I’m in the process of writing a paper focused on the Byzantine military reorganization of the 7th century that resulted in the Theme system. I would like to incorporate some Arabic sources regarding their attempts to break into Anatolia that were met with only limited success (mostly in Cilicia), but I’m having trouble finding good histories or sources writing about why this particular area was more difficult for the Arabic forces. I have a decent grasp of the historiographical arguments from the Byzantine side, but was wondering who the good Arab historians are with expertise in this area? I unfortunately do not read Arabic, so I would need translations of original sources.
Hi /u/Herakleios - it's an interesting topic you've chosen to work on, although not at all the easiest one if you want to work from the perspective of the Arabic material.
A couple of things which importantly need to be noted here:
*We have no Arabic narrative material which survives from the seventh and early eighth centuries, so the available Arabic sources on the types of things you are interested in are not at all contemporary to the events.
*A lot of the Arabic material hasn't been translated into western languages, so you are immediately limited in the things that you can use, unfortunately. This is especially problematic for you, as the things that tend to have been translated tend to be universal/non-regional histories and chronicles, which aren't interested in/simply don't have the space to cover the minutia of particular regions like Cilicia that you are interested in.
*Perhaps most problematically, the Arabic narrative sources very rarely linger on issues which can't easily be made to express the success or superiority of the Islamic state, the conquests, and so on. In short: the sources usually don't like/simply don't know how to handle well any reverses in fortunes that occurred, especially during the foundational period of Islamic history in the seventh century CE. Lots of times, this is accomplished by simply leaving out things that are inconvenient; at other times, details are changed or omitted to simply pass around the negative thing. For instance: a Muslim army fighting against the Khazars is beaten badly, and the Muslim commander barely escapes with his life and the army is crushed. Rather than writing all that out, the Arabic source simply chooses to state that "the commander and his army left." That kind of thing.
With all of that said, Cilicia as a borderland in particular has a number of unique and interesting things that happen there during the establishment of the Islamic state. The constant border skirmishes with the Byzantines that categorized the early Islamic period affected southern Anatolia significantly, unsurprisingly. Namely, and as you have probably seen already, both sides turned these frontier territories into so-called "no-man's land." The local inhabitants of these territories either chose to leave this land willingly owing to the continued dangers of enemy raids, or were actually moved by the state and resettled elsewhere, with their towns and villages destroyed to avoid providing any advantage to the enemy traversing this region. These borderlands therefore became difficult - if not outright impossible - places for a community to survive, and become buffer regions separating the extent and influence of both states. This is how the borderlands between southern Anatolia and northern Syria were treated.
In terms of useful secondary sources you can use that discuss this borderlands and the skirmishes in and around it:
Ralph-Johannes Lilie, “The Byzantine-Arab Borderland From the Seventh Century to the Ninth Century,” in Borders, Barriers, and Ethnogenesis: Frontiers in the Early Middle Ages, ed. Florin Curta (Turnhout: Brepols Publishers, 2005)
Michael Bonner, Aristocratic Violence and Holy War: Studies in the Jihad and the Arab-Byzantine Frontier (New Haven: American Oriental Society, 1996)
Bonner's book is particularly useful as a discussion of the situation from an excellent Arabist/Islamicist, although it's a bit dry.
In terms of primary sources you can turn to, the massive universal History of the Prophets and Kings by the Muslim author al-Tabari (d. 923 CE) is excellently translated in a SUNY series of some 40 (!) volumes and is very well indexed, too.
A much more likely useful source for you to look at, however, is al-Baladhuri's (d. ca. 892 CE) "Book of the Conquest of Lands," translated in two parts by Philip Hitti and Francis Murgotten as The Origins of the Islamic State (and available free online). In particular, the section which will likely be of the most use to you is his chapter on "The Frontier Fortresses of Syria," although his preceding chapters may have interesting material for you, too.
I hope this helps. Good luck with your paper.