Nemara and Faw

Abstract

The many thousands of inscriptions conventionally classified under the headings of Dedanite, Lihyanite, Safaitic, and Thamudic, all share the characteristic of a definite article in the form h- or hn-. Pre-Islamic texts displaying the distinctively Arabic article al are a mere handful; among them, easily the most important is the funerary text of Umru' al-Qays at Nemara (RES 483). This very minuscule corpus has recently been enlarged by two inscriptions from Qaryat al-Faw (anciently Qaryat Dhāt Kāhil; near modern Sulayyil, on the trade route linking Nagrān with the eastern Arabian coast), publicized by Dr. Abdul Rahman al-Ansary in spring 1977 at the first International Symposium on Studies in the History of Arabia at Riyadh. These texts are particularly welcome in that they are written in fine monumental South Arabian script, and thus do not pose the acute problems of reading occasioned by the exceedingly ambiguous scripts of Nemara and the other northern texts.

On the genetic background of the Rbbl bn Hfʿm grave inscription at Qaryat al-Fāw

“…30I follow Beeston's (1979: 1–6) interpretation. For alternatives, see Al-Ansari 1982; Kropp 1990; Robin 1992; Mascitelli 2006: 102–09.…”

“…The word ʾbdm is an adverb, and wks 1 m requires further discussion. Beeston (1979, n. 1) has argued that the final -m 's in this text should be connected with the so-called mā al-ʾibhāmiyyah , which is a post-positive indefinite relative particle mā , implying ‘any’ or ‘whatever’. This ingenious solution is challenged by the occurrence of a final m on the adverb ʾbdm , which Beeston himself had recognized as possibly problematic.…”

“…The particular construction ʿdky is unattested in Sabaic and Arabic, but is found in Dadanitic 53 . Beeston (1979) interprets Namāra ʿkdy as a metathesized form of ʿdky . This explanation is unlikely for two reasons: (1) it occurs twice in that inscription and both times it is clearly written ʿkdy , which precludes a writing error; and (2) the form ʿkdy has been identified with a similar meaning in Safaitic (Al-Jallad, forthcoming).…”

ʿArab,ʾAʿrāb, and Arabic in Ancient North Arabia: The first attestation of(ʾ)ʿrbas a group name in Safaitic

“…They were parked in the dry bed of a small seasonal lake about half a kilometer northeast of our location in the Wadi (Figure 1). 6 This, for example, is the opinion of Beeston (1979). 7 Zwettler (1993) suggested that ʿrb should be understood as a toponym rather than an ethnicon, based in large part on the supposed grammatical mismatch between the suffix pronoun -h, which according to Classical Arabic grammar can only reflect a masculine singular form, and its antecedent ʿrb.…”

The decline of eastern Arabia in the Sasanian period

“…There is some speculation about the continued importance of Thaj in the early Sasanian period (170). This seems to have been fuelled at least partly by Beeston's now discredited reading of the Nemara inscription (171). Potts has concluded that the excavated sequence at the site ends in the first or second century AD (172).…”