Of diverse tribal backgrounds, the ʿIbād were united only by their adherence to Christianity and, after the sixth century, the Church of the East.
An important authority on the ʿIbād in the Arabic tradition is Ḥishām ibn al-Kalbī (d. 819), who consulted ʿIbādī books and archives in al-Ḥīra.
In the twelfth century, Abuʾl-Baqāʾ of al-Ḥilla wrote that the history of the Lakhmid dynasty that had ruled the region before Islam was taught to schoolchildren.
[9] The ʿIbād had diverse tribal backgrounds from both northern Arabia (Tamīm, Rabīʿa and Muḍar) and southern (Azd, Iyād and Lakhm).
[10] Because the ʿIbād were a unity formed out of several tribes, al-Jawharī says, they received their own nisba, a surname usually indicating tribal affiliation: al-ʿIbādī.
[11] Generally, the term ʿIbād seems only to have referred to the established sedentary Christian population of mixed tribal background in al-Ḥīra.
[13] The first language of the ʿIbād was Arabic, but their dress and manners were that of the Aramaic-speaking peasantry of the Sawād (the fertile land of southern Mesopotamia).
In the early sixth century, Aḥudemmeh converted the Tanūkh and the Arabs of Kūfa and Simeon of Bēt Arshām was actively proselytizing in al-Ḥīra itself.
[18] The ʿIbād appear to have been doctrinally mixed prior to the late sixth century, when dyophysite influence overwhelmed the monophysite.
According to a legend repeated by Abuʾl-Baqāʾ, the king fell ill and requested the help of both the Yaʿqūbiyya (Jacobites) and the Nasṭūriyyūn (Nestorians).
This story probably represents part of the origin legend of the ʿIbād of Abuʾl-Baqāʾ's day, explaining how the confessional diversity in the city was replaced by uniformity.
[18] In 636, during the Muslim conquest of Persia, the church of al-Ḥīra was razed so Saʿd ibn Abī Waqqāṣ could build his capital of Kūfa.
It was a common setting for the orgies and bacchanalia in the khamriyyāt (wine poetry) of the "accursed poets" (shuʿarāʾ al-mujūn) of Kūfa, since the monasteries of al-Ḥīra were associated with drinking and taverns.
[21] According to al-Shābushtī, the daughter of al-Nuʿmān III, Hind bint an-Nuʿmān, who had retired to a monastery, met Saʿd ibn Abī Waqqāṣ and Mughīra ibn Shuʿba al-Thaqafī around the time of the conquest and told them how: In the evening, there was no Arab on earth that did not request favors from us and glorify us, but then in the morning, there was no one from whom we did not request favors and glorify!