ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses some detail about a particular strand of continuity that links the pre-Islamic Middle East and its Islamic successor: Arab leadership. For scholars of early Islam the question has long been one of the Arabian uniqueness of Islam versus its relationship to broader events and themes contemporary to the late antique Middle East and within the sliding scale there are various competing positions. Key to any investigation of early Islam is the question of what sort of unification, if any, was underway in sixth-century Arabia. The holy men who feature in the histories of the late antique Arab elites are often ascetics, ‘cut adrift amid the barren landscape of the desert’, or roving ordained clerics without a secure base, like Jacob or Theodore. The indistinct lines between super-phylarchs and holy men underscore the ease with which the former transferred many of the characteristics of tribal leadership to the more complex political arena of the sixth century.
