaritan rebellion and fought in the Byzantine army under Belisarius in Mesopotamia. He killed his Lakhmid rival in a decisive battle (554), and in 563 visited Justinian's court, where the imposing bedouin sheikh made a profound impression on the courtiers. While in Constantinople al-Harith secured the appointment of Jacob Baradaeus of Edessa as prelate of the Syrian Monophysite Church. During his and his son's reigns the new doctrine spread all over Syria.
