Note 83 — Chapter II

Concerning Ḥíra and its history the reader may consult an admirable monograph by Dr. G. Rothstein, Die Dynastie der Laẖmiden in al-Ḥíra (Berlin, 1899), where the sources of information are set forth (p. 5 sqq.). The incidental references to contemporary events in Syriac and Byzantine writers, who often describe what they saw with their own eyes, are extremely valuable as a means of fixing the chronology, which Arabian historians can only supply by conjecture, owing to the want of a definite era during the Pre-islamic period. Muḥammadan general histories usually contain sections, more or less mythical in character, "On the Kings of Ḥíra and Ghassán." Attention may be called in particular to the account derived from Hishám b. Muḥammad al-Kalbí, which is preserved by Ṭabarí and has been translated with a masterly commentary by Nöldeke in his Geschichte der Perser und Araber zur Zeit der Sasaniden. Hishám had access to the archives kept in the churches of Ḥíra, and claims to have extracted therefrom many genealogical and chronological details relating to the Lakhmite dynasty (Ṭabarí, i, 770, 7).