A Comparative Study of the Arabic Nautical Vocabulary from Al-'Aqabah, Transjordan

Abstract

THE REGION lying at the north end of the Gulf of 'Aqabah has since the first millennium B. a. been a clearing-house for the wares of many nations. In Hellenistic times it ranked with Klysma and Berenike as one of the three great northern termini of the Red Sea commerce,1 feeding the two great trade highways leading to Petra, Damascus and Gaza. It was in realization of these potentialities that Solomon founded his industrial and commercial settlement at Ezion-geber, and, with the help of Hiram's Phoenician mariners, knowers of the sea, built and despatched a fleet for trade with Ophir (I Kgs. 9: 26-8; II Chron. 8: 18), bringing back products of African and Indian origin (I Kgs. 10: 22). After Solomon, Jehoshaphat attempted to revive this commerce, but following the debacle in which his fleet was wrecked (I Kgs. 22: 49) the project was abandoned as impracticable, probably owing to Jehoshaphat's unwillingness or inability to employ skilled Phoenician shipwrights, sailors and navigators. Between the end of Jehoshaphat's activities and the advent of the Hellenistic age there are no written records for the sea trade of Ezion-geber and its successor Elath. During most of this period the region was under the control of the Edomites, certainly not a seafaring people; these were succeeded probably by the Neo-Babylonians and then in the 5th century B. C. by the Achaemenids.2 All during this period the Arab element in the population must have been continually on the increase; that these Arabs were Minaeans is indicated by the finding at Ezion-geber of pottery incised with Minaean characters.3 It is doubtful, however, judging from what the Greek writers say about the routing of later Minaean commerce (Strabo, Geog. 16.4.4, quoting Eratosthenes, ca. 276-ca. 194 B. C.), whether much of this was carried on by sea. Classical authors are, in fact, unanimous on the subject of the nautical ineptitude of the Arabs of the llijaz coast. Strabo (16.4.23) reports that they had no skill at all in sea-fighting, though Agatharchides 4 says that the Nabataeans along the shores of the Gulf of 'Aqabah were in the habit of mbushing shipwrecked sailors and attacking merchant shipping by means of rafts. The Alexandrian merchants who had opened these waters to trade were finally avenged by a fleet of Ptolemaic quadriremes, whose crews ransacked the Nabataean settlements on the shores of the Gulf and punished the guilty parties, thus putting an end to this piracy for the time being. The conclusion we must draw from this is that what sea trade Aila enjoyed in Nabataean times must have been carried on principally by Greek an Roman merchants operating from Egypt, particularly Alexandria. To these Aila, now the successor of Ezion-geber and situated on the shore about four kilometers further east,5 was known also as Berenike,6 a name given earlier to at least two other towns on the Red Sea (Artemidorus in Strabo, 16.4.5, 10). In the 5th and 6th century we have four references to the maritime commerce of Aila, still conducted apparently under Greek auspices. By this time, however, it had already suffered a marked decline,'6 probably as a result of the disturbed condition of Arabia arising from the ilimyarite-Abyssinian wars of the 4th century a d the subsequent waning of the ilimyarite power. In the days of Procopius (BP I. xix) Aila was still a point of departure for Roman vessels trading on the Red Sea. St. Jerome (Eusebius