Arabian Peninsula in Antiquity

The present article focuses on a long-lasting phenomenon that has not yet been treated from a regional and comparative perspective, despite its exceptional character: the walled oases of north-western Arabia. It appears that several oases in the region (Al-Ḥuwayyiṭ, Dūmat al-Jandal, Ḥāʾiṭ, Khaybar, Qurayyah and Taymāʾ) were entirely, or in large part, enclosed by outer walls prior to the Islamic era. These compounds comprised not only densely populated areas but the whole oasis territory, including rural zones and sometimes burial grounds. Measuring several kilometres in length, these immense defensive schemes required considerable investment by indigenous populations for their construction and maintenance until their disuse. According to our research, the walled oases phenomenon in north-western Arabia originated sometime in the late fourth−early third millennium BCE, possibly inspired by Early Bronze Age southern Levant defensive concepts, and further expanded in connection with the emergence of the trans-Arabian trade and the caravan kingdoms. These conclusions are based on the detailed technological study of the ramparts of the oasis of Dūmat al-Jandal and on the analysis of satellite imagery and scientific literature on other sites in northwestern Arabia.

El presente artículo tiene como objetivo llamar la atención sobre una obra que ha pasado un tanto desapercibida. Considerada como un trabajo menor de un autor satírico, al-Jāḥiẓ, el Kitāb Fakhr al-Sūdān 'alā al-Bīḑān (La superioridad de los negros sobre los blancos), pese a su sugerente título, ha sido minusvalorado, pero es, en realidad, una obra seria y plenamente imbuida en el contexto y el debate político-social del siglo IX. Esta obra resulta fundamental para entender la complejidad que encierra toda sociedad, antigua o moderna. Frente a la imagen tradicional sobre la población negra como una grupo marginado, invisible y sin historia, el Kitāb Fakhr al-Sūdān 'alā al-Bīḑān les otorga el protagonismo de su obra, les saca de su invisibilidad dentro de la sociedad abbasí, y recupera y reelabora, y esto es interesante, una historia y una memoria que hunden sus raíces en la antigüedad.

This paper is concerned with finding evidence of Arab military development in defence of their territory and against the superstates on the periphery of desert-lands. This examination concerns the growth of cultural/political groups as a result of military pressure on Arabian territory from Yemen, Roman and Sasanian forces. The model searched for is that of the Germans and Slavs in Europe due to political developments directed by the Roman state and the pressure from other forms of foreign invasion (unlikely true on a largely desert land with few profitable urban centres). The Arab/Islamic invasions here are seen as products of events surrounding Arabia identified as an increase in Saracen activity (seen here as Arab raiders and mercenaries) and the identification of large group formation.

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.

This paper examines an ongoing cooperative project between the National Museum of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and the National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution, undertaken within the framework of the International Partnership Among Museums (IPAM) program of the American Association of Museums. The project— Written in Stone: Epigraphy from the National Museum of Saudi Arabia —is a virtual Web exhibition of inscriptions dating from the late second millennium B.C. to the nineteenth century A.D. It is undoubtedly representative of many special-purpose cooperative projects (for exhibitions, research, or other purposes) that are taking place across international boundaries between pairs or groups of museums in various countries. Such collaborations provide examples of how partner institutions can take advantage of the opportunities that globalization and standardization of museum practices offer.

One of the main salt basins in South Arabia is located in the southern part of Yemen, along the edges of Ramlat as-Sabʿatayn. This basin, some 600 km long and 100 km wide, shows diapiric walls orientated northwest-southeast, from the Indian Ocean to the Jawf. The salt-mines follow a long line west of Ḥaḍramawt cliffs (Jawl) and north of Jabal al-Nisiyīn. Salt-mines are sometimes located at the tail of main wādīs, such as Wādīs ʿIrmā/ʿAṭf, Jirdān, Ḥammām and Bayḥān. Salt was probably a small-scale production, feeding a local and regional trade in antiquity.
In Northern Tihâma, salt mines around as-Salîf were known to exist in the medieval period.
In the Afar depression on the western side of the Red Sea, salt traded to Highlands.

Archaeologically, only little is known of the prehistoric, ancient, and medieval periods of central Arabia, the Riyadh Province
in particular. And yet, as one of the few watered areas in the Najd, it has played a significant role in the political, economic, and
religious history of the Peninsula. In order to throw new light on this region, in 2011 a French-Saudi archaeological mission started
work in the Kharj oasis, surveying the area. Several types of site have been located: middle Palaeolithic workshops, Bronze Age
necropoleis, and late antique/early Islamic settlements and irrigation systems. The main results of this survey are presented here,
focusing on two sites: al-Kharj 22, a middle Palaeolithic site, and the late antique/early Islamic site of al-Yamāma, which was one of
the major settlements in central Arabia for almost half a millennium (fifth–twelfth centuries) and was occupied until the eighteenth
century.

The well-known snake burials from the Late Dilmun building complex at Qalat al-Bahrain are discussed in the context of pre-Islamic Arabian, Mesopotamian, Elamite, Avestan, and Vedic Indian evidence. Ancient attitudes towards snakes are reviewed with the aim of confirming or eliminating one or more of these traditions as the likeliest cultural context for the snake sacrifices of Bahrain.

"""Table of Contents.
1. Arabia and the study of the ancient Near East.
2. Ecological and environmental diversity in Arabia.
3. The formation of Arabian society: 7000 to 3000 BC.
4. Eastern Arabia from 3000 to 2000 BC.
5. The Bronze Age in western Arabia.
6. Eastern Arabia from 2000 to 1300 BC.
7. Humans, dromedaries, and the transformation of ancient Arabia.
8. Intensification and consolidation: Arabia from 1300 to 800 BC.
9. Expansion and engagement: Arabia and the ancient Near East.
10. Adaptation and social formation in ancient Arabia."""

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 cli-matological, seismological, volcanological and epidemiological history of the period. Most so-cio-political systems of the Arabs reacted to the socio-ecological crisis by getting rid of the rig-id 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 the most of the Arabian kingdoms and chiefdoms (reflected in Ayyam al-`Arab tradition) led to the elabora-tion of some definite "anti-royal" freedom-loving tribal ethos. At the beginning of the 7th cen-tury a tribe which would recognize themselves as subjects of some terrestrial super-tribal polit-ical authority, a "king", risked to lose its honour. However, this seems not to be applicable to the authority of another type, the "celestial" one. At the meantime the early 7th century evi-dences the merging of the Arabian tradition of prophecy and the Arabian Monotheist "Rah-manist" tradition which produced "the Arabian prophetic 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 explain to a certain extent those prophets' political success (including the extreme political success of Muhammad).

Osteobiography is a research method that offers many benefits to bioarchaeologists, both conceptual (e.g., disclosing the contingency of the production of scientific knowledge, engaging with the social construction of identities in the past) and practical (e.g., improving outreach to the public and increasing relevance to other academic disciplines). This article focuses on how the practical benefits of osteobiography can be maximized without compromising the conceptual ones. Research by social psychologists suggests that affective modes of interpretation, and accounts of single, identified individuals, are each productive ways of eliciting empathy from, and reducing prejudice in, readers. The current study evaluated whether these effects extend to fictive osteobi-ographical narrative. Respondents to an online questionnaire were randomly assigned to read one of three versions of an osteobiography: analytical technical, analytical colloquial, and affective/analytical narrative. The osteobiographies presented the same bio archae ol o gi cal data and were comparable in length, but they varied in style (exclusively analytical vs. affective and analytical) and language (technical vs. colloquial). The fictive osteobiographical narrative was the only version that was significantly effective at both generating empathy for past peoples and reducing prejudice toward distant places and modern populations. We argue that affective modes of osteobiographical interpretation such as fictive narrative styles of writing should be pursued more frequently and such interpretations should be disseminated more widely by bioarchaeologists as a means of public outreach. La osteobiografía es un método de investigación que ofrece muchos beneficios a los bioarqueólog os, en lo conceptual (por ejemplo revelando la contingencia de la producción del conocimiento científico, captando a las con-strucciónes sociales de identidades del pasado) y lo práctico (por ejemplo, mejorando el alcance al público y aumentando la pertinencia a otras disciplinas académicas). Este artículo se enfoca en cómo los beneficios prácti-cos de la osteobiografía se pueden maximizar sin comprometer los que son conceptuales. Investigaciones hechas por los psicólog os sociales sugiere que los modos de interpretación afectivos, y cuentas de individuales, son maneras productivas de provocar la empatía desde, y reducir los prejuicios en los lectores. El estudio actual evaluó si estos efectos extendieron a la narrativa osteobiográfica imaginaria. Encuestados en un cuestionario en línea fueron al azar asignados a leer una de tres versiones de una osteobiografía: técnica analítica, analítica familiar , y la narrativa afectiva y analítica. Las osteobiografías presentaron los mismos datos bioarquelógicos y fueron compatibles en largo, pero fueron variados en estilo (exclusivamente analíticos en contra de afectivo y analítico) y en idioma (técnico en contra de lo familiar). La narrativa imaginaria de osteobiografía era la única versión que era considerablemente efectiva en generando empatía para las personas del pasado, y en reducir los prejuicios en

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).

A preliminary survey of the historical sources and secondary literature relating to Christianity in the Arabian Gulf. This report details what information is available and deals with some of the major issues relating to Christianity in the region including the issue of Ecclesiastical authority and Christian involvement in maritime trade, particularly the pearling industry.

A new interpretation of Arab origins and the historical roots of Arab identity

Who are the Arabs? When did people begin calling themselves Arabs? And what was the Arabs’ role in the rise of Islam? Investigating these core questions about Arab identity and history through close interpretation of pre-Islamic evidence and the extensive Arabic literary corpus in tandem with theories of identity and ethnicity prompts new answers to the riddle of Arab origins and fundamental reinterpretations of early Islamic history.

PHONOLOGIE La graphie et la prononciation Pour dresser le système phonologique de la langue dédano-lihyânite, les spécialistes se sont appuyés sur des données indirectes, fournies par le sudarabique et l'arabe. Le premier présente des ressemblances graphiques, le second des similitudes linguistiques. La valeur donnée à chaque lettre est évidemment approximative. On sait que cette valeur, en arabe classique, résulte d'une longue évolution et la langue dédano-lihyânite se rapproche justement de l'arabe ancien. On a donc procédé par analogie, en extrapolant selon notre connaissance de l'évolution comparée des sons dans les langues sémitiques I54. L'écriture dédano-lihyânite ne possède pas de voyelle. Pour noter les voyelles longues finales, elle a recours aux maires lectionis Ihl, Iwl et lyl. La notation des voyelles médianes apparaît sporadiquement dans la graphie dédano-lihyânite, à une date difficile à établir 1SS. Quant aux voyelles brèves, on a tendance à les restituer par analogie avec l'arabe. Le système consonantique Le système phonologique dédano-lihyânite compte vingt-sept consonnes organisées en plusieurs catégories, selon Γ articulation de chacune : labiales, dentales, interdentales, sifflantes, prépalatales, postpalatales, vélaires, pharyngales et laryngales. Selon la manière d'articuler, elles sont sourdes ou sonores, emphatiques, nasales, latérales ou vibrantes 156. Le tableau qui suit appelle quelques remarques.-Contrairement au sudarabique qui possède trois sifflantes-s1 ή (proto-sémitique s), s2 î (proto-sémitique s), s3 8 (proto-sémitique s)-, le dédano-lihyânite ne possède que deux signes indépendants pour noter les sifflantes s1 et s2 : ή et $. Le premier est issu du 5 proto-sémitique et le second du έ proto-sémitique 157.

Although the Mediterranean Sea was the center of Greek and Roman life, the Red Sea tells another story of the West trying to catch up with Eastern refinement. The trade of the Red Sea has again and again been called into question where extensive bibliography can conveniently be found. My present study, in a way, continues this interest, but with a crucial shift of emphasis. The trade of the Red Sea is not my particular concern as such, though it remains important. My purpose is to weigh how the luxury trade of the Red Sea appeared in Augustan poetry. (1) It is a subject on which two principal lines of thought can be traced: : First: How did this luxury trade affect the literary perspectives of the Roman poets in connection with women? Second: The Roman poets' reflections on this trade. Time and again, I would assist my argument by references to other sources outside the Augustan poetry to give emphasis to the Augustan poetical view. (2) Many Latin texts address the issue of female adornment. Our knowledge of the Roman women's extravagance of getting the luxury products of the East comes from a variety of literary sources, usually and mainly Pliny the elder, Seneca the younger, and the satirists Juvenal and Martial. I would suggest, in this context, to illuminate the evidence of Roman love elegy. (3)

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 is the first monograph to present Madina in modern Saudi Arabia as a model of sacred space and a holy city in western Arabia in early Islam. Based on Munt’s doctoral thesis, ‘The Sacred History of Early Islamic Medina: the Prophet, Caliphs, Scholars and the Town’s Ḥaram’, it is an earnest attempt to put within historical framework the conversion of Yathrib, the pre-Islamic name for Madina, into Madīnat rasūl Allāh. The study’s main objective is to define and contextualize the different phases of Madina’s taḥrīm (lit. ‘sanctification’), during the first three centuries AH (seventh to ninth AD), and to integrate its findings with the religious, political, legal and perhaps socio-economic contexts in which this process emerged. Madina is particularly honoured for having served as the dār al-hijra or muhājar rasūl Allāh, ‘the emigration place of God’s Messenger’. The city is more widely known, however, as al-Madīna al-Munawwara, ‘the illuminated city’, i.e., the city which has been enlightened by the Prophet taking it as his place of emigration. It is the place which accommodates his mosque and grave and to which faith, as stated in a ḥadīth, comes creeping ‘just as a serpent creeps to its hole’.

ABSTRACT: This lecture (no. 16) covers the Neo-Babylonian Empire, starting with the transitory reign of King Nabopolassar (Nabu-apla-usur) (ca. 626/625-605 BC), an individual who began as an official serving the Assyrians and gradually became independent, initiating a small kingdom in southern Babylonia that grew into an autonomous Babylonian kingdom and then challenged and ultimately defeated the Assyrian Empire by 610 BCE. The lecture proceeds with a brief coverage of his son, King Nebuchadnezzar II (Nabu-kudurru-usur; 604-562 BC), and a series of other Neo-Babylonian rulers: King Amel-Marduk (biblical: Evil-Merodach; ca. 561-560 BC), King Nergal-Shar-Usur (Neriglissar; Nergal-sherezer; ca. 559-556 BC), King Labashi-Marduk (ca. 555 BC), and King Nabonidus (ca. 555-539 BC), the latter of whom lost his kingdom to Cyrus II (the Great), who incorporated the Neo-Babylonian Empire into the expanding Persian Empire.  Please Note: This lecture will also be expanded in future course revisions/offerings. UPDATED: 2022 Spring offering.

The Book of Job is full of fascinating paradoxes: despite it is the oldest book of the Bible (Job 19:23), it is very badly known, despite the fact that many details, even insignificant, about the life of Job are known this character is merely regarded like the Good Samaritan (a parable), despite the main question all over the book is: "why evil prevails?" the answer would be: "please, look at the hippopotamus and the crocodile" (Job 40:1-42:6), which is poetic but quite absurd. However, as Maimonides had already understood a long time ago the Book of Job: it includes profound ideas and great mysteries, removes great doubts, and reveals the most important truths (The Guide for the Perplexed III:22). Indeed Job lived (1710-1500) near Bozra in Idumea and received a deep and detailed answer, when the Israelites were suffering in Egypt (the Hyksos), in order to know when and how the evil angel, Leviathan a.k.a. Satan, will be defeated by Behemoth the first creature of God (Job 40:19). In a surprising manner, archaeology has shown that all the geographical and historical details in the Book of Job are accurate and reliable.
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In scattered areas of the Arabian Peninsula, beginning several centuries before the first Christian millennium and for several centuries after, public works efforts were mounted to convey water from mountain aquifers, via subsurface aqueducts, onto
drier valleys and plains. These subterranean, gravity-driven filtration galleries, known generically as qanats, were transplanted across the Peninsula first by Persians, and later by others who borrowed their technology. Much scholarly work has been produced to account for their constructions in Iran, Oman, and many other countries throughout the world where qanats were eventually built. But this story of technological
diffusion has been left with notable gaps. This paper offers a synthesis of the history of qanats from earlier studies, together with fresh evidence collected from 1993-1998 fieldwork in some of these 'gaps' in the northern and southern Peninsula. This collation offers evidence of three distinct pathways of diffusion of qanat technology from Persia across Arabia, and discusses the current use and future of qanats throughout the region.

L’auteur Hérodote, né à Halicarnasse (sud-ouest de la Turquie) en 484 avant J.-C. signale l’usage du youyou traditionnel, par les femmes maghrébines durant la haute antiquité : « Pour moi, dit Hérodote, les hurlements rituels qui accompagnent les cérémonies religieuses ont aussi la même origine car les Libyennes en usent fort et d’une façon remarquable », (Livre IV, 189). Au Maghreb traditionnellement, selon les contrées et la configuration culturelle des lieux, le youyou est nommé Twalwil et Tzaghrit  (arabe populaire), Tighratin dans les dialectes berbères de la Kabylie. Ce rituel du youyou, spécifique aux femmes maghrébines selon Hérodote, plonge ses racines dans les tréfonds antiques du monde méditerranéen. Il découle d’usages et de coutumes archaïques et de règles religieuses communes aux anciens grecs et aux paléoberbères.

This paper deals with various types of depicted pre-Islamic ornaments in Rock Art and Mural painting, discovered in Saudi Arabia. It asserts that the information obtained from the aforementioned material can be utilized to increase knowledge about general aspects of life and their patterns of the population being studied; in light of its economic and social conditions. The study attempts to discern the importance of human embellishment of past times achieved by virtue of natural raw material usage. In order to accomplish the desired goal, the way that is most likely to succeed in the addressing of this issue is the combination of both methods, descriptive, as well as analytical-comparative method in certain cases.

The petroglyphs and pictographs of Oman are little known, but for the last 9 years I have been involved, through the Omani Ministry of Heritage and Culture, in a series of surveys of the Jebel Akhdar Mountain range, that have resulted in the location of several important sites. The recording of these sites, on occasion in advance of major roadwork modernization projects, has for the first time enabled detailed research of the rock art in the area. This is being undertaken through the research of: superimpositions; cross-dating with known artistic expressions elsewhere in the region; the known dates for the introduction of writing systems in Ancient Arabic and Standard Arabic alphabet; the study of various objects of material culture; and the presence of certain animals in the rock art (such as turtles, oryxes, goats-like animals, camels and horses). I propose a preliminary chronology consisting of several major phases spanning the last 7,000 years.

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.

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.