Lakhmid Kingdom

The Lakhmid kingdom, also called the kingdom of al-Hira or the Nasrid kingdom, was an Arab state on the desert frontier of Sasanian Mesopotamia that lasted from the late third century until 602. Its rulers, the Banu Lakhm, are often called the Nasrids after their founder; they made al-Hira, near the later site of Kufa, their capital, and from there governed the nomadic Arab tribes of the frontier. The Lakhmids were client kings of the Sasanian shahanshahs, defending the western approach to Iraq against Rome and its own Arab allies, above all the Ghassanids, and their warriors fought in the long Roman-Persian wars of late antiquity. Al-Hira became a famous centre of Arabic poetry and of Nestorian Christianity, and its court drew poets and scholars from across Arabia. The kingdom's power rested on a balance between loyalty to Ctesiphon and the independence of the desert chiefs, and when that balance broke the state fell quickly: in 602 the Sasanian king Khosrow II deposed and executed the last Lakhmid ruler, al-Nu'man III, and the frontier passed under direct Persian administration. Arab tradition remembered the fall as a warning to kings, and the region soon became the stage for the first Muslim conquests outside Arabia.