Northeastern Arabia Research Articles

Notes on the dialect of the Ḍhafr of north-eastern Arabia

It was remarked by the Czech linguist Pavle Ivi that it would be possible for particular linguistic landscapes to fit easily into particular theories about linguistic diffusion. He was referring especially to the difference between the Stammbaum or family tree theory and the Wellentheorie or wave theory as expounded by the Neo-grammarians. The family tree theory sees dialect features as genetically transmitted and traceable to the homeland of the group concerned. The wave theory on the other and concentrates more on the present geographical location of the speakers and traces the geographical diffusion of dialect features across the landscape independently of the movement of groups of people. If a distinction between family tree landscapes and wave theory landscapes is possible, as Ivi suggests, then the dialectology of the bedouin tribes of north-eastern Arabia falls quite definitely into the first group. In a previous article the writer described the dialect of the Muṭair tribe of Eastern Arabia which a dialect of the Central Najd type akin to the dialects of Central Najd and the 'Aniza tribes of the Syrian Desert. The Ḍhafr, although direct neighbours of the Muṭair to the north and west, speak a dialect of a quite different kind, basically North Najd, akin to the speech of the Jabel Shammar and the Shammar tribes, but with some admixture of Central Najd features. It seems that in this area dialect is a marker of tribal identity and since there is no gradation between membership of the Ḍhafr tribe and membership of the Muṭair, the dialects are similarly clearly demarcated geographically. The boundary between the Ḍhafr and the Muṭair also Muṭair also constitutes a more far-reaching boundary between Ahl al-Shiml and Ahl al-Jinb, northern and southern bedouin. This division is marked by dialect features and also certain other cultural externals such as dress and tent structure.

The Bakr B. Wa'il Tribes and Politics in Northeastern Arabia on the Eve of Islam

The Bakr B. Wa'il Tribes and Politics in Northeastern Arabia on the Eve of Islam

Prehistory in Northeastern Arabia

In 1968 Geoffrey Bibby, then carrying out an archaeological survey in the Eastern Province of Saudi Arabia, was shown a collection of flint implements and ‘about two hundred potsherds, of a thin, greenish-yellow ware decorated with geometric patterns in dark-brown paint’ (1970, 376). They had been found by an American school teacher, Grace Burkholder, who, together with other amateur archaeologists from the headquarters of the Arabian American Oil Company at Dhahran, had scoured the nearby desert in pursuit of archaeological remains. Bibby with considerable astonishment recognized the pottery as identical with the Mesopotamian al ‘Ubaid.

The Monsoonal Mid-Tropospheric Cyclogenesis

The initiation of the monsoonal mid-tropospheric cyclone over the west coast of India in summer is regarded to be an instability phenomenon of a rather unique class of baroclinic basic state. The latter is believed to be associated with the monsoon depression over the Bay of Bengal, the heat low over Pakistan, as well as with the strong heating on the Himalayan-Tibetan Massif. The essential elements of a representative flow over the northeastern Arabia Sea and central western India are incorporated into a modified Eady model in which the basic flow is assumed to have a zonal component with a uniform easterly shear, and a southerly component vanishing at the surface and in the upper troposphere but having a maximum value at a low tropospheric level. The instability analysis indicates that with plausible values for the parameters, the horizontal length scale, the growth rate and the phase speed of the most unstable mode are quite comparable to the corresponding observed values. More importantly, such an unstable mode has a strong cyclonic circulation in the 700–500 mb layer, but is very weak both near the surface and in the upper troposphere. There is a cold core below the center of the disturbance and a warm core above. It has a horizontal convergence below the 600 mb level and a weaker and thicker layer of divergence above. The relative phase between the horizontal convergence and the geopotential is such that the upward motion occurs slightly to the west of the disturbance with a downward motion to the east. These properties are strikingly similar to the observed counterparts, thereby lending support to the basic hypothesis on the origin of the mid-tropospheric cyclone. The relative roles of the zonal and meridional components of the basic flow are also examined.

Thāj: A Pre-Islamic Site in Northeastern Arabia

may have possessed a less highly developed, or different, ritualistic vocabulary than Hebrew. If so, mb'r may be a Moabite term for altar. The chief objection to such an interpretation is that the wavy fluting below the inscription suggests drapery, hence that the object bearing the inscription was the statue of a king or god, and we should have expected an inscription relating the dedication of an altar or other cultic object to have been engraved on the object itself rather than on a statue. The preposition 1 before the noun probably has the sense of as as in Gen. 22:2, Dt. 31:21, Ps. 48:4, etc. The conjunction ky (Heb. ki), for, because, occurs frequently in the Mesha inscription. In line 4 of the latter it is followed by a statement of the reason why the king set up the stele. If that is the case here the two following letters, 'h , are probably part of a verb. Verbs beginning with 'h are rare in Semitic; in fact, our choice seems limited to either 'hb, to love, or 'hl, to tent. 2 A restoration 'h (b) seems most likely. The word at the beginning of line 3 might possibly be restored as [b]nh, his son. The rest of the line reads as follows: whn 'sty 't ... which may be translated And behold made . The first word hn is doubtless to be explained from Heb. hen, behold (cf. Ex. 4: 1, etc.) rather than from Aramaic (Old and Biblical) hen, if. The verb 'sty, found also in lines 23 and 26 of the Mesha inscription, corresponds to Heb. 'asithi, I made. The last two letters are almost certainly the sign of the direct and definite object (Heb. '3th) which appears frequently in the Mesha inscription (lines 5, 6, 9, etc.). In the light of the above investigation the following translation may be proposed:

A Pre-Islamic Copper Hoe from North-Eastern Arabia

A Pre-Islamic Copper Hoe from North-Eastern Arabia

A Journey in North-Eastern Arabia

A Journey in North-Eastern Arabia