Empire: World History - 293. The Gaza Erotic Literature Festival: Byzantine Gaza (Part 3)

Episode Date: September 24, 2025

How did Gaza become a centre of learning and festivals during the Byzantine era? Who was St. Porphyrius of Gaza, and why did he destroy pagan temples in the city? Why is the Early Christian period considered a Golden Age for Gaza? Anita and William are joined by Peter Sarris, Professor of Late Antique, Medieval and Byzantine Studies at the University of Cambridge, to discuss Byzantine Gaza and the rise of Christianity in the region. Join the Empire Club: Unlock the full Empire experience – with bonus episodes, ad-free listening, early access to miniseries and live show tickets, exclusive book discounts, a members-only newsletter, and access to our private Discord chatroom. Sign up directly at empirepoduk.com  For more Goalhanger Podcasts, head to www.goalhanger.com. Email: [e-mail] Instagram: @empirepoduk Blue Sky: @empirepoduk X: @empirepoduk Assistant Producer: Becki Hills Producer: Anouska Lewis Executive Producer: Neil Fearn Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

If you want access to bonus episodes reading lists for every series of Empire, a chat community. Discounts for all the books mentioned in the week's podcasts, add free listening and a weekly newsletter, sign up to Empire Club at www.mparpoduk.com. Hello and welcome to Empire with me, Anita Arnan. And me, William Durhampool. So as our series on The History of Gaza progresses, we're now going to look at one of the great golden ages of the area, and that is late antiquity. Now that actually is a period when most of the Mediterranean world was experiencing a dark age of decline and disintegration. But conversely,

in Gaza, this was a time of great prosperity and intellectual flourishing. For even as the Romans were abandoning Britain and the Western Empire bled under the assaults of the Goths and the vandals and the Huns and all, those sorts of peoples, Gaza, in probably perhaps found a new role for itself as the centre of literary and intellectual achievement, as well as being a major port, famous for the export of frankincense, perfume, and sweet wine. This is going to be a very different episode from the succession of catastrophes, which we went through as the Assyrians and the Babylonians and the Persians and the Greeks all came and smashed up Gaza, because this is going to be a period of stability, prosperity and growth.

And here to tell us about it is another great friend of the show, and one of my favourite historians, Peter Saris, Professor of later antique, medieval and Byzantine studies at the University of Cambridge, an author of Justinian, Emperor, Soldier and Saint. Peter, so good to have you back. I mean, you were brilliant talking about Helena and Theodora, and I love, you know, very strong women. As anyone who listens to this podcast knows.

We never, ever heard that before, Alita. This is a new revelation. It's a secret, but sometimes I feel I ought to share. So, Peter, when we're talking about Gaza during this period, Tell us how exactly it slid into the Christian period. Well, the transition of Gaza into the era of the Christian Roman Empire is one that will lead to enormous cultural efflorescence in the city, but it is in itself initially quite a complicated and traumatic transition. The Christian empire is establishing itself over the course of the 4th century

after the conversion of the Emperor Constantine to Christianity in the very early, 4th century, is foundation of a new capital for the Roman Empire at Constantinople, and then by the end of the 4th century, the establishment of Christianity as the official religion of the Eastern Roman Empire ruled from Constantinople, governing the lands of Anatolia, Asia Minor, Syria, Palestine, and Egypt. And when we're talking about the early Christians of Gaza, I mean, we're talking about converts, I guess, converts from which parts? And which backgrounds? Well, Christianity will take root in Gaza extremely slowly.

So the sense one has is that until the late 4th century, the emergent Christian community of Gaza is a largely rural population. We know that the earliest bishops appointed to Gaza, so the leaders of the Christian community is charged with looking after the interests of the Christians, representing them to the emperors, are primarily operating in the area around Gaza, rather than in the city of Gaza itself.

So that's already suggesting we're dealing with a predominantly rural population. But when a new bishop is appointed to the city of Gaza itself, St. Porphyrious is this? St. Porphyrious, the Christian population of Gaza is estimated at only about 1%. Now, those Christians themselves will be individuals who have come to Christianity from a variety of backgrounds. Some of them have adopted Christianity made background in Judaism. Others in the city itself are more likely to be adopting Christianity from a background in traditional Greco-Roman paganism. And traditional Greco-Roman paganism is very strong in the city of Gaza. I think that whereas the elite of the empire at large is convert into Christianity quite rapidly over the course of the second half

of the fourth century, Gaza really appears to be somewhere where the traditional paganism of the civic elite is much more resilient. Peter, just to clarify this so that everyone What we're talking is another sort of Mediterranean port situation, much like anywhere else around the East Mediterranean, with a mix of different ethnic groups. Is that right? In Gaza, in the fourth century, you're going to be dealing with in the city. The elite is going to be primarily Greek-speaking. The lower-class population are going to be primarily speakers of Aramaic. But you will also have merchants and traders from all over the Mediterranean world there. We also know that in the countryside, as well as there being a Jewish community,

there are Samaritans in the countryside as well. So a very ancient, near-eastern, indigenous monotheistic community. So it's linguistically mixed, it's culturally mixed, but the elite has adopted the largely Greek-speaking culture of the Hellenistic East, which then the Romans are consolidated. So, Peter, when we were talking to Joe Quinn in the last episode, she was saying how, despite all this history of conquests and so on, that actually the DNA shown by archaeology of the people who are living in this region today are much the same as the people that were living at her period. So do we imagine that there's a sort of broad continuities, despite all these

empires coming and going Persian, Babylonian, Roman, and now Byzantine? Yes, one would expect a broad continuity, especially in the countryside, where one would find the same families over generations working the land, effectively irrespective of which new masters they might be serving. You mentioned St. Porphyrius, now those of us who didn't have the Catholic upbringing of William, or indeed maybe William as a while. He's an Orthodox upbringing. Yes, okay. Yes, that's right.

I remember from last time. What do we know about St. Porphyris? And also, I've seen many iterations of his name, St. Porphyry being another one. I mean, who was he? And how should we address him? I think you could address him as you like, so did so sufficient reverence. So Porphyry is the anglicised version of the original Greek name Porphyrios, which is Latinized as Porphyrias. Porphyry or Porphyrius is from probably quite a posh background in Thessaloniki.

where I have my second home. So he comes from quite an upper-class family in Thessaloniki, and he inherits quite a lot of money, we're told, from his father. But he's already become quite a pious individual, and he decides to give his money to the church, and he goes off to Egypt, which is the emergent centre of the monastic movement in the Mediterranean world, and he becomes a monk. So this is clearly a man with a very strong spiritual calling. After training as a monk in Egypt, he then heads to Jerusalem, where he again lives a spiritual life, living off arms. He's given by Christian pilgrims, and also we're told working as a cobbler. Now, at around this point, we're dealing now with the year 395, the bishopric, the sea of Gaza becomes vacant,

and Porphyrios is appointed to the sea, has made the new bishop of Gaza. Now, in many ways, he's not a very good candidate for it, in that coming from Thessaloniki, he's He doesn't really know. He's very unlikely to know the native language of much of the population, Aramaic. He'll have Greek. We assume he's got some decent Latin. There's a lot of Latin spoken in Thessaloniki. He's got no real previous experience of church leadership. And given how strong the pagan community is in Gaza, my suspicion is that he's sort of regarded as, you know, he's not really a high flyer and they think they may as well give this very difficult task to someone who'll just to do their best, but they haven't really got many prospects of getting very far with it, given

the strength of paganism there. From Kobler to sort of rabble-rousing bishop in many respects, because he does manage to stare up a crowd, and there is a story about him leading a monastic mob to destroy the Temple of Zeus. Tell us a bit more about that. Well, when he turns up, I think he is struck by the intensity of the hostility he meets on the part of the pagan population of Gaza, not just in terms of the civic elite, but also the peasants of the surrounding countryside. So we're told, for example, in the biography, the life of him that survives, when he lands at the nearby port town of Mayuma, which then feeds the city

of Darza, that the local peasants have sort of strewn the road he has to follow to the city with thorns and brambles to make his arrival as unpleasant as possible. He then turns up and he has all sort of rouse with the civic elite when his steward barochas goes out to the countryside to collect rents from the peasant working church estate, he gets beaten up. So there's unremitting hostility from pagan high and low alike. To clarify, Peter, this is because everywhere else around the Mediterranean, temples are being knocked down and replaced by churches. And they don't want that to happen in their town. At around the time that Porphy has been appointed bishop, the Emperor Theodosius has not only made now Christianity the official religion of the Roman Empire,

but has also ordered the closing of temples. Now, to what extent those temples are closed down on the ground will depend a lot on the relations between local governors and local elites and local power relations, but clearly the pagan elite of Gaza are anxious and treats the arrival of a new bishop with considerable hostility and suspicion. Now, face with that hostility, what Porphyry or Porphyrios does is he makes two embassies to Constantinople. And this is where we get to one of your powerful women. It's a very important figure here.

She's perking up. Go on. So he makes two embassies to Constantinople, by which point the emperor in Constantinople is a rather lackluster emperor called Arcadius. His brother, honoris, ruling the Roman Empire, Archadius ruling to the east. But Archadius has married a woman called Eudoxia, who takes her Christianity extremely seriously and who has got into a series of arguments, in fact, with the head of the church in Constantinople, the patriarch of Constantinople, the wonderfully named John Chrysostom, the golden mouth. He and those around him like their high living too much.

She's a much more puritanical, hardline Christian figure. And Porphyry manages to get access to the Empress via Christian courtier, and persuades her to persuade the emperor to issue an order, insisting that the new anti-pagan legislation be applied in Gaza and agreeing to provide him with soldiers to close the temples down. So in Gaza, it's not just going to be with the help of aggressive monks that he will go around closing down the pagan temples. He's able to turn up with troops from Constantinople

and also troops from the nearby capital of Maritime Caesir. Peter, I think in Britain we have this idea of sort of very cosy images of medieval monks as sort of friar tuck figures with with porches and pottering around with sort of beehives and that kind of thing. But these early Christian monks of this period are quite sort of fundo thugs, aren't they? In Alexandria we've seen, is it say Cyril, destroying places of learning and lynching lady philosophers in the streets and that kind of thing? They're militants. Yes, the early church is a fundamentally sort of anti-establishment, anti-societal, anti-authority movement.

And that sort of charismatic authority within the early church has really been inherited by the leaders of the monastic movement who capture the popular imagination with the radicalism of their religious vision and who also represent the most hardcore and aggressive elements in the church at this time. Garza becomes then a magnet for, you know, the most zealous of the zealots, I suppose you could say, because then, you know, another monk who is pretty high. hard course, now known as St. Hilarian, he joins the fray in Gaza. Tell us about him. Is he a local lad, actually? St. Hilarian has been acted in Gaza slightly earlier than Porphyry. He's a local

lad who, again, adopts Christianity and who will try to spread Christianity within the city somewhat earlier. There's a very interesting story, for example, we're told, as with all cities in the Roman East, the population of Gaza are obsessed with chariot racing. Charot racing is the big sport everyone's obsessed with. It's like a Premier League of its day. Yeah, exactly. And one of the teams in Gaza becomes associated with the Christians. And before one of the big races, Hilarion blesses the Christian chariot races with Holy Water. And they win. And this is a great sort of boost to the fortunes of Christianity in the city early. But Hilarion is responsible for founding a very important monastery near the city. And after Pauphor is closed down the temples, there will be a

monastic boom around Gaza. But what's really interested with the closing down of the temples is that, so you have the premier temple in Gaza, the so-called Mar-Neon. Initially, when Porphyry turns up with the soldiers, closing down the seven other temples is relatively straightforward. The soldiers are happy to do that. There were attempts made to make sure that the temple treasures aren't just stolen by the Christian locals. It's rather like this establishment of the monasteries in Tudor England. It's relatively ordinary. But the closing down of the Marnese, neon, the premier temple, this is much more sensitive, and it requires a lot more cajoling on the part of Bishop Porphyry to get the truth to do it. And then there's the issue of what you do with

the temple itself. There's a remarkable story told in the saint's life, of there's a debate about whether you just turn the temple into a Christian church, such as has happened elsewhere. And then a church service, supposedly, a seven-year-old boy suddenly speaks as if the voice of God is coming through him, demanding that the temple be destroyed in its entirety as it is stained with the blood of sacrifices. The boy does this in the local language of Aramaic, and he's then summoned before the bishop, who threatens to beat him if he's making this up, if someone's told him to say this. And the boy then supposedly miraculously speaks in Greek, which has never been taught, once again, demanding that the temple be destroyed in its entirety. And this, a miracle story,

the speaking in tongues has reported. And it's that that then gives, as it were, Porphyry, the license with the spreading of this story to obliterate the pagan temple and build the great cathedral there. Now, as well as building the cathedral, there'll be other churches built. Paul is very keen to win local hearts and minds by also building charitable institutions, hospice for local pilgrims to visit, giving money to the poor, building a new processional way, linking the cathedral to the other new Christian places of worship so that lavish Christian ceremonies and processions on the streets can replace the pagan ones. that have been so important to the life of the city.

So as well as the acts of destruction, he's also trying to win hearts and minds through these charitable endeavours. And a lot of the charitable endeavours and the new church building is funded by the Empress Eudoxia who has lent in the military support as well. So her support is absolutely crucial

to this process of Christianisation of the landscape. And Peter, just give us a very brief picture panning out in a sense from Gaza to the rest of Palestine. Suddenly now this land is filling with monks, the desert has become a city. That's the phrase that you see, isn't it? Yes, the area around Gaza will be one of the three greatest concentrations of monasticism in late Roman or Byzantine-Palestine. You have the area around Gaza, where we know

archaeologically of around 15 very substantial monasteries that are built across the 5th into the 6th centuries. We have a massive investment in monasteries in Jerusalem itself, and then increasingly in Judean Desert as we're moving out. Now, whereas the monasteries of the Judean Desert are isolated, they attract pilgrims, but they're sort of monasteries in the desert away from civilization, centers of aceticism and withdrawal. The monasteries around Gaza are much more involved in the social and economic life of the region, much more involved with the life of both the peasantry and the urban elites. These monasteries around Gaza are very important, centres for viticulture, for wine production. And we have a marvellous series of letters exchanged between monks from Gaza,

this character, Barstunufius and his correspondent, John of Gaza, who are referred to as the two old men of Gaza. And their letter correspondence helps us to establish there's a very interesting network between these different monasteries, discussing religious affairs, spiritual affairs, but also with members of local society, both high and low, approaching them for advice to do with the most muddimentary in day-to-day concerns. It's sort of a self-help clinic as well as a place to go to for religious advice as well. Peter, in Egypt, the monks often have a reputation as being anti-schololally. So Anthony has some quote about how, that you only need to read one book, the Bible, that you don't need to read anything else. But in Gaza, you get the impression

that the monks are part of a new wave of learning that now takes over. And there's the school of rhetoric. There's this extraordinary growth of Gaza as a place you send your kids to be educated. It suddenly becomes the sort of the Harvard or the Yale or the Oxford and Cambridge of the region. Gaza has clearly a very rich intellectual infrastructure, I think fed partly by its very close proximity to Egypt and Alexandria. One of the great advantages of Gaza is it's at the crossroads between Egypt, Syria and Palestine in an economic sense, but also in an intellectual sense. and Alexandria is one of the great centres of learning in the ancient world, and almost all of the figures we know to play an important part in the intellectual life of Gaza have been through or have associations with Alexandria. Now, in Alexandria, learning is very much associated with the old gods and paganism, and attracts a great deal of hostility on the part of hardline elements in the Egyptian church, for whom even having sort of statues of pagan gods in your garden,

you think they look nice, regarding the signs of crypto paganism. So even a sort of classicizing taste is regarded with great suspicion by hardline Egyptian monks. In Gaza, as you say, a very different culture seems to be emerging, where some of the early monastic leaders are clearly men of considerable culture themselves, and we see them corresponding with teachers at the schools of Gaza. And also interestingly, in Gaza, in a way there would have been inconceivable in some other parts of the empire by the time he reached the early 6th century, the leading intellectual figures who are teaching classical Greek texts, Greek rhetoric to the posh young men of the city, also seem to be instructing them in Christian scripture in a way this is very unusual.

Now, I think the way in which these teachers, we have this character, for example, Procopius of Gaza, who writes important biblical commentaries, as well as very classicizing literary works depicting the world of the old gods. I think someone like Pocopis of Gaza is able to get away with playing with so many pagan, classical, mythologizing motifs because he has such good Christian credentials as well. And this is something that's very unusual in Gaza. So that is a different, the one that you've spoken of, you know, the very learned Percopis, is a different Pocopis to the one we spoke about in your last visit. Although it's not a terribly common name, also active in the sixth century is one of the greatest

historians to have written in the Greek language at any moment of its history, Vucopius of Caesarea. Now, that Caesarea is up the coast and is the capital of the province of Palestina, Prima, in which Gaza sits as well. And these worlds are very interconnected. Now, Vucopius is a very classicizing figure, very well educated in the world of classical Greek text, his historical imagination is rooted in the writings of the likes of Thucydides and Herodotus. And it has been suggested by some that he may have been, received his rhetorical training, which is sort of the university element, as it were, of a young man's education this period, in Gaza. We have no hard proof for that, but it is a

plausible suggestion. And so, Peter, you've got in Gaza now an institution. What is it standing relative, I mean, we all know the Library of Alexandria down the coast. Where does it stand in the hierarchy of great classical places of education by the 6th century? Is it where everybody who's got a teenager seeks to send their teenager for an education, like the Oxbridge, if you like. Is that where they want to go? I think we need to think of the school of Gaza more as a sort of circle and collection of scholars who hang around there rather than an institution.

It's a school in the same way as you can have a school of artists. Right, or the Bloomsbury Group. Yeah, exactly, or the Bloomsbury Group, exactly. So what you have is clearly the library infrastructure, the education infrastructure, the wealth of the local elite, is sufficient in Gaza to attract lots of scholars who operate there, who take on private pupils, but there is also an established, governmently funded professorship based in Gaza, and the person who is regarded as the leading scholar is an appointed to that position and sort of presides over the broader intellectual community.

Now, what's very important, I think, in terms of creating a sort of a hock-house environment intellectually in Gaza, I think part because the city is so wealthy, is still doing so well from interregional trade and so on and so forth, is that a lot of the local, Trained, as well, the locally educated, then remaining Gaza and forged their careers there. And then there's further investment in the cultural life of the city and its celebrations and its festivals than the both social and literary occasions as well. Well, I think we should delve into that because we have somebody here, William Dorempal, who knows the thing or two about literary festivals. But Gaza had a dozy of a literary festival. Join us after the break and we'll talk about that. Welcome back. So Gaza, you mentioned just before the break, was a site of... festivals of learning. And they had one in particular that I'm interested in, the Dionysen or Dionys, and I'm saying it properly, Dionysus, I know how to say, but Dionys and Festival of Roses. So what was that

about and what happened in that festival? It sounds quite saucy. I mean, it would be with Dionysus involved. I mean, is it sort of an erotic lip fest? Is that what we're talking about? The life of Gaza is punctuated by a whole series of festivals, all of which have pagan origins but all of which seem to survive into the Christian era. And the so-called Festival of the Roses, a spring festival is one of the most richly recorded of these. Now, it is possible, not certain, but it is possible the festival of the Roses that takes place in Gaza,

which is associated with literary competitions, what have you, but also with lavish dining and parties, may be the same as a celebration referred to elsewhere in the empire as the Mayuma, which is a spring festival of Syrian origin associated with aquatic competitions, with naked dancing, with swimming, with feasting, and which becomes a byword for lasciviousness and immorality on the part of Christian moralists. Yeah, the monks are not going to like this at all. Oh, what I was thinking?

What was going to blow their robes off, isn't it? Well, exactly. Around the same time as Porphyry is trying to spread Christianity in the city of Gaza, the imperial authorities are also trying to crack down on these Mayuma celebrations. Now, we know that these Mayuma celebrations are introduced, for example, in Italy, to the city of Austria, the port-town of Austria, by migrants from Gaza. And this is why it has been argued that the spring ceremony, the ceremony of the roses in Gaza is probably also including these rather orgiastic

celebrations of the Mauma cult that we find described elsewhere in the empire. I love this. And then, of course, where you have or geastic behavior, you've got to have wine. And one of the things we also read about at this period is Gaza wine. I went to the extraordinary saved treasures of Gaza exhibition in Paris last month. And there you have this line of what they call torpedo amphorae or torpedo jars, which are these very distinctive jars with the kind of nipple at the bottom, large, man size, six foot long amphorae, which were full of sweet Gaza wine, which seems to have been highly celebrated. Yes, Gaza was. famous in the ancient world and still in the Byzantine world as producing by far the best wine in the Mediterranean. The chateauy chem of its day. Exactly, or sort of Chateau Musa. Given it's sweet, I like to think it's the sort of the ancestor of the Cypriot dessert wine commandaria, which is then developed further by the Crusaders later on. We should stress your Cypriot background. Absolutely. It's everything good has a Cypriot connection at some point. Now, what's interesting with the wine industry is not only the very high repute of gars and wines, but also,

also that as we see the growth of monasteries in the area, that the monasteries are very involved in wine production. A lot of our monasteries in this period, in the 5th, 6th, and early 7th centuries AD are actually very highly commercialised enterprises. And so part of this tension between Christian elites and pagan elites during the period of Christianisation is actually probably the church taking over a lot of the really good vineyards. So we've got the wine, Peter, and if you want to drink wine, you want to know that it's wine a clock. Ha ha, that's a terrible segue. But I do want to talk about the wondrous clock of Gaza.

Now, we talked about the two brocopias. And this is the brainchild of clever procopius rather than smutty precopheus, the original brocopius, if you like. Tell me about this clock and why it was so wondrous and so famous in the ancient world. One of the problems with Gaza is that, due to its very turbulent history, we have very little evidence for it archaeologically. But because of the literary school there, we do have these marvelous descriptions, There's a form of literature that they really specialising called the Ekhrasis,

which describes works of art or architectural monuments or what have you. This is something the School of Gaza really specialises in. And we have this marvelous account of this very complicated clock that stands in the center of Gaza, which both celebrates the sun god and the labors of Hercules, with each hour being depicted by a separate labour of Hercules. It's clearly a very complex piece of machinery. It's water-powered, right? Yeah, yeah.

There's a great deal of very interesting research being done on the way in which the Romans and the Greek specialize in these remarkable automata, very little evidence for which survives physically into the modern world, but clearly, well, of remarkable complexity. So in a sense, we have evidence for the great sort of technical expertise and skill of Roman mechanical engineering and what have you preserved, in these literary texts. Has anyone tried to remake it or make one like it? Not to my knowledge,

but there have been certainly attempts to make, so for example, we also have very nice mosaic depictions of organs, for example, musical instruments as well, mechanically powered instruments are probably feeding off similar technology. Peter, we've got this picture of this very prosperous town, it has a reputation for monks, it has a reputation for orgies, it has a reputation for intellectuals, it's making delicious wine. What is sort of powering the economy? Is it still, as it was in the early period, frankincense and myrrh and perfumes coming in from the Red Sea and from Arabia, and Gaza's role as a major port? And the Nabatian still sort of dominating that trade?

I mean, are they the ones who are doing this still? So Gaza in the 6th century is still profiting from its traditional role, port area, which is allowing for goods coming from the East, aromatic's, spices, probably to some extent, silk entering the Mediterranean world. Now, I think the contours of that trade are changing in that over the course of the 6th century, you have a sort of a struggle between the Roman Empire ruled from Constantinople and its great superpower rival, the Sasanian Empire of Persia, over control of Indian Ocean trade. And the Persians are with growing success forcing more and more of that trade up the Persian Gulf,

and the Romans are seeing less and less of that trade coming up the Red Sea. So we're going to see a strangulation of that trade coming from the East Sea. So I think that aspect will start to decline in terms of Gaza's prosperity, but I think it's still very important in the early 6th century. I think the wine industry is crucial, and also Gaza is feeding off the factors that are leading to much greater broader prosperity in the Eastern Mediterranean at this time. In the fourth century, you've had the foundation of a magnificent new imperial capital at Constantinople,

and this has led feeding Constantinople, trading with Constantinople, has been a major boost to transportation across the Mediterranean by sea, to investment in trade by the sea lanes, has sparked off a broader commercial expansion. You're also seeing a growing commercialization of the economy by virtue of the enter Constantine's minting of a magnificent new gold coinage, the Solidus, describes the dollar of the Middle Ages, which would be the greatest currency down to the 11th century, and also rising population levels. And Gaza and the area around it is able to profit

from each and every one of these developments as well. And Peter, we had earlier images of the Nabatians coming in with sort of camels from the desert. Do we still imagine Gaza as the kind of terminus of caravan routes, with people coming from the Hajas as well as the Nabatians, with Arabs coming in? On the Egyptian side of the border, you have the port town of Pelusium, and a lot of trade is then travelling up the coastline from Pelusium to Gaza. You either go west to Alexandria or you go east

to Gaza, but also in-land trade, and a lot of contacts with the Arabian peoples beyond is still going to be very important, and indeed increasingly militarily important. Well, that's exactly it. This is what I'm trying to create a picture of, because we're seeing in old accounts, in traditional accounts, we're coming up to what are called the Arab invasion, and the idea that the arrival of Islam at the end of this period. But you get the impression in a lot of more recent work that there are already Arabs coming as traders into Gaza. These nomads from the desert are bringing these goods in. And as things begin to get more rough and tumble in the 6th century, with the borders of Byzantium not being guarded as they once were.

And the Persians are, you know, completely assaulting at any opportunity. Exactly coming in, that you get Arabs being drafted in as soldiers by Byzantine emperors like Justinian. So essentially what happens is in the early 6th century, we have the revival of warfare on a massive scale between the Eastern Roman Empire ruled from Constantinople and its great superpower rival, the Sassasian Empire of Persia. Now, that warfare, the direct hot warfare between the two empires is essentially along the border that runs now between Syria and Iraq. But this hot war along that direct frontier also leads each empire to engage in what has been described as a sort of late antique version of the Great Game, whereby each empire is then vying for advantage in the Caucasus, the north, and in Arabia to the south. And so the peoples of Arabia start to be drawn into the great superpower conflict between the Romans and the Persians,

and particularly in terms of policing the frontier of southern Palestine, we start seeing the Romans investing very heavily in local Arabian military chieftains and lords. They are being converted to Christianity. They're being drawn into the imperial embrace that way. And a lot of imperial investment upgrading these Arabian leaders politically and militarily. But also a massive program of rebuilding. You know, you've painted a picture of a sixth century, which is in sort of tumult, and it's dangerous, you know, and you've got instability now. So this man, Bishop Marciano, of Gaza, he is responsible for a massive rebuild. I mean, is it a fortification, or is it a beautification? Is it both things? What does he do? These are both things. With the revival of warfare with

Persia, the imperial authorities invest very heavily in re-fortifying the region and its defencing depth. The imperial authorities are just building fortiers along the direct frontier zone. You have building work and fortification all the way into the Sinai Peninsula, for example. but often, as we see in the case of, say, the monasteries and catherine's in Sinai, for example, monasteries can also serve as fortifications and the distinction between these structures isn't always entirely apparent, even sometimes to archaeologists. So a lot of this building work is serving a dual purpose of civic investment, regional investment, but also fortification, with a lot of the building work being entrusted often to bishops as well as to governors. By this stage, as well as Aramaic and the

elite speaking Greek. You've probably got quite a few people in Gaza already now speaking a form of Arabic? A form of Arabic. Arab identity is something that is taking shape over this period. So quite often into the six and seven centuries, we will often refer to these people as Arabians rather than Arabs. So Arab identities would work in progress at this time. And the form of Arabic that will be found, for example, with the rise of Islam in the Quran, the scholars would argue is influenced by forms of proto-Arabic we associate with the Nabatians and what have you, so that's showing that sort of connections, that earlier world you were talking about with Joe Quinn.

And there's always this story that, was it the grandfather of the Prophet Muhammad, had already led caravans to Gaza during this period, that this was a world that they knew? So by virtue of this growing Roman and Persian interest in Arabia strategically, we also have growing involvement with Arabia economically. and the region of the Hejaz, the area around Mecca, appears to be connected in trading relations with the world of Roman Palestine and Syria to the north. The Prophet Muhammad's family, and Muhammad himself is supposed to have engaged in trading trips into Roman territory northwards, but also crucially, by virtue of the way in which Arabia is being drawn into this broader

superpower struggle, we also start seeing much greater cultural and religious penetration of the thought world of Arabia. With the Romans trying to spread Christianity in the region, engaging in mission activity amongst the Arabs or Arabians to try to draw them into a more pro-Roman orbit, and with the Persians bolstering the regions, non-Christian and particularly Jewish communities, the Jewish communities facing growing persecution in the Roman Empire and who are regarded, therefore, as more likely sources of support for the Persians in their imperial endeavours. I mean, you've got these sort of great bodies moving sort of around each other, these great ideologies. But then the Persians do. invade Gaza and Jerusalem too, don't they? As I say, the early 6th century, we have this major revival of warfare between the Roman and Persian empires. And this escalates over the course of the century and culminates in the early 7th century when the Persians were able to take advantage of a civil war that breaks out in

Constantinople to engage in the large-scale conquest of Syria, Palestine and Egypt. and in the year 626, even tried to besiege Constantinople itself with the aid of some Hunnic-style allies called the Avars. Now, the loss of Jerusalem to the Persians in the year 614, and Palestine at large in that same year, is a massive blow to imperial prestige, not least because the Persians also seize the relic, the holiest relic in Christendom, the true cross. It had supposedly been discovered by the Empress Helania in the early 4th century, and they take the true cross into captivity, as it were, they would have regarded as protection in Persia. In a brilliant feat of generalship, one of the most brilliant feet of generalship in the history of warfare, the Roman Emperor Heraclius, manages to outmaneuver and outmarch

to Persians in the Caucasus, strike into the heart of the Sasanian Empire in what is now Iraq, bearing down their capital and Satisipon in modern Baghdad, and is able to bring down the Persian regime, is able to restore the True Cross to Jerusalem, which he does in person in the year 630, and is able to restore the Roman Empire's old frontiers. But it's really a nominal restoration, and it's a restoration that is also associated with major recriminations and bitterness and struggle in Palestine itself, in that the area's Jewish community are regarded as having been in cahoots with the Persians and the persecution of the area's Jewish population, which have been mounting under Christian Roman emperors becomes particularly severe under this emperor Heraclius.

So then we have reports coming from southern Arabia that a new religious leader has turned up. This guy, Muhammad, who's united all the tribes, has conquered great swathes of territory, and getting as close to Gaza as Akaba at the top of the Red Sea, with whose governor he signs a treaty. But Muhammad dies soon after in 632, and no one expects that the southern Arabs would be in any sort of, sort of position to threaten the victorious army of the Byzantines. And then, in 634, a local unit commander in Palestine named Sergius insults a group of Arab allies outside Gaza, refusing to pay them the money that they were owed for guarding the desert frontier. And according to one Byzantine chronicler, there were some nearby Arabs who received small payments from the emperor to guard the entrance

of the desert. But in that time, some unit came to pay the soldiers and the Arabs, according to custom came to receive their pay, but the eunuch drove them out saying that the ruler scarcely pays the soldiers, how much less these dogs aggrieved, the Arabs departed for their fellow tribesmen. These they led to the countryside of Gaza, the entrance being by the wastes of Mount Sinai. So we've got these Arabs suddenly coming out of the desert and they ambush the small Byzantine force sent against them. The history of Gaza is about to change for ever. And luckily we've got Peter coming back in the next episode. to take us through this very controversial period of the rise of Islam and the Islamic conquest of Palestine.

And if you want to hear that episode right now, just join the Empire ClubUK.com. That's EmpireClubukuk.com and there's a way of listening to it right now without having the wait. Till the next time we meet, it's goodbye from me, Anita Arnan. And goodbye from me, William Durimple.