The papers presented here were first presented at the third Workshop organized by the Late Antiquity and Early Islam Project and held at King's College London on 29-31 October, 1992. They are here published, after revision by the authors, as the third Workshop publication in the Project series.l All the papers given at the Workshop are included, with the exception of that by Khalil Athamina on private militias during the Umayyad period; in addition, we are glad to be able to include John Haldon's paper on ajnād, which was not originally given at the Workshop, as representing a closely related contribution by a scholar who has been associated with the work of the Project since its inception.

As with earlier Workshops, the numbers attending were limited, and each paper was allowed as much discussion time as possible, led by nominated discussants; thanks are due to Michael Whitby, Hugh Kennedy, Maribel Fierro, Patricia Crone, Lawrence Conrad, James Crow, John Haldon, Mark Whittow and Fred McGraw Donner for taking on this task. We are also grateful to John Haldon and Chris Wickham respectively for laying out the parameters of the problem and for drawing together the threads of the discussion in the Introduction and Conclusion. Many of the scholars participating in the Workshop had also been present at Workshops I and II, but we were glad to welcome some new members, and particularly younger scholars and students.

As will be clear from the papers that follow, discussion of the topics covered here is in some cases still at an early stage. Whereas the condition of the late Roman/Byzantine army in the Late Empire and immediately before the Islamic conquest (chaps. 1-3) and the emergence of the Byzantine themesystem (chaps. 9, 10) have already been studied at length, pre-conquest Muslim armies (chap. 6) and early Islamic taxation and its close connection with the military system (chap. 8) are much less known, and the issue of the degree of centralization in the Muslim conquest (chap. 7) remains extremely controversial. Two important papers on the Sasanian Empire (chaps. 4, 5) give differing views on the third great player in the military scene in this period of Eastern Mediterranean history. As in earlier Workshops, certain items of primary evidence are discussed more than once, in different contexts and from differing perspectives (see chaps. 3 and 8 on the Nessana papyri). And again, similar problems emerge in the various chapters, for instance the methods and financing of army recruitment, the speed and availability of transport, the relations between nomadic groups and settled communities and the use of federate or foreign allied troops . In general, the papers focus less on tactics or on the great set-piece battles of the period, important though they were, than on the resource implications and general management of military affairs in three cultures, Byzantine, Sasanian and early Islamic.