Arabia in late Antiquity

1.

Arabia in Late Antiquity

2.

3.

East Arabia
• Oman and Bahrayn
• Distinguished from Arabia in MP inscriptions
• Major expeditions under Shapur II.
Deportation of troublesome tribes to the
island of Darin
• Major Christian monastic settlement across
eastern Arabia, supplied from the sea, going in
an arc from Basra to Socotra

4.

Central and Northern Arabia
• Ancient North Arabian: relatives of Old Arabic,
but distinct languages and scripts.
• Languages of the oases: Dadanic, Tihyanic
• Languages of the nomads: Safaitic, Hismaic
• They end around the C.4: displacement by
migrants from the south?

5.

Safaitic and Hismaic

6.

‘Arabic’?
• Herodotus has a zone going up to northern
Somalia
• Xenophon refers to the region around the Khabur
river in northern Iraq.
• ‘Arab’ used by foreigners to describe the
Nabataean kingdom of Petra (but never Palmyra
or Edessa, whose kings use ‘Arab’ names: Wa’el
ibn Shahru in the first century AD).
• By third century, replaced by terms Saracen and
Tayyaye. ‘Arabian’ used to mean the Roman
province of Arabia, with capital at Bostra.

7.

8.

Sabaic script

9.

South Arabia
• Exports incense, coral, wine and silver to the
Mediterranean
• Mountainous irrigated plateaux (the Marib dam)
• Five South Arabian languages, united by a single Sabaic
script (also occasionally employed in trilingual inscriptions
in Ethiopia)
• Political union under Himyar in c.300, with capital at Zafar
• Worship of the god al-Maqah, with his chief shrine at Saba
and smaller pilgrimage centres in each of the regional
kingdoms
• Appears highly literate: on the level of Syria or Iran.
• Later imagined as speakers of Arabic

10.

Monotheism in Himyar
Monotheism of C.4 inscriptions: ‘Ilam, Lord of the heaven’.
No polytheist inscriptions after 380.
Sudden appearance of Aramaic/ Hebrew words: alam ,Baraka, zakat, salat, shalom,
kanisha
References to a Jewish community, used instead of older political communal
memberhsip
Middle C.5: ‘Aid and protection of Rahmanan’
Late fifth century king builds a ‘mkrb’ and a ‘knst’
Kings keep monotheism vague, though a very small number of inscriptions show
deep knowledge of Judaism. Dangerous to follow Muslim historians like Tabari.
Reports of contacts with the rabbis in hostile Christian sources.
Christian sources refer to the conversion of Yemenite Jews
Zayd said to have studied the ‘Jewish script’. A small number of Hebrew
inscriptions.

11.

The war of Dhu Nawas
• Madikarib Ya’fur (509-521) fights the Nasrids in central
Arabia.
• Yusuf As’ar, ‘king of all the tribes’, wars against Axum
and the Banu Taghlib. Destroys churches in areas under
Axumite influence in Zafar and Najran.
• Axumite invasion using Roman and Ethiopian vessels
across the Red Sea
• After Axumite invasion installs a Christian Himyarite
prince, Sumuyafa Ashwa, in c.526 but overthrown by
the general Abraha. He organises a diplomatic
conference in 547.
• Persian invasion in 570

12.

Axumite period in Himyar
• Inscription: ‘With the power of Rahmanan, of
Christ the victor and the Holy Spirit’ Christ
the victor replaced by Messiah under Abraha:
compromise between Axumite and Jewish
formulae.
• Church at Marib using Syriac cognates (qsis;
b’t)
• Use of Byzantine mosaics (later used to repair
the Ka’aba in 753)

13.

Jafnid ‘palaces’?

14.

The tribal interior
• Stereotypes of the Romans: uncouth, warlike, untrustworthy,
superstitious
• Complemented by Muslim stereotypes of jahiliyya
• But no rigid line between settlement and tribes, or between sheep
nomads and camel nomads.
• Linked to settled world: sell slaves and booty; buy wargear; draw on
water; buy cereals
• Large scale raiding only with ecological disaster
• Dietary requirements of Arab religions: role of feasting in building
political alliances related to membership of different cults.

15.

Client kings
• Competition between Rome and Persia
• State Arab kings Arab tribes: kingship
comes from appointment by a complex state,
it does not evolve organically from a tribal
system.
• Romans Jafnids Ghassanids
• Persians Nasrids Lakhmids
• Himyar Hujrids Kinda

16.

The Jafnids
• Treaty struck at the turn of the sixth century, with probable
conversion to Christianity. Raiding by Arab federations may
be an ‘advertisement’ of their prowess as well as an
attempt to gain booty
• Acquire power during the 529 Samaritan revolt in Palestine:
promoted as a phylarch over all the Roman Arabs
• Fight as proxies against the Persians, but continue to
squabble with the ‘Persian Arabs’. Opponents of the much
better established Nasrid kings of Hira.
• Accusations of disloyalty may have some truth: Jafnids wish
to prolong conflict to get booty, rather than win the war.

17.

The Jafnids II
• Military success in the 550s: killing of Mundhir
at Chalcis by al-Harith
• Prestige at Constantinople: the emperor
confirms Jafnid succession
• 560s also sees first use of epigraphic Arabic at
Harran south of Damascus and a use of
Harith’s reign as a dating system at Qasr alHayr al-Gharbi

18.

Jafnids III
• Further successes prompt greater demands
for rewards from Rome
• Mundhir the Jafnid withdraws from service
until recalled and crowned by the Romans in
late 570s.
• Finally removed permanently and exiled in
581

19.

Jafnid Miaphysitism
• Sponsors of monasteries
• Reconciles different Miaphysite splinter
groups in the 580s.
• Some Miaphysite authors invert the older
barbarian stereotypes: it is the Romans who
are overconfident in their attempts to fight
the Arabs.
• Cyrus of Batna and the camel flesh.

20.

The effects of the client kings on the
interior: Christianisation
• Hubs for Christian mission? Manichees, Miaphysites,
Church of the East all at Hira, Najran.
• Monastic sponsorship of the Jafnids
• Conversion of Arabs of the Jazira by Ahudemmeh.
Monasteries given the names of tribal chiefs.
• Christian symbols used to enforce oaths, mark
boundaries, give fertility, render judgement, enforce
dietary restrictions
• Sponsorship of the shrines of Sergius at Bostra and
Rusafa

21.

22.

The Effects of the client kings II:
Arabic
• C.1BC inscription in South Arabian letters at
‘Qaryat al-Faw’ (later Hujrid capital)
• Development of an Arabic script from Nabatean
in Mada’in Saleh (northern Hijaz)
• Zebed inscription of 512 (s. Jordan): the first
Arabic name
• Harran inscription: trilingual in Arabic, greek and
Syriac, 568.
• Traditions of Tabari and the aghani on the
muallaqat: sponsorship of poets by the kings of
Hira

23.

Additional select bibliography
• Fisher et al., The Arabs before Islam: A Sourcebook
(forthcoming: please contact me)
• Fisher and Dijkstra (ed.), Between Empires: Arabia and
Nubia before Islam
• Irfan Shahid, Byzantium and the Arabs (many volumes)
• M.J. Kister, ‘al-Hira’, Arabica 15 (1968)
• I. Gadja, Le royaume de Himyar
• J. Trimingham, Christianity among the Arabs
• P. Wood, We have no King but Christ, chp. 7
• P. Crone, Meccan Trade and the Rise of Islam