The Tyne and Tigris
The recent mishandling of the Syrian civil war and Arab
spring in general has resulted in a catastrophic humanitarian crisis. For
people of my generation however, all this means in practical terms is a
Facebook feed cluttered with distressing images, misinformation and shocking xenophobia.
After the announcement that Britain would accept 20,000 refugees the worryingly
popular EDL and Britain first outlets have been on constant blast. Britain as
an island nation has a somewhat naive view of its own identity. We are far more
connected to both Europe and the “Middle East” than the majority of us are
aware or care to admit. Perhaps we remember our comp history lessons regarding
the Norman invasion of 1066 or at a push the Danish “occupation” of large parts
of England. There is however, no sense within modern British people of a lack
of continuity with their “proto-British” ancestors even if they now bare Danish
or Norman surnames. Time has made the Norman just as British as the rest. Migration to the British Isles is not a
modern phenomenon, but it invokes terrible fear in a large number of us because
of its role in our collective identity as a people. I believe that there is one
particularly good example that those who find themselves in a panic.
In the North of England overlooking the Tyne is a partially
reconstructed Roman settlement that served as the seaport of Hadrian’s Wall.
Built in the first quarter of the 2nd century A.D Arbeia was the
home to a host of Roman soldiers, merchants and sailors from all over the Empire.
The name itself means “Place of the Arabs” and among its cosmopolitan occupants
it boasted boatmen from the Tigris in Mesopotamia, soldiers from North Africa
and Spain. Arbeia was also the home of a certain merchant named Barates an
immigrant from the Syrian city of Palmyra. Barates married a former slave, a
Briton named Regina who when she pre-deceased him was given a beautiful
funerary sculpture baring a Latin and Aramaic inscription. [1]
There is every reason to believe that Barates and Regina had
offspring and considering the cosmopolitan nature of the settlement that they
were not the only couple of mixed background. Britain therefore not only
received Syrian migrants less than one hundred years after Boudicca but was
their home almost three hundred years before the advent of the Saxons and more
than seven hundred years before Alfred the Great.
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