(a.), pl. ṣawāʾif (< ṣayf ‘‘summer”), summer raid or military expedition (see Lane, 1756; Dozy, Supplément, i, 857).
1. In the Arab-Byzantine warfare.
The term is used by the early Islamic historians to denote the raids of the Arabs into Byzantine Anatolia. These were normally mounted annually, over a period of some two centuries, beginning during the governorship in Syria of Muʿāwiya b. Abī Sufyān [q.v.], i.e. from ca. 640 onwards. They tailed off in the 3rd/9th century as the ʿAbbāsid caliphate became racked by internal discord and as the Macedonian emperors i…