Last updated: May 23rd, 2025 at 12:19 pm · Est. Reading Time: < 1 minute
The Lakhmid and Ghassan Arabs were at each other’s throats.
In addition to being proxies of their respective superpowers in wars, both had their enmities, too. They had heavy hearts for each other and many times tended to settle their account by waging a war without involving the superpowers. “And a little later,” narrates Procopius, “Arethas [Harith bin Jabalah] and Alamoundaras [Mundhir of Lakhm], the rulers of the Saracens, waged a war against each other by themselves, unaided either by the Romans or the Persians. And Alamoundaras captured one of the sons of Arethas in a sudden raid while he was pasturing horses, and straightaway sacrificed him to Aphrodite [‘Uzza]. Later, they both came together in battle with their whole armies, and the forces of Arethas were overwhelmingly victorious, turning their enemy to flight; they killed many of them. And Arethas came within a little of capturing alive two of the sons of Alamoundaras; however, he did not succeed.”1 The behaviour of the two vis-à-vis each other was not that of states but that of tribes. Raiding each other, killing the other as much as possible, and capturing the other’s movable property was the aim of these wars. Occupying land was not on the agenda, as it belonged to the respective superpowers.