ABSTRACT

In AD 503, when the Byzantine emperor Anastasius mustered the largest ever army (or so Procopius says) against the Persians, Joshua the Stylite, who was witness to the war, wryly remarked, To the Arabs of both sides this war was a source of much profit and they wrought their will on both kingdoms.’1 This example demonstrates how the people who emerged under the ominous, but vague name of Saracens were to some extent the creation of the great powers who used them. But it also throws light on the nature of the so-called barbarian invasions of the later Roman Empire, since the Saracens were not a new, unknown hoard of invaders, but a people who had long been known to the Romans and had even been a part of the Roman empire.