Mardaites
 Main areas under Mardaite control in the Levant, c. 7th century AD | |
| Regions with significant populations | |
|---|---|
| Levant, Anatolia, the Balkans | |
| Languages | |
| Unknown; possibly Syriac, Armenian, or an Iranian language | |
| Religion | |
| Christianity | |
| Related ethnic groups | |
| Maronites, Greeks, South Slavs, Albanians |
total. Replace with population.The Mardaites (Medieval Greek: Μαρδαΐται; Arabic: المَرَدة) or al-Jarajima (Syriac: ܡܪ̈ܕܝܐ; Arabic: جَرَاجِمَة/ALA-LC: Jarājimah) were early Christians following Chalcedonian Christianity in the Nur Mountains. Little is known about their ethnicity, but it has been speculated that they might have been Persians (see, for a purely linguistic hypothesis, the Amardi, located south of the Caspian Sea in classical times) with other theories placing them as Armenians or even Greeks native to the Levant. Their other Arabic name, al-Jarājimah, suggests that some were natives of the town Jurjum in Cilicia; the word marada in Arabic is the plural of mared, which could mean a giant, a supernatural being like Jinn, a high mountain or a rebel.
Whether their name was due to their existence outside of legitimate political authority or their residence in the mountains is not known. They were joined later by various escaped slaves and peasants during their insurgency and were said to have claimed territory from "the Holy City" to the "Black Mountain" (Nur Mountains).