South Arabia Research Articles

The Role of trade Transport Routes in Economic Growth throughout History in Bisha Province: A Historical and Analytical Study

Background/Objectives: To identify the role of trade transport routes in economic growth throughout history in Bisha Province. Methods/Statistical Analysis: The study followed two approaches; the first one is the historical approach, which seeks to study the ancient and historical phenomena and linking them with the current problems. The second approach is the analytical approach to analyze the documents that related to the subject matter of the study, and data extraction that may contribute in answering the main question of the study. The study concluded that ‘Asir Region publically and Bisha Province privately were linked together with a strong cultural linkage with the kingdoms of South Arabian Peninsula. Bisha Province has an important historical presence, as it is one of the richest places with heritage and archaeological places. Two trade routes were famous in Arabian Peninsula that connects eastern and western sides of Asia; these trade routes are Incense trade route and Al Hareer Route. Bisha was one of the most important trade routes passages that came from south to north in its way to the civilization of Mesopotamia, The Levant, Egypt and the Mediterranean Sea. The paper used 26 of previous studies as references. Findings: We found on the sides of the trade routes of Wadi Bisha the emergence of stations and trade centers that have been developed into villages and cities where people were aggregated along the trade route to provide service to the conveys in terms of food and drink also they act as a trade guide. Researchers mentioned that Bisha Province and its villages and cities, were an old and thriving Arab town, because it is located along the southern sector of the path of the historical Incense pathway that was linking the cultural centers at the south and the north of Arabian Peninsula together. The region seems to get a great benefit from this trade so markets are spread. People got rich and they got benefit from this in reclamation and cultivation of their lands. They build dams and facilitate the methods to get benefits from valleys’ water, however most of them extinct as a result of time factors where future archaeological scans may result in a clearer picture of these sites. Bisha has an important role in successive Islamic ages due to its strategic location on the trade routes and on Yemeni Hajj routes, it is known by highest Yemeni Hajj route or known by Najdian Hajj route that links between San’a in Yemen with Makkah in Hejaz. Bisha and its cities related closely to transportation and tribe’s movement even it is a trade tribe or a Hajj tribe, the fertile soil and abundant water in the tribe stations had been helped in the flourishing of these routes. Improvements/Applications: The study had recommended the importance of studying historical economic diversity in Bisha Province, as well as the possibility of benefiting from this study in the future planning of the railway lines that could be operated in the region, based on the old routes that have been tracked according to its facility and simplicity. Keywords: ‘Asir Region, Bisha Province, Historical Approach, Trade in Ancient Times, Trade Routes, Wadi Bisha

Medieval Reports of the Preservation and Looting of Pre-Islamic Burials in South Arabia

Abstract In the tenth century, the polymath Abu Muhammad al-Hamdani compiled a ten-volume compendium, entitled al-Iklı-l (The Crown), which narrates the history of South Arabia from the pre-Islamic to the early Islamic periods with the aim of extolling the various achievements and virtues of this region. The eighth volume of this compendium contains a collection of reports that describe the uncovering of pre-Islamic burials in the early Islamic period. Although the veracity of some reports may be questioned due to their inclusion of fantastical elements, these accounts portray a vivid imagining of the ancient tombs themselves and the stories of those buried within, as well as show the varied reactions to these sites. In some reports, the interred are revered and the chambers are returned to their former state. But in others, ambivalence is shown toward those buried, even when the inscriptions found at the site communicate that the interred testified to a belief in one god, and the tombs are looted. Overall, these rich reports do not merely depict encounters with pre-Islamic funerary remains, but also serve to connect South Arabia’s past with major narratives and themes of Islamic history.

Lexical Resemblance among Modern South Arabian Languages in Oman

Modern South Arabian (MSA) languages make one central group of three distinct language groups that comprise minority languages in Oman. Contrary to their counterparts spoken in the north of Oman, MSA languages are spoken in the southern part of the country with some spoken in neighboring Yemen. Due to both geographical and linguistic proximity among these languages, they are often viewed even by some of their speakers as dialects of one another rather than languages of their own. Accordingly, the improper term 'dialects' is often used to refer to these languages in reference to other languages within the group. Chiefly based on common lexical items, this view, however, is unsubstantiated on research basis. This paper, hence, is an attempt to vindicate such view by measuring the extent of lexical resemblance among these languages using the Swadesh's one hundred word list as its framework. To this effect, speakers were asked to report word recognition of lexical items under investigation as well as mutual intelligibility to sentences in which recognized lexical items were used. Findings show that although there is a huge lexical resemblance among these languages exhibited by the fact that speakers could recognize numerous words from these languages, native speakers reported minimal mutual intelligibility to these languages.

Evidence of Austronesian Genetic Lineages in East Africa and South Arabia: Complex Dispersal from Madagascar and Southeast Asia

The Austronesian dispersal across the Indonesian Ocean to Madagascar and the Comoros has been well documented, but in an unexplained anomaly, few to no traces have been found of the Austronesian expansion in East Africa or the Arabian Peninsula. To revisit this peculiarity, we surveyed the Western Indian Ocean rim populations to identify potential Austronesian genetic ancestry. We generated full mitochondrial DNA genomes and genome-wide genotyping data for these individuals and compared them with the Banjar, the Indonesian source population of the westward Austronesian dispersal. We find strong support for Asian genetic contributions to maternal lineages and autosomal variation in modern day Somalia and Yemen. Surprisingly, this input reveals two apparently different geographic origins and timings of admixture for the Austronesian contact; one at a very early phase (likely associated with the early Austronesian dispersals), and a later movement dating to the end of nineteenth century. These Austronesian gene flows come, respectively, from Madagascar and directly from an unidentified location in Island Southeast Asia. This result reveals a far more complex dynamic of Austronesian dispersals through the Western Indian Ocean than has previously been understood and suggests that Austronesian movements within the Indian Ocean may have been part of a lengthy process, probably continuing well into the modern era.

The contribution of the domesticated camel and advanced irrigation techniques (the horizontal well/Falaj system) to the Iron Age economy and settlement patterns of the Oman Peninsula and Arabia.

Iron Age II is considered the classical period of the Iron Age (figure: 2). This period shows sudden increase in distribution and diversification in settlement pattern, in South-eastern Arabia (Magee 1998b:49). The settlements during this period expanded to include inland (Herrmann et al. 2012), mountains (Haser in Avanzini 2010:162) and coastal sites (Mouton & Schiettecatte 2014). Settlements became more diverse to include non-residential architecture. An appearance of irrigation technology (Falaj) along with camel domestication coincides with this increase. This increase was accompanied by regional (Benoist & Mery 2012: 88) (between the varied types of settlements) and trans-regional contact (with south Arabia) and goods exchange (Magee 1999, 2004, 2005).The layout, the location, the structure and the material culture excavated from this period reflects a complex community (Magee & Thompson 2001:129) (Magee 1998b:54). This manifested in the appearance of a belief system related to both irrigation and bronze production (the snake cult) (Benoist 2007:50), specialized labour in pottery (Benoist & Mery 2012:88), metal production (Magee 1998a:114) (Nashef in Avanzini 2010:215) and administration systems (al-Tikriti 2010:240), fortification structures related to the agriculture activity (Magee 2014:237), symbolic (axe heads on the stamp seals) and prestigious goods for elites (Magee 1998b:56). This paper argues that irrigation technology was responsible for creating a social elite class. This class was responsible for cyclic production, the expansion and the diversification of settlement patterns using the domestication of the camel.The Iron Age is divided into three sub periods based on ceramic evidence from Tell Abraq: I (1200–1000 BC), II (1000–600 BC) and III (600–300 BC) (Magee 2001:345).Table 1: Brief description of the settlement patterns and economy of Iron Age I and III: Iron Age I(1300-1000BC) Iron Age III(600-300BC) Settlement Patterns Known Shimal, Tell Abraq, al- One-third reduction in number Hamriyah and possibly Kalba; of sites when compared with on the Gulf coast, and the East Iron Age II. Known sites are Coast (Fig. 1) (Potts 2001:50). Tell Abraq, Shimal, Rumeilah, Hili17, Hili 2, Nud Ziba, al- Thuqaibah, graves in the Wadi al-Qawr and Dibba oasis (Potts 2001:50). Economy A) Dependency of the Little is known about Iron Age inhabitants on fish and III. However, excavations in shellfish (Potts 1990:103-109). Thuqeibah shows that the B) Metrical and technological economy consisted of analysis suggest that pottery agriculture, stock breeding and was produced on a part-time goods exchange with the coast or occasional basis with non- (Del Cerro 2015:23) specialized labor, and that the main reason for production was to satisfy domestic needs (Magee 2005:51). Cause of decline in May be due to: May be due to:Number of sites and a) Drought conditions that a) The limitation ofeconomy. impacted water resources, archaeological surveys in 3 b) The decline of maritime some regions versus the trade which might have been intensive explorations of caused by the Mesopotamian others restrict the knowledge replacement of Omani copper about this period (Mouton & production with that from Schiettecatte 2014:45). Anatolia, b) The collapse of the Iron c) The political instability in Age II Irrigation technology the Indus Valley during Aryan (al-Tikriti 2010:240) invasion which led scholars to ((Mouton & Schiettecatte speculate that this may have 2014:45) caused further disruption, through a cultural effect, in south-eastern Arabia (Brunswig in Potts 1990: 29 and Carter 1997: 95-7).

ОСНОВНІ ВІДОМОСТІ ПРО ДАВНЬОЕЛЛІНСЬКІ ФІМІАТЕРІЇ ТА ЇХ ПРИЗНАЧЕННЯ

The paper looks at the ancient Greek thymiateria and aims at finding data in literary, epigraphic and visual sources that would cast light on the use of thymiateria in private and public rituals of the VIІ th century BC – IVth century AD. Systematic collection of data and its comparative historical analysis were in the core of the methodology. Among the main methods of analysing the collected sources, one should mention empirical, analytical, structural-typological and iconographical methods. A thymiaterion (an incense burner) is firstly mentioned in the Vth century BC in Herodotus’ Historia. In centuries to come, the panhellenic name of thymiaterion would dominate and enter to Roman and Germanic languages. This device was used solely with fire, charcoal or heated pebbles to burn aromatic compounds, incense and aromatic plants and flowers in particular. Thymiateria didn’t have any fixed shapes or sizes. In narrative sources, they were also named bomiskos, libanotis (libanotris), escharis, tripodiskos etc. In this paper, I examine the basic constructive elements of thymiateria. As visual sources and lyric poetry suggest, they were used in the archaic period. The earliest instance of the use of thymiateria in the ritual practice date late to the VIth century BC in the Phanagoria of the Bosporus. The thymiateria is depicted on mostly in mythological scenes on the Athenian red-figure pottery late of the Vth – IVth centuries BC found in Panticapaeum and in the surrounding area. The Greek iconography of mythological scenes on the vases was clear for the locals. The majority of visual, numismatics and epigraphic sources that reveal the use of thymiateria on the Bosporus are dating to the IVth–ІІth centuries BC, when they were spread in Hellenistic Greece and, especially in sanctuaries of Delos. Although aroma was an essential part of thymiateria culture, only Orphic Hymns cast light on the use of particular incenses (in pure form or in compound) for each gods or heroes. One important question persists: which aromas were burnt in thymiateria and from which countries were they brought to Greece? From literary sources, we know that plant-based aromas, namely incense and myrrh were brought from South Arabia and Syria. Thymiateria were used during rituals in sanctuaries and temples, during religious processions, funerals, symposiums and wedding that were accompanied by aromatic smoke. The present essay should be regarded as a starting point for the further in-depth study of thymiateria from the Northern Black sea region and Olbia in particular.

Customary Laws in Hadramawt (South Arabia). Between the Past and the Future

«Вестник Санкт-Петербургского университета. Востоковедение и африканистика» — рецензируемый междисциплинарный научный журнал, призванный стимулировать развитие оригинальных, независимых, достоверных, многосторонних исследований в области востоковедения и африканистики.

Alessandra Lombardi, South Arabian funerary stelae from the British Museum collection, with contrib. by Fabio Eugenio Betti

Alessandra Lombardi, <i>South Arabian funerary stelae from the British Museum collection</i>, with contrib. by Fabio Eugenio Betti

La collection d'antiquités sudarabiques de François Antonovich

Publication of South Arabian antiquities from the collection of parisian antiquary Francois Antonovich.

Floristic composition, Life forms and Phytogeography of Al-Hashr Mountain, Jazan region, SW Saudi Arabia

The Floristic composition, life forms and phytogeographical iaffinities were conducted in Al-Hashr Mountain, Southwestern iSaudi Arabia. In total, 116 plant species belonging to 95 genera iand 47 families were collected and identified. Asteraceae and iPoaceae were the most important families in terms of species irichness. The life forms spectrum was dominated by ichamaephytes, while the remainders were therophytes and iphanerophytes, denoting phytoclimate of semi-arid mountainous ihabitat with topographical variation refuge many microhabitats, as iwell as anthropogenic factors. Due to its location, the study area, ias a part of southwestern Saudi Arabia, is a meeting place of isome phytogeographical regions of Holarctic and Palaeotropic, iwith high affinity to Sudano-Zambezian phytochorion, as well as ihigh degree of endemism of South Arabian. i

Additions and Corrections to Wolf Leslau’s Comparative Dictionary of Ge‘ez (1987–2017)

&#x0D; &#x0D; &#x0D; Thirty years after the appearance of Wolf Leslau’s Comparative Dictionary of Geʿez, the present study aims at correcting and updating some of the entries of this major tool of Semitic etymology. New data from Ugaritic, Akkadian, and especially Modern South Arabian are prominent among the additions (particularly the Soqotri lexical material acquired in the course of the many years of the author’s fieldwork on the island).&#x0D; &#x0D; &#x0D;

A short review of Southern Arabian thrones and stone furniture

The article describes southern Arabian thrones and other stone furniture, some well preserved, and some in fragments. The number of finds, their forms and decoration evidence the importance of thrones in the religious and political spheres and artistic culture in ancient South Arabia. They also recall the famous story of the Queen of Sheba’s throne recounted in the Qur’ān (Q 27.23, 38, 41, 42) and dealt with in Islamic mysticism. A short description of the various types of thrones and stone furniture is provided. Southern Arabian inscriptions linked to thrones are cited and some interpretations for the function of the thrones are proposed.

Обряды племен ал-Мишкаса (Южная Аравия): трансформация нормы

Обряды племен ал-Мишкаса (Южная Аравия): трансформация нормы

Unearthing the Wilderness: Studies on the History and Archaeology of the Negev and Edom in the Iron Age

Unearthing the Wilderness: Studies on the History and Archaeology of the Negev and Edom in the Iron Age

Beyond the Arab Cold War: The International History of the Yemen Civil War, 1962–68

Beyond the Arab Cold War: The International History of the Yemen Civil War, 1962–68

ORIGINS OF MODERN DIPLOMACY: AKSUM, SYRIA AND BIZANTIUM BETWEEN THE WEST AND THE EAST

Purpose of the article. This article conceptualizes diplomacy in diachronic as a political practice of negotiating peace, trade, and war through standardized communications with other foreign policy actors. It is assumed that although the forms and conditions for the implementation of diplomacy changed over time, the foundations of such interaction were developed in ancient times in numerous and diverse networks of contacts and exchanges not only of large and small proto-states of the world, but also between fractions, parties, aristocratic unions, trading companies. Methodology . Historical-logical and systematic methods of analysis are used to clarify the origins of the phenomenon of diplomacy as a mechanism of international relations, external relations, trade of the elite of Axum. The scientific novelty consists in positioning the diplomacy of the Aksumite kingdom as a mechanism for resonating the social dimensions of human existence (spirituality, culture, economic and political interests) of ancient Rome, Byzantium in the synergistic effect of the further development of communications of the East and the West. Conclusions. During its heyday, the kingdom of Aksum was the most prominent and important example of the African proto-power. During this period Aksum kingdom made the greatest contribution to the history of mankind. Facts from the eventful history of Axum, his political and commercial influence, active participation in world politics of that time allow us to speak of the outstanding role of Aksum in world history. Aksum kingdoms' elite had strong ties with the peoples of Tropical Africa, the high civilizations of the Mediterranean, the population of the Nile Valley, South Arabia, the Persian Kingdom (including Mesopotamia), India, Ceylon and other distant countries. The multi-vector policy of the Aksumite elite was a product of a long historical development in conditions that are significantly different from the conditions in which civilizations of Europe and Asia developed.

Imagining Oceans of Law: Oman and East Africa, circa 1910

This article takes a single moment—a court case that took place in Zanzibar in 1910—and uses it to explore the legal imaginaries that circulated around the Western Indian Ocean at the height of British imperialism. It stitches together the actions of litigants, the utterances of qadis, and the proclamations of jurists, reading them alongside the silences in the legal material itself to bring to life a world of law, mobility, and imagination. More broadly, it suggests that through the exploration of parallel but never fully intersecting legal encounters in South Arabia and East Africa that emerged from a single moment, historians might use micro-level discourses and actions to make claims about macro-level phenomena.

Writing the Ethnic Origins of the Rasulids in Late Medieval South Arabia

The Rasulids arrived in South Arabia towards the end of the sixth/twelfth century as Turkoman officers in the Ayyubid military. Thereafter they established a dynasty that lasted until the mid-ninth/fifteenth century. At the height of their power at the end of the seventh/thirteenth century, an effort to further buoy their political legitimacy was undertaken by resituating their ethnic origins to South Arabia. This first appeared within a genealogy that simultaneously showed their emergence from the complex web of descent of the local tribes, as well as juxtaposed them with the rulers of the Islamic Caliphate and elevated them above other contemporary political groups in South Arabia. However, after the Rasulid military was increasingly challenged over the course of the eighth/fourteenth century and the dynasty’s influence in the region and the wider Islamic world continued to dissipate, the assertion of their local origins was greatly fleshed out into a narrative at the beginning of a dynastic chronicle of the early ninth/fifteenth century. This prologue explains more explicitly how they first emigrated from South Arabia in the pre-Islamic period only to then return in the late medieval period as its rightful rulers. Overall, the construction of this origin story points to the Rasulids’ attempt to take on a new strategy of identification through the appropriation of South Arabian cultural memory in order to strengthen their political status.

Beads and pendants in the late Harbor Temple and the harbor temenos of the Red Sea port of Berenike (seasons 2010–2013): materials, techniques, functions and cultural attribution

More than 250 beads and pendants have been registered from the Harbor Temple and its surroundings, the so-called “harbor temenos”, in the Red Sea port of Berenike. The Harbor Temple assemblage is dominated by South Asian glass beads dating from the 4th through early 6th centuries AD, but the bead finds from the presumed temenos show much greater variety in both type and date, the latter spanning the centuries from the 1st to the 5th century AD. Rather than being accidentally lost, the quantity and find context of the beads support the idea of a votive offering function. Stylistic similarities of some objects found in the Harbor Temple have led to their association with South Arabia or Axum (Rądkowska, Sidebotham, and Zych 2013); yet a much closer affiliation might also be considered. Similar ritual objects, as well as beads and pendants, have been recorded at contemporary temples and shrines in Nubia

Agriculture in the Northern Highlands of Yemen: From Subsistence to Cash Cropping

The most fertile part of the Arabian Peninsula is the southwestern corner known historically as Yemen. The primary occupation of Yemen’s tribes over the centuries has been sedentary agriculture, stemming back to the pre-Islamic South Arabian kingdoms. Up until the revolution that toppled the Zaydī imamate in 1962, agricultural activities had change little over the centuries. After the revolution and civil war in the north, development aid poured into Yemen and access became available to modern machinery, especially diesel pumps for wells, and supplies. This article analyzes the transition from a household subsistence-based production to cash cropping in the northern highlands of Yemen. The focus is on the regions north and east of the capital Ṣanʿāʾ, which received less aid than the coastal region and southern highlands. Details are provided on the methods and production of agricultural crops in the period between 1975 and 1985, with an assessment of the potential future development of agriculture in a country currently torn apart by war.