This chapter aims to present a story of North Arabia in which the Arabians play the part of the protagonist rather than the minor role in a story of empires. This is be done by investigating the Konfliktbeziehung (conflictual relation) between empires and local dynasties and analysing the influence of foreign forces in the self-representation, cross-cultural assimilation and propaganda of the Arabian elites. Through a focus on degrees of participation and mediation as well as on buffer zone policies, a comparison is made between the North Arabians and those of other similar political entities in the first millennium. In a similar fashion to other first-millennium political entities, the Jafnids adopted the Roman lingua franca and its system of belief. Nonetheless, they found a way to rebrand Rome’s ‘identity signs’ as their own, as suggested by their adherence to Miaphysitism. Therefore, the chapter sheds light on their relationship with faith and the Church through an inquiry into their role as agents of cultural transformations in sixth-century North Arabia.

The second chapter narrates the history of North Arabia between the late third and fifth centuries. In around 224, the Arsacid dynasty in Iran was defeated by the Sasanians, who immediately embarked on a war against Rome. The renewed animosity between the two superpowers of Late Antiquity had repercussions in the Near East, causing the fall of valuable buffer states such as Palmyra and Hatra and the employment of Arabian allies in areas such as North Ḥijāz, where the Romans could no longer easily exercise direct control. These Arabian allied confederacies did not have fixed geographical boundaries and were also often unstable in their alliances. After shedding light on the sociopolitical situation of North Arabia, the chapter focuses on the impact of Constantine’s conversion to Christianity, which had the result of creating a cultural network. It argues that Christianity had an instrumental role for the North Arabian urban elites and a more limited role among the poorer classes, especially the rural ones.