Jabalah IV ibn al-Harith

Jabalah IV ibn al-Harith
King of the Ghassanids, Roman Phylarch
Reign	ca. 518 – 528
Successor	Al-Harith V
Died	528 Thannuris
Spouse	Māriya
Issue	Al-Harith V

Jabalah IV ibn al-Ḥārith (Arabic: جبلة بن الحارث‎‎), known also by the tecnonymic Abū Shamir (أبو شمر), in Greek sources found as Gabalas (Γαβαλᾶς), was a ruler of the Ghassanids. At first an enemy of the East Roman (Byzantine) Empire, he raided Palestine but was defeated, becoming a Byzantine vassal in 502 until circa 520, and again in 527 until his death a year later.

Jabalah was the son of Al-Harith (Arethas in Greek sources) and grandson of the sheikh Tha'laba. He first appears in the historical sources in 498 during the reign of Byzantine emperor Anastasius I (r. 491–518), when, according to Theophanes the Confessor, the Diocese of Oriens suffered from large-scale Arab raids. The head of one of the Arab groups invading Byzantine territory was Jabalah, who raided Palestine before being defeated and driven back by the Byzantine dux Romanus. Romanus then proceeded to evict the Ghassanids from the island of Iotabe (modern Tiran), which controlled trade with the Red Sea and which had been occupied by the Arabs since 473. After a series of hard-fought engagements, the island returned to Byzantine control.

In 502, Emperor Anastasius concluded a treaty of alliance with the Kindaites and Ghassanids, turning them into imperial allies (foederati). With the outbreak of the Anastasian War against Sassanid Persia, the Ghassanids fought on the Byzantine side, although only one operation, an attack against the Lakhmid capital of Hirah in July 513, is explicitly attributed to them. The Ghassanids settled deep inside the Byzantine limes, and in a Syriac source for July 519 they are attested as having their "opulent" headquarters at al-Jabiya (Gabitha) in the Gaulanitis (Golan Heights), where Jabalah had succeeded his father as king over his tribe. With the rise of the pro-Chalcedonian Justin I (r. 518–527) to the imperial throne in 518 and the subsequent re-imposition of Chalcedonian orthodoxy throughout the Empire, however, the staunchly Monophysite Ghassanids withdrew from the alliance in circa 520 and retreated into the northern Hejaz.

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