South Arabian Culture

The authors suggest to view the origins of Islam against the background of the 6th century AD Arabian socio-ecological crisis whose model is specified in the paper through the study of climatological, seismological, volcanological and epidemiological history of the period. Most socio-political systems of the Arabs reacted to the socio-ecological crisis by getting rid of the rigid supra- tribal political structures (kingdoms and chiefdoms) which started posing a real threat to their very survival. The decades of fighting which led to the destruction of most of the Arabian kingdoms and chiefdoms (reflected in Ayyãm al- 'Arab tradition) led to the elaboration of some definite "anti- royal" freedom-loving tribal ethos. At the beginning of the 7th century tribes which would recog- nise themselves as subjects of some terrestrial super-tribal political authority, the "king", risked to lose its honour. However, this seems not to be applicable to the authority of another type, the "ce- lestial" one. At the meantime the early 7th century evidences the merging of the Arabian tradition of prophecy and the Arabian Monotheist "Rahmanist" tradition which produced "the Arabian pro- phetic movement". The Monotheist "Rahmanist" prophets appear to have represented a supratribal authority just of the type many Arab tribes were looking for at this very time, which seems to ex- plain to a certain extent those prophets' political success (including the extreme political success of Muhammad).

The reconciliation of Ibn al-Kalbī's ninth-century CE text of on pre-Islamic Arabia with modern scholarship offers certain insights to religious practices in the Arabian Peninsula from prehistory through the seventh cenury CE This study integrates his early Book of Idols into existing archaeological and anthropological studies about diverse aspects of pre-Islamic religion and ritual: diverse forms of litholatry; pilgrimage rituals; and the social economy of sacrifice and rain rogation rituals. Al-Kalbī's text is recognized rightly for its essential character as a product from a distinct cultural milieu, early Islamic Kūfa, distant by time, geography, and culture from the pre-Islamic culture of Arabian antiquity of the peninsula and particularly the ancient kingdoms of Yemen in the southwest. Nevertheless, this article analyzes this contested source for several of its alignments with recent archaeological and anthropological findings.

Sabeans: folk settled in central Yemen belonging to the great tribe and kingdom of Saba’ (8th century BCE – 3rd century CE). Famous for the likely fictitious character of the Queen of Saba’, this kingdom established itself as one of the great power of pre-Islamic Arabia.

كلمات مفتاحية: أوسان، وادي مرخة، نقوش قديمة، كتابات كلاسيكية، الهمداني

ملخص البحث: نشأت في الألف الأول قبل الميلاد بجنوب الجزيرة العربية، حضارة عريقة. قام بتلك الحضارة ممالك أو كيانات سياسية، اصطُلِح على تسميتها ممالك جنوب الجزيرة العربية. وهذه الممالك عاشت في فترات متداخلة ومتعاقبة؛ وهي معين، سبأ، وقتبان، وحضرموت وحمير، ثم هناك أَوْسَان. وسيقتصر هذا البحث على تناول المصادر الكتابية لدراسة تاريخ مملكة أوسان، التي نشأت في وادي مرخة، ونجحت في فترات مختلفة من تاريخها السياسي في السيطرة على كثير من مناطق جنوب الجزيرة العربية. بما تتضمنه تلك المصادر من نقوش يمنية قديمة (أَوْسَانية، سبئية، قتبانية، معينية)، وكتابات كلاسيكية، علاوة على الكتابات العربية الإسلامية. ويناقش البحث ما تقدمه من معلومات يمكن الاستفادة منها في زيادة الجانب المعرفي عن بعض أنماط الحياة العامة؛ متمثلة في الأوضاع السياسية والدينية والاقتصادية والاجتماعية.

Keywords: Awsan, Wadi Markha, ancient inscriptions, Classic writings, Al- Hamadani

Abstract: An ancient great civilization in Southern Arabia was established in the first millennium BC. This was carried out by several kingdoms or political entities, termed the kingdoms of South Arabia. These kingdoms lived in overlapping and successive periods, which are known as; Saba, Qataban, Hadramout and Himyar, as well as Awsan. This research will be limited to taking the written sources for the study of the history of the Kingdom of Awsan, which originated in the valley of Markha, and succeeded in different periods of its political history of control of many areas of the southern part of Arabia. These sources include ancient Yemeni inscriptions (Awsanite, Sabaean, Qatabanian, Mainaean), and the classical writings, as well as the Arab- Islamic writings.
This research asserts that the information obtained from the aforementioned material can be utilized to increase knowledge about general aspects of life; in light of its religious, political, economic and social conditions.

In the 1st millennium A.D. the North-East Yemen political system consisting of a weak state in its centre and strong chiefdoms on its periphery appears to have been transformed into a system consisting of a bit stronger state in its centre and true tribes (but not chiefdoms). Within this system the tribes and state constituted one well integrated whole.
There does not seem to be any grounds to consider this transformation as "degeneration", "regress" or "decline", as there was no significant loss of the general system complexity and elaboration, one complex political system was transformed into another one, structurally different, but not less complex, highly organized and sophisticated.
In many respects the tribe of the North Yemeni type could be regarded as a rather developed form of the political organization, whose complexity could quite be compared with that of the chiefdom (and it is by no means more primitive than the chiefdom), implying first of all a very high level of the development of the political culture and the existence of an elaborated system of the political institutions and the traditions of arbitration, mediation, search for consensus &c, a wide developed network of intensive intercommunal links on enormous territories populated by tens and hundreds thousand people. Such tribal system can to a certain extent organize (without the application of any centralized coercion) all these masses of population which often exceed the population of an average chiefdom by 1-2 orders of magnitude.
The notion of "tribe", as it is used by the social anthropologists for the description of the socio-political organization of the Northern Yemenis (or, say, the population of many areas of Afghanistan, Cyrenaica, Atlas &c) in the 19th and 20th centuries appears rather useful, as it denotes quite a distinct form of supra-communal political organization, which does not seem to be adequately denoted by any other current terms, like "chiefdom" (let alone "state", or "community"). We can observe here such a type of political organization, when the functioning of quite stable forms of intercommunal integration takes place without the monopolization by the tribal leaders of the legitimate application of violence, without their acquisition of any formal power over the communities and the commoners, when e.g. the conflicts are solved (or the collective "tribal" actions are undertaken) not through the decisions of authoritative officials, but through the search by the tribal leaders (lacking any formal, absolute, inde-pendent from their personal qualities, power) for the consensus among all the interested members of the tribe (or the tribes) &c.
It seems reasonable to consider the tribe as the chiefdom alternative rather than a "pre-chiefdom" form of political organization (whereas in some respects the tribe of the North Yemeni type appears to be an even more developped form of political organization than the chiefdom). And in any case there does not seem to be any ground to consider as "primitive" the tribal organization of the Islamic Middle East, which (like the Middle Eastern states) formed as a result of long "post-primitive" evolution as a specific (and quite effective) version of socio-political adaptation of some quite highly developed regional populations to certain natural and socio-historical environment.
The genesis of the tribal organization in the North-East Yemeni Highlands can be also well considered as the "response" by the area socio-political system to the "challenge" of the socio-ecological crisis of the North-East in the second half of the 1st millennium AD. With respect to the Highland area this crisis seems to have been at least partly caused by the "prestige economy" of the Highland chiefdoms which led to the overstrain of the very fragile natural environment of the region (e.g. to the extreme degradation of the natural vegetal cover of the East of the Northern Mountains). The socio-ecological environment of the region does not appear to have been able to sustain the prestige consumption of the qayls ("chiefs") and their entourage. The overcoming of the second socio-ecological crisis seems to have been achieved through the getting rid of the qaylite aristocracy by the region socio-political system through the genesis of the tribal organization which in this area secured the reproduction of a rather complex and developed agricultural society by the procurement of a very "economical" surplus production.
On the one hand, the tribal organization of the area population made it possible for the tribesmen to struggle successfully (with the arms in their hands) for the preservation of a rather low level of taxation on the part of the state center of the North Yemen multipolity. On the other hand, it secured the effective control by the tribal agricultural population over resources used for the maintenance of the non-agricultural strata of the tribal zone (including its intellectual and political elites).

View online: https://religiondatabase.org/browse/1268/#/
This entry treats the state religion of Pre-Islamic South Arabia from the second half of the fourth century CE until the region was absorbed by the Sassanians in the seventh century CE. During this time, the ruling Himyarites not only expanded South Arabia to its largest territorial extent ever, spanning from modern Yemen to lower Iraq and perhaps even to Palestine (Robin, 2012), but they also adopted a new form of monotheism, which was heavily influenced by but distinct from Judaism. This Judaizing Himyarite Monotheism worshipped a monotheistic deity called either Raḥmānān "The Merciful" or ʾIlān "God." While details about this religion are sparse, Philostorgius provides some hints concerning its character. He records that Constantius II sent an expedition to Himyarites (called "Homeritae") in South Arabia in what would be the time of Thaʾrān Yuhanʿim (324-375 CE). He describes the Himyarites as "of the Israelitish family" but notes that they sacrificed to various native gods. There were also Jews in the royal court, who are said to unsuccessfully oppose the Christian embassy, as Philostorgius alleges that the Himyaritic king converted to Christianity and built three churches. Yet during that time, public state sponsorship of polytheism did not cease in the epigraphic record. It is not until the reign of Thaʾrān's son, Malkīkarib Yuhaʾmin (375-400 CE; Robin, 2012), that worship in the monumental display texts was almost unilaterally directed to Raḥmānān, with mentions of the old gods becoming almost extinct (yet, they still persist in the less public stick inscriptions; Stein, 2009). Explicitly Jewish inscriptions also begin appearing in fourth century CE; albeit, the exact relationship of South Arabian Judaism with other outside contemporary Jewish groups remains unclear (Hughes, 2020a). There is further uncertainty as to whether their God, who is twice explicitly called "The Lord of the Jews," was originally identified via syncretism with Raḥmānān or if he was thought to be a separate distinct but still monotheistic divinity, who existed alongside Raḥmānān (Gajda, 2017). Regardless of this potential distinction, the name Raḥmānān does eventually get absorbed into local Christian and Jewish vocabulary as a moniker for "God." During the fifth century CE, the state continues to sponsor Himyarite Judaizing Monotheism all-the-while tensions between Christians and Jews begin to rise. The Martyrdom of Azqir (Conti-Rossini, 1910) records a priest named Azqir being arrested for proselytizing. He was then brought to trial before the Himyarite king (who is not said to be Jewish) and the Jews on his court. The text ends with Azqir's martyrdom, with the narrator noting that thirty eight Christians had received a similar fate during that king's reign. In the sixth century CE, state sponsorship of Judaizing Himyarite Monotheism disappears as the Ethiopian Aksumites gradually gained control of South Arabia and installed a Christian king, Maʿdīkarib Yaʿfur, on the South Arabian throne in 519 CE. Around this time, the Christians began to persecute the Jews. When Maʿdīkarib dies a few years later in 522 CE, a Jewish prince named Yūsuf Asʾar Yathʾar (Arabic Dhū Nuwās) began a series of military campaigns seeking to expel the Aksumites and to burn their churches (Robin, 2012). This culminated in the slaying of the Martyrs of Najrān in 523 CE, wherein the Jewish King Yūsuf gained control of Najrān by artifice and then systematically kills the Christians. This event gave justification for the Aksumite King Kaleb to invade South Arabia, during which he killed Yūsuf and violently seeks vengeance on the Jews. South Arabia thereafter would remain under Christian control until it was eventually acquired by the Sassanians.

"This special issue of Comparative Literature Studies brings together talks, some extensively revised, others virtually unchanged, that were delivered at a conference entitled "What is Philology?" The gathering took place on Saturday, March 19, 1988 at Harvard University under the aegis of the Center for Literary and Cultural Studies. The depth and breadth of interest in the conference was deeply gratifying. I had not experienced another occasion when so many scholars from different language and literature departments gathered at Harvard, and I hope that publishing the proceedings will benefit a larger community outside the University.

By way of introduction I will describe how the event originated. My description will explore a few of the reasons why an interdisciplinary conference of a dozen speakers and respondents attracted an audience of more than two hundred, and why a topic that 'may sound rarefied drew participants whose main fields of research and teaching interests ran the gamut from the most ancient Indo-European languages to the most recent African American literature. In short, I will offer tentative explanations for the urgency of the topic to students, professors, and independent scholars who engage in philology, linguistics, literary history, literary criticism, and literary theory."

Eastern Arabia has long been underexposed, compared with the south- and northwestern parts of the Peninsula, in terms of the linguistic situation in pre-Islamic times. This is mainly due to the fact that epigraphic evidence from the region is still rather sparse – comprising some forty rather stereotype “Hasaitic” tomb inscriptions and a few small fragments in Aramaic. Only the site of Mleiha stands out from this picture inasmuch as not only the number of inscriptions from there is comparatively high, but also completely new text genres have been found there. These are particularly two votive inscriptions: one in Aramaic and one in Hasaitic – more precisely, in the South Arabian zabūr script which was used in ancient Yemen for everyday correspondence on wooden sticks. These testify for a differentiated use of writing in the region in the 3rd–2nd centuries BC.

KEYWORDS
Southarabian art – Indian art – Globalization – Transcultural – Indian Ocean trade – Trade network

ABSTRACT
This paper focuses on the spread of Indian elements in Southarabian art. A new artistic language arose in South Arabia in the period of greater development of transoceanic trade with India. The adoption of foreign artistic elements can be read as an indicator of increasing external contacts, and as the output of a stronger presence into the trade and cultural networks of ancient Globalization.
The analysis of some Southarabian bronzes reveals very interesting details on the adoption of foreign forms in Southarabian art. In particular it is possible to detect some Indian element. It is not only Gandharan syncretism that reverberates in Southarabian art; indeed, some examples are reminiscent of late Mauryan and Shunga art from Northern India.
In Southarabian art the so-called Hellenistic period counts iconographic elements that are not Hellenistic. Hellenism in the East is a centrifugal and centripetal koine, indeed it absorbs autochthonous characteristics, also from peripheral areas, and at the same time it radiates outward their re-elaboration. So a reassessment of the use of this category is strongly needed, and this paper wants to be a contribution toward the abandonment of old interpretative patterns, and the creation of a new transcultural comprehension of historical phenomena.

La périodisation de l’histoire par l’Europe chrétienne comme par le monde musulman voit dans l’avènement de l’islam une rupture majeure. Cette notion de rupture se retrouve, dans une moindre mesure, dans la définition de nos champs disciplinaires : ne distingue-t-on pas l’archéologie islamique de l’archéologie de l’Orient hellénisé et romain ? L’histoire de l’Antiquité tardive de celle de l’islam ? Si cette distinction trouve sa justification dans l’usage d’une documentation spécifique et d’outils méthodologiques propres, elle contribue néanmoins à tracer une barrière entre deux périodes de l’histoire. Au regard de la documentation historique toutefois, cette barrière perd toute réalité. Si un déclin du peuplement de l’Arabie à la veille de l’islam a pu conditionner l’émergence et l’expansion d’une nouvelle civilisation, celle-ci est largement héritière des civilisations préislamiques de la péninsule. Dans les régions voisines, ce n’est pas un changement brutal des modes de vie qui s’observe, ni même une conversion massive à la nouvelle foi, mais nous constatons au contraire la poursuite d’évolutions engagées de longue date.
La réunion d’archéologues et d’historiens spécialistes de l’Antiquité tardive en péninsule Arabique, au Proche-Orient, dans la Corne de l’Afrique, en Perse et en Inde a permis d’interroger les sources documentaires lors d’une table ronde tenue à Paris en 2008. Cet ouvrage en publie les actes en s’interrogeant sur la réalité ou non d’un déclin des civilisations du Moyen-Orient et des régions voisines à la veille de l’islam et sur les ruptures et continuités qui se font jour.

Presentation of the discovery of a Sabaean presence on the Somali coast. It results from the illegal excavation of an archaeological site in Somalia, a temple for which no
parallel is attested in the region. There, monumental Sabaic inscriptions were unearthed, their photographs were posted on the Web and simultaneously handed down to Christian Robin and Khaldun Nuʿmān in 2019-20. Since then, we have had the opportunity to present this discovery in order to prevent the illegal trafficking of these artefacts.

“The Periplus of the Erythraean Sea” of an Unknown Author is a unique source on wide range of questions concerning the history of the Red Sea and Indian Ocean basin in the 1st century A.D. The book contains the reviewed Greek and translation with commentaries on geography and history of the countries, described in this source. Some more additional studies accompany the edition.

Abstract

        Studies over the past century have led to the conclusion that many of the events mentioned in the Torah or Hebrew bible cannot be historically verified through archaeological findings in the Levant.  On the other hand, a number of folkloric histories and cultural events frequently found in medieval Islamic sources and comparable to those of the first several books of the Hebrew bible have been regarded for centuries as those that were adopted by the authors of Islamic stories.  These stories, considered Hebraic, are thought to have spread and spilled over into Arabia through Bedouin trade and contacts with people in regions further north of peninsular Arabia.
    This book proposes that the geographic and cultural context for the narratives of the Hebrew Bible, including those involving the Exodus, the conquest of Jericho, the coming of Nebuchadnezzar and numerous other events, are about happenings that took place among peoples of the ancient Yemen.  Epigraphic and ethnographic evidence, as well as the ancient classical writings, and medieval folklore and genealogies suggest that ancient Yemenite clans identified in the Torah and mentioned in South Arabian inscriptions moved northward at various times settling in regions of the Levant, Babylonia and Syria, and bringing most of the place and people names that are found in the Torah with them.
    The evidence presented in this book also suggests that the demographics of peninsular Arabia have undergone significant change within the last several hundred years and that the ethnic groups and societies of biblical Israel and Canaan developed within the context of the Afro-Arabian civilization sprung from the Bronze Age cultures once predominant in the Yemenite Tihama and Red Sea region.

"L’Arabie préislamique ne fut pas seulement le vaste désert parcouru de nomades que l’on imagine souvent. Des civilisations florissantes s’y développèrent au cours de l’Antiquité. De puissants royaumes émergèrent, tirant profit de vastes aires agricoles irriguées et du commerce de la myrrhe et de l’encens. On vit éclore des villes sur les rives du golfe Arabo-Persique, le long de la chaîne du Hijâz, mais aussi et surtout dans le sud, à l’image de Marib, capitale du royaume de Saba’. Ce sont ces villes de l’Arabie méridionale préislamique qui sont traitées dans cet ouvrage.
L’essor de l’archéologie en Arabie du Sud ces dernières décennies et les milliers d’inscriptions en langues sudarabiques qui y ont été découvertes offrent désormais un matériau abondant pour l’étude du phénomène urbain.
Outre la définition de la ville sudarabique, la vocation de l’ouvrage est d’offrir au lecteur une présentation synthétique de chacun des principaux sites urbains d’Arabie du Sud. Trente-neuf monographies, représentatives de trajectoires urbaines variées, décrivent les vestiges, les fonctions, le territoire, la structure sociale et finalement l’histoire de chacune de ces villes. Elles illustrent les processus qui ont mené à l’urbanisation de la région, les raisons de la croissance du réseau urbain et les causes de la disparition de nombre de ces cités. Ces monographies, groupées par aires géographiques, permettent également de faire un état des lieux du peuplement de chaque région et de cerner l’évolution du réseau urbain en révélant les dynamiques qui caractérisent l’Arabie méridionale.
L’ouvrage pourra aussi bien être parcouru linéairement pour qui souhaite aborder l’Arabie du Sud préislamique que servir de précis pour qui désire s’éclairer sur une localité ou une région particulière."

This paper analyzes Christianity in Western Arabia from the third through the sixth centuries A.D. It includes discussion of the notorious difficulty of defining the boundaries of Arabia and the identity of Arabians. It recognizes distinctions between the Syriac-­‐speaking church in the northwest, simultaneously in the Byzantine orbit and defined in opposition to the empire; the southwest and the established kingdom of Himyar; and the Red Sea Coast of the Hijaz. And it notes the doctrinal distinctions that emerged among the almost exclusively non-­‐Chalcedonian Christian churches of the region. The paper argues that Christianity was real and significant in Arabia in the centuries before Islam, but that its societal influence varied widely across the three regions. Syriac-­‐speaking Christianity in northwestern Arabia was both widely popular and deeply rooted. In the west and southwest, Christianity in a diverse milieu, but was not necessarily even the primary monotheistic religion. The trade interests of a wide variety of international Christians led the southwest to become Arabia’s most doctrinally diverse region, while the central-­‐west region, including Mecca and Medina, was the least Christianized. The paper charts a course between J. Spencer Trimingham’s assertion that Christianity never deeply touched the lay Arab soul and Irfan Shahid’s assertion that the Arab world into which Islam was born was “Christianized.” In the process it draws significantly on Trimingham's study of Christianity among the Arabs and Shahid's multi-­‐volume work on Byzantium and the Arabs.

Pour les sources arabo-islamiques, l’Arabie d’avant l’Islam — période dénommée Jāhiliyya (“ignorance” des lumières de la vraie foi) — est misérable, isolée, vouée à l’anarchie. C’est le pays “du sable et des puces”. Or, les sites antiques donnent une image bien différente. De grandes villes furent fondées en Arabie du Nord, sur les rives du golfe Persique ou dans l’antique Yémen. L’une d’elles, Taymâ’, fut même la résidence du roi babylonien Nabonide vers le milieu du VIe s. avant l’ère chrétienne. Une autre, Ma’rib, était au centre d’une vaste palmeraie qu’alimentait en eau l’un des plus longs barrages de l’ancien monde. Entre ces deux visions, celle d’une Arabie pitoyable et celle d’une Arabie heureuse, qu’en était-il ? Archéologues, épigraphistes et historiens se réunissent ici pour dessiner les contours de la péninsule à la veille de l’Islam. Ils concilient et pondèrent ces deux visions à travers l’étude des productions épigraphiques d’Arabie du Nord et d’Arabie du Sud, des productions artistiques, du peuplement des sites majeurs de l’Arabie préislamique : Taymā’, Madā’in Ṣāliḥ, Yathrib, al-Mulayḥa, Kush, Shabwa, Ma’rib, Ṣan’ā’... Comme le suggère la vision traditionnelle de la Jāhiliyya, ils montrent que la plupart des villes d’Arabie sont sur le déclin après le IIIe siècle de l’ère chrétienne. Seuls quelques sites emblématiques survivent. La production épigraphique diminue fortement. Les émissions monétaires cessent. Mais à l’inverse, un empire se forme, une production artistique éclot. À la veille de l’Islam, il en résulte une situation contrastée, oscillant entre grandeur et décadence.