Caucasian Elites between Byzantium and the Caliphate in the Early Islamic Period

This chapter treats the Caucasian borderland between the Byzantine and Islamic empires in the East Caucasus, called Caucasian Albania/Arrān. It first supplies an overview of the history of the area prior to the rise of Islam, then focuses on the struggle for the Caucasus between Byzantium and Islam. Following an exposition of the history of the region in Umayyad times, the chapter traces the growing Muslim incorporation of the Caucasus within the Islamic empire beginning in the mid-eighth century; the settlement of Arabs in the area in the ninth century; and the area’s political fragmentation from the mid-tenth through mid-eleventh centuries. Throughout, it traces the continuing role of Christian elites, even under Muslim rulers. The chapter demonstrates that the loss of status of the late Roman elites of Syria in the early Islamic period is not true of the Caucasus, due in part to its distance from the imperial centers in Syria and Iraq and its mountainous topography, and in part to its proximity to the empires of the Byzantines and Khazars, whom the local chiefs could call upon for support or play divide and rule between them and the agents of the Caliphate.