In the province of Hatay, in southern Turkey, there is a mountain range locally known as Nur Dağları. Arabs call it Jabal al-Lukkam, and in Spanish, its Greek name, Amanus, has been adopted. It spans approximately 200 kilometers in length, with its highest peak being Mıgır Tepe or Bozdağ, standing at 2,240 meters. It was also the home of a Christian people who, with the support of the Byzantine Empire, managed to maintain their independence against the advance of the Caliphate until 708, when they were defeated. Nevertheless, they were allowed to keep their faith in exchange for military collaboration. These were the Mardaites.

Although some Maronites claim to descend from them, they should not be confused. The Maronites are Christians of the Syriac Church of Antioch who are fully aligned with the Catholic Church in doctrine, differing only in the rituals they celebrate (the Antiochian liturgical tradition), the use of Western Syriac (with Lebanese Arabic as a supplementary language), and the unique structures of their institution (headquartered in Lebanon and led by a patriarch). In contrast, the Mardaites adhered to the Council of Chalcedon (451 AD) and were therefore Orthodox.

Theological differences lay in the two doctrines followed by their groups. The first was Miaphysitism (or Henophysitism), which holds that in Jesus Christ, there is a single, united nature, both human and divine. The other was Monothelitism, which accepted two natures in Jesus Christ—human and divine—but with a single will. Preached by Patriarch Sergius of Constantinople, Monothelitism sought to bridge Monophysitism, as taught by the monk Eutyches, who recognized only one nature in Christ, and Trinitarian Christianity, which maintains that God is one being in three distinct persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. A sort of middle ground.

Mardaites
Byzantine icon with the effigy of St. Cyril, Patriarch of Alexandria. Credit: Ted / Wikimedia Commons / Flickr

That’s as far as religion is concerned, but what about their ethnicity? Not much is known. Some experts believe the Mardaites were Zoroastrian Persians who converted to Christianity, based on linguistic analyses linking them to the Amardians or Mards, an Iranian nomadic people who, according to Strabo, inhabited the mountainous region south of the Caspian Sea in Classical times. However, this might have been a nominal transfer, prompting others to broaden the possibilities and suggest they were Armenians, Arameans, or a mix of the three.

There are those who, considering their name in Syriac (gargumaye) and Arabic (al-jarājimah), trace them to the city of Jurjum, located in Cilicia. In fact, the Arabic word marada is the plural of mared, which can be translated in several ways, all relative to something grand and, in a sense, applicable to the Mardaites from the Muslim perspective of the time: a giant, a mountain, a supernatural spirit, or even a stubborn rebel. In any case, they were united by religion, not by language or ethnicity.

Regarding the latter, it is important to note that this group did not remain isolated and pure; they received a significant influx of escaped slaves, primarily Greeks and Arameans fleeing Umayyad expansion, which could have substantially altered their original ethnic composition. Another prominent hypothesis is the Greek one: the Mardaites were Hellenes, though not necessarily from Greece, but from some indeterminate point in the Levant or even the Arabian Peninsula, which they called Mardistan, northwest of Turkey’s Lake Van. This theory is based on two arguments.

Mardaites
The Amanus mountains as seen from the Turkish province of Hatay. Credit: Radyokid / Public domain / Wikimedia Commons

First, linguistically, a Greek trace can also be observed since the Byzantine Empire used the Hellenic term Μαρδαΐται in its medieval Greek vernacular. It was synonymous with apelatai or akritai, terms used by the Byzantines to refer to border soldiers who guarded the Empire’s eastern frontiers against the Muslims, as celebrated in the 12th-century romantic epic Digenes Akritas (Digenes meaning “two races”; Akritas meaning “frontiersmen”).

As the title suggests, they were light infantry—also cavalry, known as trapezitai or tasinarioi—recruited among the native Byzantine and Armenian population between the 9th and 11th centuries, forming a mix of professional troops and local militias. They carried out raids and skirmishes, helped people evacuate, and protected them when the enemy conducted raids, harassing them until reinforcements arrived. However, they were also known for banditry, and in the Balkans, they were referred to as chonsaroi (thieves, in Bulgarian).

Returning to the Hellenistic argument for the Mardaites, another factor to consider is that they always remained loyal to the Byzantine Empire, following its directives to confront the Muslims, unlike, for instance, the Maronites. It is true, however, that it remains unclear whether their name reflects their non-integration into the political authority of the emperor in Constantinople or the fact that they lived in the mountains, a challenging terrain that allowed them to resist the Umayyad advance.

Mardaites
The Levant around 700 AD, then under the Umayyads. The map shows the Mardaite strongholds of Mount Lebanon and the Black Mountain. Credit: Jack Keilo / Wikimedia Commons

Since the Amanus mountain range constituted a natural boundary between the Arab and Byzantine domains, the wall separating Cilicia from Syria stretched from the southern Taurus Mountains and the Ceyhan River to the Mediterranean, between the Gulf of Alexandretta and the mouth of the Orontes. There were two main passes to cross it: the one known in antiquity as the Syrian Gates (in Belen—not the Palestinian city but its Turkish namesake) and the Amanian Gate (in Bahçe, also in Turkey), with another further north called the Nurdağ Pass.

As mentioned, the territory of the Mardaites extended from northwest Syria to Galilee, and they claimed it reached what Greek and Syrian historians refer to as the “sacred city.” This is often identified with Jerusalem for obvious reasons, but it seems more likely they were referring to Hagiopolis, also called Kyrrhos or Cyrrhus (unrelated to the Persian king Cyrus), founded by Seleucus I Nicator and the capital of Cyrrhestica, a region located between the Antioch plain and the former Hellenistic kingdom of Commagene.

After the Levant was conquered by the Rashidun Caliphate—the first caliphate, which lasted from 632 to 661 and had four caliphs, with Medina as its capital—the Mardaites obtained semi-independence in their region, Marada (with its capital in the Lebanese town of Baskinta), though integrated into Al-Awasim, the province bordering the Byzantine Empire. This privilege was granted in exchange for their service as mercenaries controlling the aforementioned Amanian Gate. However, historical circumstances often determined their loyalty, which they sometimes extended to the Emperor of Constantinople.

Regardless of whom they served, their lands frequently became a sanctuary for numerous runaway slaves, increasing the population and diversifying the ethnic composition of the Mardaites while strengthening their military forces. Since most of these fugitives were Greeks and Syrians fleeing their Muslim masters, the caliph Muawiya ibn Abi Sufyan, founder of the Umayyad Caliphate in 663, was compelled to endure being a tributary to Emperor Constantine IV—or perhaps even to the Mardaites themselves.

Mardaites
The Muslim expansion. Credit: Romain0 / Rowanwindwhistler / Wikimedia Commons

This situation worsened between 668 and 669 when Justinian II dispatched the Mardaites on a campaign in Syria to secure control of the region. During these operations, which took them to what is now Lebanon, another wave of enslaved and subjugated peasants seized the opportunity to escape and join them. Consequently, the Umayyads faced intensified humiliation and, under a second treaty, had to pay the Byzantines half the tribute from Cyprus, Armenia, and Iberia (not Hispania, which they had not yet reached, but the Caucasian kingdom that is now Georgia).

To secure peace, the emperor committed to relocating approximately twelve thousand Mardaites to Isauria (it is possible that the future iconoclast Emperor Leo III “the Isaurian” was related to them) and to areas in Greece such as Nicopolis (in Epirus), Laconia (in the southern Peloponnese), and the island of Cephalonia, to repopulate these regions after previous wartime demographic declines. In these places, the Mardaites strengthened their Hellenic ties by joining the Vardariot guards of the Byzantine army (palace guards of Magyar origin) and being recruited as rowers and sailors in the Cibyrrhaeot fleet (a thema on the southern coast of Asia Minor) based in Attalia (modern Antalya).

Nonetheless, the majority of their population remained in the Amanus and continued their tumultuous frontier existence, periodically raiding caliphate territory until 708. That year, the Umayyad prince Maslama ibn Abd al-Malik, who had just captured Tyana (a Byzantine city in Cappadocia at the foot of the Taurus Mountains, strategically important for controlling the Cilician Gates), avenged the previous year’s death of General Maimun “the Mardaite” by defeating these troublesome Christian highlanders and seizing their lands.

Mardaites
Mardaites and other ethnic relocations after 685 AD. Credit: Yannis Stouraitis / Public Domain / Wikimedia Commons

The Mardaites were expelled and resettled throughout Syria, scattered to prevent uprisings. Despite this, Maslama not only allowed them to keep their religion but also invited them to join his forces for future expeditions—initially against the Byzantines, later against the Khazars, and in 717 during the second, unsuccessful siege of Constantinople. After that, the Mardaites fade from history, with the only records of them coming from Arab sources.

For instance, in his work Kitab al-Aghani (“Book of Songs”), the Abbasid historian, poet, and musicologist Abu al-Faraj al-Isfahani notes that by his time—the 10th century—the Mardaites were referred to by various names depending on their geographic location and/or role in the military: Banū al-Aḥrār in Sana’a (Yemen), aḥāmira in Kufa (Iraq), asawira in Basra (Iraq), khaḍārima in Al-Jazira (a caliphal province in Upper Mesopotamia), and jarājima in Bilad al-Sham (a caliphal province encompassing present-day Lebanon, Syria, Israel, Jordan, and Palestine). They maintained some autonomy until they dissolved at the end of the Crusades under the Abbasids. Nonetheless, their legacy endures among the Christians of the Middle East, whose challenging survival often evokes models from the past.

This is why during the Lebanese Civil War (1975–1990)—sparked by the immigration of 100,000 Palestinian refugees, the Cold War, and religious polarization between Christians and Druze on one side, and Muslims and leftists on the other—some Maronites claimed a hypothetical Mardaite ancestry. The future Lebanese president, Suleiman Frangieh, even created a Maronite militia in 1967, led by his son Tony, and named it the Marada Brigade; after the conflict, it was transformed into the Marada Movement, which in 2006 became the political party Al-Marada, aligned with the opposition alongside Hezbollah.

This article was first published on our Spanish Edition on December 9, 2024: El misterio de los Mardaítas, los montañeses cristianos que mantuvieron su autonomía entre Bizancio y el Califato

SOURCES

Georg Ostrogorsky, Historia del Estado Bizantino

Warren T. Treagold, Byzantium and Its Army, 284–1081

Milos Cvetkovic, The settlement of the Mardaites and their military-administrative position in the themata of the West: A chronology

Christos G. Makrypoulias, Mardaites in Asia Minor

Wikipedia, Mardaíta

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