The ‘Entry’ of Iyād Into Tanūkh. Invasion, Migration and Integration in Late Antique North‐Eastern Arabia

ABSTRACT Tanūkh appears in the Arabic‐Islamic sources as a non‐genealogical, heterogeneous group, formed in Baḥrayn, developed in Iraq, and ultimately attested in northern Shām . During this progression, several factions of the Hijazite ‘phylogenetic’ (super)tribe of Iyād ‘entered into ( dakhala fī )’ Tanūkh. Focusing on Aramean and Sabaic epigraphy, we aim to reappraise ‘Tanūkh’ as the western limes territory of the Sasanian world, corresponding to Iraq—and never to Syria. After a first flourishing and expansion toward Roman Arabia (c. 280–330), the kingdom of Tanūkh re‐emerged in the mid‐fifth century, with the foundation of al‐Ḥīra's ‘camp’ of King ‘al‐Nuʿmān’, and likely dominated parts of Maʿadd under ʿAmr (b.) al‐Aswad. During this period, while the eastern Maʿaddite ʿashīra of ʿAbd al‐Qays dominated Baḥrayn, ‘Iyādh’ may have served as its northern counterpart. Both happened to be neighbours in seventh‐century Kūfa (ʿAqūlā) after, during this fourth to sixth century phase, the entirety of Iyād had settled in, ‘integrated into’, various sites at ‘Tanūkh’. This process was the result of multiple—albeit uncertain—modes of migration, invasion, and likely domination. Indeed, it seems that Iyād initially served as a useful genealogical anchor even for several early Muslim elites of Iraq, before fading from collective memory. Meanwhile, like many other native Tanūkōyē groups ‘into’ which they had ‘entered’, Iyādites migrated to the Syriac Miaphysite Jazīra and Qinnasrīn, and beyond.