Mardaites

The Mardaites (Greek: Μαρδαΐται) or al-Jarajima (Syriac: ܡܪ̈ܕܝܐ‎; Arabic: الجراجمة‎‎ / ALA-LC: al-Jarājimah), inhabited the highland regions of the Nur Mountains. The Mardaites were early Christians following either Miaphysitism or Monothelitism and bear a possible, but unconfirmed, relation to the Maronites. Little is known about their ethnicity, it has been speculated that they might have been Persians or Armenians, yet other sources claim them to have been native to the Levant or possibly even from the Arabian peninsula. Their other Arabic name, al-Jarājimah, suggests that some were natives of the town Jurjum in Cilicia (Tachkastan). They were joined later by various escaped slaves and peasants during their insurgency and were said to have claimed territory from "the Holy City" to the "Black Mountain".

According to some historians, after the Muslim conquest of the Levant, the Mardaites gained a semi-independent status around the Nur Mountains within al-ʿAwāṣim, the Byzantine-Arab border region. They initially agreed to serve as mercenaries for the Arabs and to guard the Amanian Gate, but their loyalty was intermittent and they often sided with the Byzantine Empire as their agenda varied.

According to Greek and Syriac historians, their territory stretched from the Amanus to the "holy city", the latter often identified as Jerusalem, although more likely to refer to Cyrrhus, also called Hagioupolis, the capital of Cyrrhestica, in upper Syria.

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