LAKHMID DYNASTY

pre-Islamic Bedouin tribal dynasty that aided Sasanian Iran in its struggle with the Byzantine Empire and fostered early Arabic poetry. Centred at the Christian city of Al-Hirah, near present-day Al-Kufah in southern Iraq, the Lakhmid kingdom originated in the late 3rd century AD and developed essentially as an Iranian vassal state. Gaining a voice in Iranian affairs under King al-Mundhir I (c. 418462), who raised Bahram V to the throne of the Sasanian empire, the Lakhmids reached the height of their power in the 6th century, when al-Mundhir III (503554) raided Byzantine Syria and challenged the pro-Byzantine Arab kingdom of Ghassan. His son 'Amr ibn Hind (554569) was patron of the pre-Islamic Arabic poetry of Tarafah and others associated with Al-Mu'allaqat (The Suspended Odes). The dynasty became extinct with the death, in 602, of an-Nu'man III, who was a Nestorian Christian.