In this carefully researched work, Mohammad Rihan undertakes to reconstruct the history of the ʿĀmila tribe in early Islamic history. This is a particularly daunting task. ʿĀmila was not a well-known and documented tribe, either before or after the Islamic conquests. The paucity of sources, and their nature, make it difficult to trace the historical path of any tribal group, even those more renowned than ʿĀmila. The standard, albeit cryptic, foundation myth for ʿĀmila is that they migrated from Yemen to the Syrian desert sometime in the pre-Islamic period, converted to Islam around the time of the conquests, and settled in the area of Jabal ʿĀmil in what is now Lebanon, where they became early converts to Shiism. Rihan seeks to up-end this traditional narrative and offer an alternative.
Rihan begins by scouring textual and archaeological sources for the earliest traces of ʿĀmila in Syria. He finds hints of ʿĀmila's presence at Nimrud and in biblical texts, which he treats with appropriate scepticism. Rihan is more confident that ʿĀmila played a role during the glory days of Palmyra, protecting caravans travelling in the region. Eventually, ʿĀmila, along with Tanūkh, Judhām, and most famously Ghassān, became part of the Byzantine foederati, relocating to southern Palestine in the process. Here ʿĀmila survived the tumult surrounding the Byzantine abandonment of Ghassān and retained their role as protectors of the frontier until the arrival of Muslim forces. The religious orientation of the ʿĀmila during their service to the Byzantines is unclear. Rihan suggests that they were vaguely Christian, retaining elements of their previous paganism and that they were not particularly concerned about religious matters: instead, they simply served as pragmatic, paid protectors of the frontier.
It is unclear when ʿĀmila abandoned their Byzantine patrons in favour of the Muslim invaders. Rihan finds evidence that they may have joined the Muslims before the battle of Yarmūk, but there are also indications that they were on the Byzantine side at Muʾta three years later and perhaps at Tabūk the following year. He concludes that at some point ʿĀmila made a pragmatic decision to switch sides and to continue to function as defenders of the frontier, only with new patrons whose payments arrived more reliably. Some of the confusion about ʿĀmila's role in the initial conquests stems from their near invisibility in the sources, which sometimes conflate them with Ghassān, Judhām or Kalb. Whether they converted to Islam in conjunction with their acceptance of new patrons is uncertain.
Rihan argues that during the Umayyad period, ʿĀmila became important supporters of the Umayyad caliphate, whoever the caliph happened to be at any given time. They settled largely in the junds of Filasṭīn and Urdunn and were sometimes referred to as the ahl al-Filasṭīn, the ahl al-Urdunn, or more broadly as part of the ahl al-Shām. Rihan speculates that ʿĀmila fought on the Umayyad side at Ṣiffīn and Marj Rāhiṭ. He is more certain that they fought the Khawārij in Iraq and defended al-Ḥajjāj during the revolt of Ibn al-Ashʿath. Despite fluctuations in the fortunes of the great tribal blocs of Qays and Yaman, ʿĀmila apparently retained their role as defenders of the caliph, whoever he may be, turning against their Yamani kinsman Ibn al-Muhallab and, more surprisingly, serving both Khālid al-Qasrī and his nemesis Yūsuf b. ʿUmar. Their role in the final days of the Umayyads, like the events and their descriptions in the sources, is quite confusing. Ultimately, they remained loyal to Marwān b. Muḥammad, despite his Qaysi tendencies. The Umayyads’ collapse inspired some ʿĀmilis to migrate westwards, while others retreated into obscurity. Rihan does not offer a clear explanation for the tribe's inability or unwillingness to pursue the adaptive policies that allowed them to weather previous regime changes.
Rihan's portrayal of ʿĀmila during the Umayyad period is consistent. They were loyal supporters of the regime regardless of tribal or religious factors. His analysis of the sources is sometimes a little too convenient – he finds ʿĀmila where he wants to find them. When the sources do not mention them, he sometimes assumes that they are subsumed under the label ahl al-Urdunn, or ahl al-Shām, or even subordinate to the Kalbis. Usually he treats the words of the ʿĀmilī poet ʿAdī b. al-Riqāʿ (the only ʿĀmilī source) as the voice of the tribe, accurately recording ʿĀmila's exploits, but when ʿAdī supported Ibn al-Muhallab, Rihan dismisses him as being out of sync with his tribe. Rihan does acknowledge occasional speculation about events where the sources are silent. One wonders, though, whether he is speculating too far.
After presenting his new narrative, in which the ʿĀmila are Umayyad loyalists, only vaguely religious, and consistent in supporting their powerful patrons, Rihan returns to the traditional story of how ʿĀmila landed in Jabal ʿĀmil. He finds no evidence for their presence there until the third century ah. Rihan dismisses later Shiite historiography, which asserts that ʿĀmila came to the mountain during the Rashidun era and were among the earliest Shiites, as polemic “based on little more than fantasy” (p. 136). He then rebuts the Shiite legend that Abū Dharr converted the ʿĀmila to Shiism, arguing that Abū Dharr never entered ʿĀmila territory and was not actually a Shiite. Instead, Rihan suggests that Shiism could not have taken hold in Jabal ʿĀmil until the third or fourth century ah. He does not offer evidence to support this speculation.
Rihan's work offers an interesting illustration of how, through careful use of sources, one can begin to reconstruct histories of individual Arab tribes and move beyond the simplistic Qays–Yaman dichotomy. At the same time, it serves as a reminder of the dangers of reading more into the sources than they actually say, as well as the continuing influence of modern historiographical and political disputes on scholarship, both traditional and revisionist.
