The transformation of Mard ō Mard from a Persian tradition to a literary topos
Ilia Curto Pelle, Classics, Princeton University,Class of 2022
Introduction
Albrecht Noth’s seminal book The Early Arabic Historical Tradition: A Source-Critical Study remains, a quarter century on, one of the most important and useful studies of literary topoi in the Arabic historical tradition of the 9th and 10th centuries. In one of the most important passages of his book, Noth argues that, in using Arabic sources for the reconstruction of the Arab conquests of the 7th century, “we must take an all-encompassing view of the forms and the biases of early Islamic tradition as a whole, in order to assess accurately even one occurrence.” He dedicates a large part of his book to studying the different literary schemata and topoi in Arabic futūḥ (conquest) narratives: their transferability from one event to another and the complications for the reconstruction of early Arabic history when this “[s]ystematization and schematization” prevails “over purposeful description of actual events…” One of the elements of the early Arabic conquests that he labels as a literary topos is the use of duels at the onset of battles between the Sasanians and Arabs. While he concedes that “single combat was beyond any doubt a custom of the early period, especially since this usage has its roots in pre-Islamic times,”his discussion of these duels is quite brief — only about a page in length. But the implications of this labeling of duels as topoi are huge. These are similar to those of his discussion of Persian commanders’ names, which Parvaneh Pourshariati argues contributed to a “skewed reconstruction of Iranian history,” which forces us to “reckon with this period of Iranian history in a vacuum that has been occasioned by our own lack of research”. This is even more so the case because we know of a Sasanian military tradition of single combat — mard ō mard (man to man). Therefore, we must investigate what this tradition and its usage in the Arab historical tradition tell us about the battles of the early conquest of Iraq. In this essay, I will argue that these duels had their historical basis in the tradition of mard ō mard, that the diverse descriptions of these duels in the first battles of the conquest of Iraq can make us fairly confident of their historicity, and that the internal controversies among our sources in the battle of al-Qadisiyyah testify to the transformation of this Sasanian military tradition into a literary topos.
Key terms
Before discussing the transformation of mard ō mard into a literary topos, it is first necessary to provide the reader with a brief discussion of the key terms in this paper and with a short reconstruction of the historical events of the early Arab conquest of Iraq. The first central definition of this paper is mard ō mard, the name given to the Persian custom of single combat in the scholarly literature. The term is translated from Middle Persian as “man-to-man” and was modeled after the cry that a Persian general would shout out to his opponents if they refused to submit to the rule of the Shahanshah and the Zoroastrian religion. This tradition seems to have preceded the Sasanian period, but it was under the House of Sasan that it became “a firm law code,” governed by strict regulations, and endowed with high ethical standards. For the Sasanian kings, military prowess was an important tool for dynastic legitimation, which led them to present their successes as victories of the king in decisive single combat.
Some examples include the battle relief at Firuzabad, the rock-relief at the necropolis of Naqsh-e Rostam, seen in figure 1, the Paris cameo of the capture of Valerian, photographer in figure 2, and the Picture Book of Sasanian Kings. In pre-Islamic literary works, there are two instances in which mard ō mard are recorded.
The first appears in Procopius. During the first day of the battle of Dara, a Persian cavalryman issued a challenge to the Byzantine soldiers and was subsequently defeated by the Byzantine Andreas.
This horrified the Persians, who sent a second soldier to face him and who was also defeated. While the story of the individual Andreas and his duel might be a purely literary device, as Whately asserts, John Malalas, whose history seems to have been “based on official documents,” did make mention of duels at another stage of the same battle. Therefore, although Andreas himself might have been mythical, the idea of a duel, initiated by the Sasanians, is not. We can find corroboration of this principle in an alternative description of such a duel. Malalas records that during the Roman-Sasanian War of 421-422, Bahram V offered a duel between his champion Ardazanes and a Roman champion to decide who the victor of the war would be.
The Roman champion, the Gothic foederatus (a non-Roman mercenary) Areobindus, was victorious and Bahram allegedly negotiated a peaceful settlement to the conflict. Though the notion that a Sasanian shah would let an entire war hinge on a single duel appears spurious, Areobindus’s duel is attested again in the Ecclesiastical History of Socrates Scholasticus: “Areobindus… killed the bravest of the Persians in single combat”. Shahbazi and Charles both seem to accept the historicity of this duel, even if it did not lead to the end of the war; especially given that Charles identifies that Malalas correctly designated Ardazanes, a member of the Immortals, as a horseman and recorded the duel as occurring on horseback. Therefore, even if we choose to not trust the two narratives verbatim, we cannot simply dismiss the Persian tradition of mard ō mard as a literary invention. While the exact historical parameters of ceremonial dueling in the Sasanian Empire are lost to time, the concordance of all these sources may give us reasonable ground establishing the existence of such a phenomenon. Until more evidence is discovered that can decisively confirm the exact ceremonial procedures and frequency of these ceremonial duels, we have to rely and interpret this tradition from the above-mentioned Byzantine written accounts, Sasanian rock reliefs, and, as we will see, the Arabic historical tradition.
Now let us briefly turn to the second important term in this essay – the literary topos. Here, we can readily accept Noth’s definition of a topos as “a narrative motif which has as its primary function the specification of content, and aims to elaborate matters of fact… and it is normally bound to description of a specific situation, definition of a brief moment, or characterization of a person.” Given that topoi are narrative motifs by their very definition, they can become transferable from descriptions of one event to other events and this transferability can turn the essence of passages from “the reporting of history” into “the deployment of literary stereotypes.” To use an analogy, if a person knows that Italians love pizza, then they might assume their one Italian friend ate pizza for dinner yesterday, even if they really had a burger. Similarly, if that Italian friend once ate pizza for dinner with his friends, someone might assume that they eat pizza for breakfast and lunch. Some might even choose to deploy this stereotype in descriptions of their friend to emphasize their love of pizza. In the same way, what happened in one battle could be transferred to another. This transferability of topoi can lead to cases where entire battles can be completely made up of literary topoi, at which point they turn into what Noth calls “undifferentiated reports” — events whose very historicity becomes dubious because of the lack of specific information about them. If we know that a particular event is described simply as a sequence of literary topoi, we will be forced to question whether that same event would have happened in the way the author describes it. Usually, historians approach primary historical sources in order to acquire information about an event, character, or some other aspect of a particular state or society. Given the lack of Arabic sources written during or shortly after the events of the conquest of Iraq, we are completely dependent on non-Arabic writers for acquiring contemporaneous interpretations of the rise of Islam. In trying to understand the viewpoint of the Muslim conquerors, we are dependent on compilations of later historians and compilers from the 8th, 9th, and 10th centuries. Therefore, it becomes important to understand how faithfully these sources reconstructed the history of the Arab conquest of Iraq. Given the chronological gap between the start of the 7th century, when Iraq was conquered, and the first descriptions of the event, it becomes necessary for historians to, as Noth proposes, “establish reliable criteria [author’s emphasis] according to which individual traditions or groups of traditions can be assessed — not only for their “historicity”, but in other ways as well.” Therefore, whether mard ō mard is used as a literary topos can determine how useful the Arabic historical tradition as a whole is as a source for this particular part of Sasanian military culture.
Historical reconstruction of the Arab conquest of Iraq
Next, we need to review the narrative of the Arabic conquest by focusing more precisely on the battles between the invasion of Iraq and the battle of al-Qadisiyyah, which included duels. In doing so, we will follow the most widely accepted sequence of events, but no exact dates will be offered due to the renewed disagreement in the field as prompted by Pourshariati’s early chronology for the conquest of Iraq. For the reader’s orientation, the events here would have occurred between A.D. 628 and 638.
The first phase of the campaign, shown on figure 3 (the green color indicates the presence of duels in descriptions of a battle) and mapped in figure 4, was led by the “Sword of Allah”: Khālid ibn al-Walīd. After subjugating al-Yamāmah in the Ridda Wars (“Wars of Apostasy”), Khālid marched on Ubulla, allegedly with the approval of the first caliph Abu Bakr. Khālid confronted a Sasanian army under Hormozd at the Battle of the Chains. Hormozd came forward and shouted: “Man to Man! Where is Khalid?” The duel that followed was won by Khālid and another Arab soldier despite the intervention of two other Persian soldiers on Hormozd’s behalf. The retreating Persian forces were incorporated into another army, which encountered Khālid at the Battle of the River. According to al-Tabari, three duels happened on that day and all three of the Persian generals lost their lives in battle. The victory at the Battle of the River prompted another army to confront Khālid at Walaja. The battle began with Khālid facing in single combat a “Persian who was equal to a thousand men.” The victory at Walaja was followed by similar success at Ullays, where Khālid defeated one of the chieftains of the Christian Arabs – Mālik ibn Qays, in single combat. After successful sieges at al-Hira and al-Anbar, Khālid charged surprisingly the Arab auxiliary force at ‘Ayn al-Tamr, capturing its general before his lines were arranged. At that point, Khālid left Iraq to assist the Muslim forces besieging the town of Dumat al-Jandal but was forced to return and confront several small Christian Arab and Persian armies with night attacks at Muzayyah, Zumeil, and Sanyy.
In the meantime, al-Qāqā ibn ‘Amr ibn Mālik al-Tamimī confronted one part of the Persian army at Huṣayd, where he and another Arab defeated their Persian opponents in two duels. There is no duel recorded at the final battle of Khālid’s campaign against a united Byzantine-Sasanian force at Firaz. Khālid was then ordered to assist the Arab forces in Syria and began his famous march through the Syrian Desert.
The second stage of the conflict, sketched out in figure 5, was led by al-Muthanna ibn Haritha and by Abū ‘Ubayd al-Thaqafī. However, the narratives of the engagements at Babil, al-Namariq, al-Saqatiyyah, the climactic engagement at the Battle of the Bridge, and even the Battle of Buwayb – which probably never even occurred as described in the sources – all conspicuously lack any occurrences of mard ō mard. The only instance of something resembling a duel is the fatal confrontation of Abū ‘Ubayd with the elephant at the Battle of the Bridge, whose “firm relation to reality” has been well-established by its attestation in almost all of the Arabic narratives of the battle.
The third stage of the Arabic conquest of Iraq is a direct result of the defeat at the Battle of the Bridge and the death of Abū ‘Ubayd. Sa‘d ibn Abī Waqqās now headed the Arab army, which would encounter the Persian imperial army under Rustam at the climactic battle of al-Qadisiyyah. The battle was recorded in great detail by the Arab histories. However, there is a lot of uncertainty among Arabic historians concerning the course of the battle, which also translates into the quantity of the duels and the people who fought in them. According to Mas’udi, there were duels on the first day of the battle, resulting in two victories for the Arabs. Sayf ibn Umar al-Tamimi puts forward two different estimates of the the quantity of the duels depending on his sources, both of which are collected in al-Tabari: Muḥammad, Ṭalḥah, and Ziyād point to two duels, followed by a Persian coming forward and shouting “mard ō mard” upon the start of the engagement, while Ismā‘īl ibn Abī Khālid points to a single confrontation between ‘Amr ibn Ma‘dīkarib and a Persian archer, who failed to kill ‘Amr before being chased and killed. The situation is even more complicated on the second day. On that day, Qāqā bin ‘Amr arrived with reinforcements from Syria and, according to Mas’udi, Sayf based on Muḥammad and Ṭalḥah, and the father of al-Qāsim ibn Sulaym ibn ‘Abd al-Raḥmān al-Sa‘dī, immediately came forward and defeated two Persians in two duels. However, Sayf also reports, on the authority of the father of al-Qāsim ibn Sulaym and al-‘Alā’ ibn Ziyād, that these two duels were instead fought by Al-A‘raf bin al-A‘lam al-‘Uqaylī. There is even more confusion concerning whether there was another duel happening at the same time as or after Qāqā’s second duel. Mas’udi talks about a duel between al-Awar bin Kutbah and the shahriar of Sédjestân (Sistan), which ended with the death of both participants. A similar tale is told in rather gory detail concerning the martyrdom of ‘Ilbā ibn Jaḥsh al-‘Ijlī ; this version comes from the father of al-Qāsim ibn Sulaym and al-‘Alā’ ibn Ziyād. Finally, Sayf mentions a version by Muḥammad and Ṭalḥah, which recounts that, while Qāqā was busy fighting the Persian al-Bayruzān, al-Ḥārith bin Ẓabyān bin al-Ḥārith was fighting another Persian called Binduwān. Thankfully, Muḥammad, Ṭalḥah, and Ziyād only relay Hāshim bin Utbah’s statement on the third day that “[t]he beginning of the battle is individual combat, and then the shooting of arrows.” The only other more precise piece of information concerning a duel on that day comes from Sayf on the authority of ‘Abdallāh bin al-Mughīrah al-‘Abdī, who relayed what he heard from al-Aswad bin Qays, who had heard from their elders, who had fought at the battle, that Shabr bin ‘Alqamah, who was “short, slender and ugly,” had fought a duel with a Persian. We know that early on the fourth day Rustam was killed (though the killer is debated) and that the battle ended with victory for the Arabs. After the battle, the Arab cavalry pursued the remnants of the Persian army under Jalinus, who would die in battle in personal combat with either Zuhrah bin al-Ḥawiyyah (according to three of Sayf’s sources) or Kathîr ibn-Shihâb al-Ḥârithi (according to Balādhurī). The only other duel that is mentioned between the victory at al-Qadisiyyah and the capture of Ctesiphon is at the small battle at Kūthā, where Zuhrah tricked the enemy general Shahriyār into fighting Abū Nubātah Nā‘il ibn Ju‘shum al-A‘rajī, a Tamīmī, by pretending that he was a slave and thus angering Shahriyār.
Mard ō Mard in the Arabic historical tradition: a topos or a historical event?
As we can see from the historical summary, the repetitive descriptions of duels between different individuals at the start of battles permeate the historical records of Arab historians, particularly in the case of the battle of al-Qadisiyyah. This can easily lead scholars to dismiss the duels in the early battles of the conquest of Iraq as a case of what Noth calls “systematization and schematization… over purposeful description of actual events.” We can clearly see how often a battle begins with a duel and how similar the structure of the narrative is: a battle starts, the commanders fight, and then the Arabs are victorious. In the case of the battle of al-Qadisiyyah, we even see new duels every day on the battlefields as if individual battles were starting each day. This should clearly make us suspicious if the author chose to, as Noth asserts, cast “actors of the early period of Islam in heroic roôles” by painting them as victors in numerous duels.
However, I would like to put forward three counter-arguments for why the events of the Battle of the Chains, the Battle of the River, Ullays, and ‘Ayn al-Tamr cannot be considered solely as instances of the use of mard ō mard as a literary topos. First, the duels in these battles do not fulfill Noth’s criteria for describing duels as a literary topos. Second, Sayf ibn Umar, who is the largest source of stories concerning these duels in al-Tabari, has been shown to actually be a more reliable source than previously assumed concerning Persian politics and customs. Finally, if we do accept that the duels were only topoi, then we are left with the question of why no duels are mentioned at all during the second stage of the Iraqi campaign, including at the probably ahistorical battles of Firaz and Buwayb.
Noth’s argument concerning duels as a literary topos is mostly speculative, despite his concession that single combat was “a custom of the early period, especially since this usage has its roots in pre-Islamic times”. He claims that victory in a single combat could be “counted as a badge of honor...” Therefore, he equates single combat with another topos - the recitation of names of participants in a battle. The claim that victory in a single combat can be a source of prestige is unobjectionable and, in fact, was the whole point of the ritual for the Sasanians, as shown in the discussion of mard ō mard above. But a closer look at the different descriptions of the duels at the Battle of the Chains and the Battle of Walaja can reveal that the possibility of using a duel as a topos does not mean that all these duels must be topoi. First of all, Khālid fought Hormuzd at the Battle of the Chains in single combat. While the formula ikhtalafā ḍarbatayn (“they exchanged two blows”) is indeed used, the contest does not end, as Noth would expect, but continues with the pre-planned intervention of Hormuzd’s bodyguards. Had Qāqā bin Amr not intervened, Khālid might have died. So, this is more a glorification of Qāqā than it is of the dueling Khālid. Compared with this quite detailed account, the duel at Walaja is presented with only one sentence: “On the day of al-Walajah Khālid fought in single combat a Persian who was equal to a thousand men and slew him.” Here, the glorification of Khālid is clear, especially given the subsequent anecdote of him having a meal over the dead Persian’s body. Also, the topos of the “thousand man” has been identified and discussed already by Noth. And while the latter clearly is an example of single combat as a topos, it lacks the formula “they exchanged two blows” that Noth uses as an argument for the formulaic nature of duels in the historical accounts. This formula is also not present in the detailed description of the duel at the Battle of the River, Ullays (where Khālid fought an Arab, not a Persian), or ‘Ayn al-Tamr. Noth’s argument concerning the use of rhyming names has already been addressed by Pourshariati since the “rhyming” of the names of Persian commanders can be explained by the Middle Persian suffixes required for forming names.
Moreover, Sayf ibn Umar has often been judged as an imperfect source due to the internal contradictions concerning descriptions of particular events and characters within his collections, some of which have been seen in the above discussion of the battle of al-Qadisiyyah. Indeed, Noth claims that “Sayf could not possibly have had a unified conception of history”, which meant he could not possibly be assigned to a school of Islamic history. However, Pourshariati has shown in her book that Sayf indeed has a coherent internal logic and that the details he presents are “so detailed that it is incredible that scholarship has dismissed them for as long as it did.” Noth himself concedes that “a great many of the ‘Persian traditions’ have thoroughly individual traits and cannot be explained away as constructions out of Islamic futūḥ.” Therefore, it is quite surprising that the individuality of the descriptions of duels in the early part of Sayf’s narrative has not been taken into consideration in his discussion of duels as a literary topos. This does not mean that Sayf is a perfect source and that everything he recounts is true. For example, the outsized role of Qāqā bin Amr both at al-Qadisiyyah and Nihāwand has been largely, if not fully, fabricated. However, if we keep in mind the biases inherent in his narrative, such as his desire to extoll the deeds of his predecessor Qāqā bin Amr, and that the reports that Tabari has collected have not passed down to us “in unadulterated form” and so must be even more carefully scrutinized, as we might do with every other written source, then Sayf can be the source of more useful information than he previously was given credit for, including for the early conquests of Iraq and the role of mard ō mard in them.
Finally, if, as Noth asserts, we accept the use of duels in all of these battles as literary topoi, then we are left with an important question: why do we not find any reports on duels at the battles between ‘Ayn al-Tamr and al-Qadisiyyah? Even more strikingly, we do not find any duels at two battles whose historicity is quite dubious: Firaz and Buwayb. Indeed, if Buwayb was entirely concocted to serve as Muthanna ibn Haritha’s swan song, as Donner has shown, one might expect to see the wounded general prevailing in single combat against his enemies or at least some duels appearing in the smaller skirmishes before the Battle of the Bridge. After all, we do see instances of duels in the first battles of the invasion of Iraq, which would have been comparable in scale. Yet Sayf and other sources of Al-Tabari remain silent. Perhaps Pourshariati’s point that the Arabs seem to have adopted a strategy by al-Qadisiyyah of targeting Persian nobles to weaken the Sasanids might explain the absence of duels in these battles. This might also explain why, after the death of Qārin at the Battle of the River, “the Muslims did not fight anyone whose nobility had lapsed among the Persians”. After losing two important nobles (Hormozd and Qārin) in battle, the Persians would avoid participating in a mard ō mard against the Arabs. Indeed, the duel at ‘Ayn al-Tamr would be fought against an unprepared Arab commander, while the “thousandman” topos at Walaja would have been concocted to glorify Khālid. This can also explain the absence of duels in the second phase of the campaign. And it might show us how, in the narrative of al-Qadisiyyah, mard ō mard came to be transformed into a literary topos.
So, let us turn to the battle of al-Qadisiyyah. Tabari and Mas’udi are the only two authors who mention duels during the battle. These duels are not present in other Arabic and non-Arabic sources, such as the Armenian historian Sebeos, the Syriac Khuzistan Chronicle, and the Arab historians al-Balādhurī and Al-Ya’qubi, while Ibn Ishaq’s version of the battle of al-Qadisiyyah includes only the confrontation between ‘Amr ibn Ma‘dīkarib and the Persian archer. This should make us suspicious concerning the different duels described on that day. Indeed, Noth describes the battles of al-Qadisiyyah, Yarmouk, and Nihāwand “as a group which consists essentially of topoi and anecdotes strung together.” Al-Qadisiyyah was a pivotal battle in Islamic history, so much so that the Caliph Umar allegedly united all Arabs who fought in that battle under the common denominator of ahl al-Qādisiyyah (people of al-Qadisiyyah) and assigned to all of them two thousand dirhams. In doing this, he did not take into consideration whether these men had converted to Islam while the Prophet was alive or had converted later, whether they had remained on Abu Bakr’s side in the “Wars of Apostasy” or had been part of the “ahl al-riddah” (people of apostasy) and so had rebelled against Abu Bakr. Regardless of the motivation of such change being attributed to Umar or nott, participation at the Battle of al-Qadisiyyah became a marker of status for the descendants of the Arabs who fought in it. Indeed, those who had joined Islam after the battles of al-Qadisiyyah and Yarmouk received half of the ahl al-Qādisiyyah – only 1000 dirhams. This can explain Sayf’s fabrications of the role of Qāqā ibn ‘Amr, as both were members of the Banū Tamīm and so Sayf would have had ulterior motives to glorify a member of his tribe. Thus, he used the platform that the writing of history provided him with to play up the role that his ancestor played in the narrative of this pivotal battle of Islamic history and so enhance his own and his clans’ social prestige.
In this sense, dueling became connected in the battle of al-Qādisiyyah with the killing/capturing topos, described by Noth: “There can be no further doubt that the killing/capturing motif… was used by various groups, especially genealogical ones, which sought to claim glorious deeds of the past for themselves.” The difference between the two topoi is that it does not matter whom an ancestor engaged in a duel. The only thing that would matter for the descendants of that figure would be that their ancestor fought and distinguished himself in the battle of al-Qādisiyyah, which would have large implications for their status in Muslim society, as we have seen. The reason why today we have no objective criteria to prove or disprove the historicity of specific duels, as Donner and Noth note, is that many of Sayf’s sources and he himself would have attempted to play up the importance of their respective tribes, families, and ancestors by linking themselves to a figure such as Qāqā ibn ‘Amr or Al-A‘raf bin al-A‘lam al-‘Uqaylī. That some, if not all, of the duels at al-Qādisiyyah have been invented is increasingly likely, especially if we accept that Persian nobles would have avoided engaging the Arabs in mard ō mard after the numerous defeats and the many scions of noble houses who had lost their lives in battle with the Arabs. Indeed, Rustam never challenged Sa‘d ibn Abī Waqqās to a duel and never sent a proposal of a mard ō mard in the way that Bahram V did in Malalas’s account. Similar concerns would govern other pivotal battles, such as Yarmouk and Nihāwand, and thus explain why a duel is present in Al-Tabari’s account of the battle of Yarmouk. Once dueling became transferable, dislocated from its basis in the Persian ritual of mard ō mard, it started behaving as a topos. In a way similar to other topoi, even if duels were once anchored in eye-witness recollections of the battles, once they came to be used in the Arabic historical tradition, they became transferable and could be used by the author in contexts completely different from those particular to the tradition of mard ō mard. Just as elephants were part of Sasanian military tradition, but were transformed into a literary topos (one example of which is their marginal descriptions at the battle of al-Qadisiyyah), thus also duels, which were initially instances of Sasanian generals performing the tradition of mard ō mard before the start of battles, became a stereotype of the expected behavior of Persian forces and so would be deployed in other contexts as a topos. The two duels that Al-Aḥnaf won during the conquest of Khurasan provide one example of dueling as a topos, albeit one deemed an undifferentiated report by Noth.
Conclusion
This paper has attempted to problematize Noth’s brief labeling of duels as a literary topos in the Arabic narratives of the conquest of Iraq by introducing the Persian custom of mard ō mard in the conversation. This novel connection then traces the transformation of personal combat from a custom into a literary topos. After a discussion of the historicity of mard ō mard, literary topoi, and the historical narrative, the paper turned to evaluate the descriptions of duels in the early conquest by evaluating the assumptions made by Noth in his monograph, reemphasizing the credibility of Sayf ibn Umar as a source of factual information, and creating possible explanations for the unexplained lacunae in reports of duels between the battles of ‘Ayn al-Tamr and al-Qadisiyyah. In the process, the paper emphasizes the individual character of the different duels in the narratives of the early battles in the conquest of Iraq. Finally, the essay provides an explanation for the internal contradictions within the narratives of the battle of al-Qadisiyyah – that later collectors of Arabic histories stumbled upon or created embellished narratives emphasizing the participation of an individual or tribe at al-Qadisiyyah to acquire social and possibly economic benefits as descendants of these figures. We wrapped up our analysis with a discussion of the usage of single combat as a literary topos, its relationship to other topoi, such as elephants and the capture/killing of famous people, and the opportunities for future research on this topic. In conclusion, while Noth’s discussion of dueling as a historical topos has its merits, historians cannot simply dismiss any and all duels in the Arabic historical tradition as invented. Instead, a more complicated position must be taken, which takes into account similarities and difference between descriptions of duels, the historical context of the battles which we have from other sources, and the importance of these descriptions for Arab conceptions of the past more broadly.
Investigating the similarities and differences in descriptions duels between events which are spatially, temporally, and contextually completely different (such as the battles of Ṣiffīn, Nihāwand, and al-Qadisiyyah) would enrich our perspective on the use of duels as a literary topos in the Arabic historical tradition. Such studies would help us identify variations of the dueling topos and, hopefully, develop objective criteria for determining the historicity of such accounts. Since we generally agree with Pourshariati’s assertion that “the victors have managed to write the Iranian history of late antiquity”, including existing and possibly newly discovered Persian primary sources and secondary interpretations becomes not only a luxury but a necessity for any future discussion of this topic.
Acknowledgments and Bibliography:
I would like to take this opportunity to thank Professor Jack Tannous of Princeton University for his continuing support in the preparation of this paper for publication. He has been an inimitable source of inspiration, knowledge, and insight. I would not have been able to complete this paper without our conversations on the topic. My thanks also go to Alisia Pan and Esther Reichek for their meticulous review of my work, their exact comments, and their wonderful suggestions for preparing this paper for publication. Finally, I would like to thank all of my closest people for putting up with me and supporting me in the preparation of this first publication of mine.
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