Al-Harith ibn Jabalah
al-Harith ibn Jabalah was a king of the Ghassanids, an pre-Islamic Arab people who lived on the eastern frontier of the Byzantine Empire. He reigned from 529 to 569 and supported the Byzantines against Sassanid Persia. He was given the title patricius, or patrician, in 529 by the emperor Justinian. al-Harith was a Monophysite Christian; he helped to revive the Monophysite church in the region (ancestor of today's Syriac Orthodox Church) and supported Monophysite development, even though his Orthodox Byzantine patrons regarded this theology as heretical.