Al-'Awasim (the Syrian frontier zone)

Al-'Awasim was the name of the part of the frontier zone between the Byzantine Empire and the Caliphate in the north and north-east of Syria. Its forward strongholds were called al-thughur, the frontier, and those further to the rear al-'awasim, literally "the protectresses". In the time of 'Umar and 'Uthman the Muslim strongholds were those between Antioch and Manbij, while the thughur lay in a no-man's-land stretching north of Antioch and Aleppo to Tarsus and the Taurus, where Heraclius had deliberately depopulated the towns when he withdrew from Syria. ¹

The Arabs made no attempt for a while to extend conquest into Byzantine territory beyond the Amanus and the Taurus. The region, periodically raided by Muslims, was called al-dawahi, the outside country, or dawahi al-Rum. The Umayyads began to occupy its strategic points at road junctions and mountain passes. The withdrawal of the Mardaites after Justinian II's treaty with 'Abd al-Malik left the zone undefended, to the disaster of the Byzantine Empire. The whole zone first depended on the djund of Homs; from the time of Yazid ibn Mu'awiya it was made a separate djund, that of Kinnasrin. In 170 AH (786) Harun al-Rashid detached from Kinnasrin the strongholds of Manbij, Dulük, Kurus, Antioch and Tizin, and called them al-Sawasim; in 173 AH the province had 'Abd al-Malik ibn Salih as governor, with his residence at Manbij. ²

The early authors define the name in different ways: al-Baladhuri, Ibn Shaddad and al-Kalkashandi each give a reason for it. Al-Kalkashandi held that al-thughur and al-'awasim were different names for the same thing, which the entry thinks is incorrect, since the two were distinct from an early period, though they were used interchangeably once the province was formed. The awasim and the thughur were often under a single command, sometimes with the djund of Kinnasrin, and sometimes the thughur formed a separate province. The geographers disagreed about which localities belonged to the awasim. In the tenth century its capital was Antioch. Byzantium reconquered the region in the tenth century, when Nicephorus Phocas obliged the emirate of Aleppo to cede the whole western and northern part. After that al-'awasim remained simply a geographical expression, used by Arab geographers into the Crusader and Mamluk periods. ³

Information on the economy is sparse, but the region seems to have been fairly prosperous in 'Abbasid times. Ibn Khurradadhbih gives the tax of the djund of Kinnasrin and the awasim as 400,000 dinars, and Kudama 360,000. The population was very mixed: indigenous Christians of the towns and settlements, the Harajima of the Amanus; Arab tribes, especially Kaysites, and the Kilab as far as Dulük; and foreign groups brought from India by way of Mesopotamia, such as the Sayabija, brought to Antioch by Mu'awiya, and the Zott, settled there by Mu'awiya and then by al-Walid ibn 'Abd al-Malik, who bred water buffaloes that cleared marshy land of lions. ³