[The Middle East Studies Pedagogy Initiative (MESPI) brings you the nineteenth in a series of “Peer-Reviewed Article Reviews” in which we present a collection of journals and their articles concerned with the Middle East and Arab world. This series will be published seasonally. Each issue will comprise three-to-four parts, depending on the number of articles included.]
Arab Studies Quarterly (Volume 44, Issue 1)
The Artist's Way
By: Mohamed Salah Eddine Madiou, Samira Al-Khawaldeh
Abstract: [While critics take a particular interest in discussing Mohsin Hamid as a novelist of globalization, migration, war, politics, economics, and capitalism, I contend that Hamid manifests a strong interest in, even obsession with, art in his fiction and non-fiction, which also makes him a novelist of art. Relying on his own words in his non-fiction, I argue that Hamid expresses a direct, often indirect concern about his artistic life, which includes his artistic experiences, ways, pursuits, and struggles in the globalized world of art. This article aims to ground my obstinate claim that Hamid symbolically exposes his own artistic life in his fiction in reality; it does this by focusing on Hamid’s non-fiction where his personal confessions can be said to be the most pronounced in contrast to his fiction where these are symbolic and, therefore, less definite. It establishes the basis on which my subsequent claim that Hamid speaks about his artistic experiences in his fiction can stand and, by extension, the claim that his fiction, besides being metafictional, can also be considered autobiographical.]
On Humanitarian Law and the U.S. Double Standard
By: Ghada Hashem Talhami
Abstract: [U.S. criticism of its client/ally Saudi Arabia regarding the killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi immediately diminished the kingdom’s ability to secure funds for its latest mega development project, the Neom convention center. U.S. intelligence pinned the crime on aides to Crown Prince Muhammad Bin Salman (MBS). At the same time, a seemingly unauthorized operation, later attributed to former president Donald Trump, killed a top Iranian commander, Qasem Suleimani, by a drone strike. Congress was not involved and the UN protested this as a violation of Article 51 of its Charter, emphasizing that this was justified in a case of imminent threat, undertaken only by a state. Encouraged by drone technology, the U.S. found it easy to locate the target and minimize collateral damage. International lawyers and military experts are still debating the legitimacy of such action. The U.S. is persisting in claiming that it upholds the standards of international humanitarian law which sometimes sanctions targeted killing. A number of international law professors continue to deride U.S. action as illegal, while the latter continues to describe its actions as defensive in nature. Organizations such as Human Rights Watch lament the reluctance of previous U.S. presidents to define targeted killing.]
Revising the Assumption that Ḥadīṯ Studies Flourished in the 11th/17th-Century Ḥiǧāz: Ibrāhīm al-Kūrānī’s (d. 1101/1690) Contribution
By: Naser Dumairieh
Abstract: The Ḥiǧāz in the 11th/17th century has long been considered the center of a “revival” movement in ḥadīṯ studies. This assumption has spread widely among scholars of the 11th-/17th- and 12th-/18th-century Islamic world based on the fact that the isnāds of many major ḥadīṯ scholars from almost all parts of the Islamic world from the 11th/17th century onward return to a group of scholars in the Ḥiǧāz. The scholarly group that is assumed to have played a critical role in the flourishing of ḥadīṯ studies in the 11th/17th-century Ḥiǧāz is called the al-Ḥaramayn circle or network. However, to date, there have been no studies that investigate what was actually happening in that century concerning ḥadīṯ studies. Examining the actual ḥadīṯ studies of one of the scholars at the core of al-Ḥaramayn circle, i.e. Ibrāhīm b. Ḥasan al-Kūrānī, will unpack the main interest of Ḥiǧāzī scholars in ḥadīṯ literature, reveal previously unstudied aspects of ḥadīṯ studies in the 11th/17th-century Ḥiǧāz, correct some unexamined assumptions, and situate the ḥadīṯ efforts of scholars of the 11th/17th-century Ḥiǧāz within a general framework of developments within ḥadīṯ studies.
Old Arabic Minutiae I: ḥattā, laysa, and More from the Inscriptions of the Syro-Jordanian Ḥarrah
By: Ahmad Al-Jallad
Abstract: This is the inaugural paper of a series on material attested in ancient North Arabia inscriptions that is of particular importance to the history of Arabic, its linguistic context, and its development and classification. The article edits eleven Safaitic inscriptions, inscribed on seven stones, discovered during the 2019 Badia Survey in Northeastern Jordan. Most of these texts attest new grammatical and lexical features that shed important light on this shadowy phase of Arabic’s pre-Islamic history, including attestations of the subordinating particle ḥt (= ḥattV), the negator ls (= laysa), possible nūnation, and idioms that appear later in the Qurʾān, e.g. tmny h-mt ‘he wished for death (in combat)’ (cf. Qurʾān tamannūna l-mawta).
The Truth within a Circle: A Muḥabbaẓūna’s Play and Its Revival by Alfred Faraǧ
By: Daniela Potenza
Abstract: During his travels in Egypt, Edward William Lane attended “a low and ridiculous farce,” he reports, performed by the muḥabbaẓūna, before Muḥammad ʿAlī Bāšā. Lane described its plot and concluded that the farce was played before the Pasha to open his eyes to the conduct of the tax collectors. When recounting farces in the Ottoman Empire, some travellers and critics confirm the narrative of ridiculous and low shows, while others underline their social critique. In 1979, inspired by Bertolt Brecht, Alfred Faraǧ rehabilitates the show in Dāʾirat al-tibn al-miṣriyya, masraḥiyyat al-muḥabbaẓīna (The Egyptian Hay Circle, a Play by the Muḥabbaẓūna). Comparing different descriptions of the muḥabbaẓūna and Faraǧ’s interpretation of their play, this paper provides reflections on the social aim of performances using the circle as an ephemeral division of fiction from reality and highlights how the muḥabbaẓūna could deliver political comments both to the common people and to the elites.
Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East (Volume 41, Issue 3)
Infrastructures of Minoritization
By: On Barak
Abstract: Figurations of body, community, and politics traversed India and the Ottoman world along the artificial coaling archipelago that connected both via legal islands of extraterritoriality and other technologies in the Red Sea. Examining this system and the ethnic groups that operated and subverted it reveals how minority formation and other forms of making community and autonomy were linked to processes of anatomization and a rearticulation of ideas about race, blood, and soil. This “infrastructural turn” meant that sociability, religion, identity, and political legitimacy in the inter- and intra-imperial domains were biologized and thus fastened to the material and technological systems these groups were part of. Parsis and their Muslim competitors naturalized this system and made it and themselves into parts of the landscape. Such ecologies of ethnicity and extrastatecraft flourished on the margins of large-scale infrastructures, underpinning the emergence of minorities and diasporas in the twentieth century.
The Fruit of the Arts and the Mob: Global Minorities during the Dreyfus Affair
By: Orit Bashkin
Abstract: This essay considers accounts of the Dreyfus Affair published in the newspaper Thamarat al-Funun (founded 1875) during 1898 to demonstrate how Arab writers addressed the rights of minorities in Europe and examined failed emancipatory projects. Writing about the Dreyfus Affair allowed intellectuals in the Levant to reverse the power relationship between themselves and Europe and to comment on the kinds of politics that would ensure the equality before the law of the Jewish minority in Europe. These debates further illustrate that even before the shift to electoral politics in the Ottoman Empire (after 1908) and in postwar Arab nation-states, Arab writers were preoccupied with the relationship between statecraft and majority-minority relations. They argued that democratic institutions such as parliaments and courts of law were the best venues to safeguard the rights of religious communities whose mere existence was defined as a problem. Bashkin shows how Thamarat al-Funun pointed to phenomena that endangered religious communities, such as fanaticism, racism, abuse of power by the police and the military, and mob politics.
From Religious Eulogy to War Anthem: Kurdizadeh's “Layla Bigufta” and Blackness in Late Twentieth-Century Iran
By: Beeta Baghoolizadeh
Abstract: This article looks to two songs, “Layla Said” and “Mammad, You Weren't There to See,” to examine the politics of representation, race, religion, and nationalism in late twentieth-century Iran. “Layla Said,” a religious eulogy sung by Jahanbakhsh Kurdizadeh, would serve as inspiration for the most popular song of the Iran-Iraq War (1980–88) in terms of melody, rhythm, and lyrics. Kurdizadeh, a visibly Black Iranian, is not popularly remembered as the source of the eulogy, an omission that compounds many of the politics of Black representation in Iran. Through an investigation of film, aural recordings, photographs, and more, this article follows the many mutations of the eulogy-turned-anthem to identify the various ways ethnography and documentary works frame blackness in Iran. Kurdizadeh's life and marginalized legacy highlights the tacit erasure of blackness on the national stage in Iran.
Middle East Popular Politics in Gramscian Perspective
By: John Chalcraft
Abstract: This article outlines a theoretical framework for researching popular politics in the Middle East and North Africa. It sketches a Gramscian alternative to existing approaches in materialist Marxism, cultural studies, and social movement studies. It also aims to think a Gramsci useful to historians, political scientists, sociologists, and anthropologists, beyond the common loci of Gramsci scholarship in political theory, comparative literature, and international relations. With a start point in Gramsci's philosophy of praxis, it puts forward a concept of popular politics as a mostly slow-moving, complex, and many-layered transformative activity, a form of historical protagonism comprising a variety of moments, capable of working changes on existing forms of hegemony and founding new social relations. The point is to enable researchers in Middle East studies to see and research popular politics, carry on a critique of transformative activity, and inform transformation in the present.
On Common Speech: Chaste Writing, Dalit Language, and Vernacular Monolingualism
By: Sravanthi Kollu
Abstract: The multilingual turn in literary studies emphasizes the fairly recent emergence of a monolingual attachment to language. While this rightly calls into question the academic focus on monolingual competencies and offers a substantial area of inquiry for scholars working with the linguistically diverse regions of South Asia, Africa, and the Middle East, this essay posits that the persistence of multilinguality among historical actors from these regions does not merit a shift away from monolingualism in contemporary scholarship. This argument derives from the claims analyzed in this essay, made by South Asian writers in colonial India, about the singularity of one's own language (swabhasha) and the writers' anxieties to protect this language from vulgar speech (gramyam). Building on contemporary work on the vernacular, the essay seeks to draw renewed attention to the role of speech in language debates in Telugu, a language whose particularity has not become a metonym either for the nation (like Hindi) or for a pan–South Indian identity (like Tamil). In tracing the movement from vulgar speech to proper language in this archive, this essay reframes vernacularity as an ethical compulsion premised on the common.
Self-Minoritization: Performing Difference in Colonial Algeria
By: Amal Ghazal
Abstract: This article looks at the process through which the Ibadi Mzabi community in the Algerian desert “minoritized” itself during the colonial period, leading into the 1948 elections to represent the Mzab Valley on the newly created Algerian Assembly. This representation legally and effectively incorporated the Mzab into French Algeria and ended its special status as a French protectorate. Mzabi self-minoritization, Ghazal argues, was a process of performative differentiation based on a sectarian identity. It was initiated by the colonized and negotiated with the colonizer, emerging at the intersection of colonialism and the institutionalization of political representation in colonial Algeria. Ghazal defines this process as self-minoritization to attribute a proactive role for, and more agency to, the colonized in claiming a “minority” identity and negotiating a special status within the colonial order.
Islamic Law and Society (Volume 28, Issue 4)
The Decline of Green-Glazed Jars after the Early Abbasid Period
By: Elon Harvey
Abstract: Green-glazed jars were manufactured in southern Iraq during the Parthian, Sasanian, and early Islamic periods. In the latter period, they were distributed in great numbers in the Near East and in coastal areas along the Indian Ocean from the Horn of Africa to China and Japan. The jars are thought to have been used chiefly for storing “date-syrup.” Around the 4th/10th century their production was significantly reduced and their prevalence greatly declined, a phenomenon that has puzzled archeologists. In this study, I identify these jars with “the green jars” (al-jarr al-akhḍar or ḥantam) mentioned in some classical Islamic texts. According to numerous Ḥadīth, the Prophet prohibited nabīdh (date-wine) in “green jars.” While many Muslim jurists held that the Prophet withdrew this prohibition and that these jars were lawful, many found the use of these jars reprehensible or even forbidden. I suggest that the Ḥadīth in which the Prophet prohibited green jars may have contributed to the decline of green-glazed jars.
Journal of Cuneiform Studies (Volume 73)
A Sargonic Learner’s Tablet with an Invocation of the Goddess Nisaba
By: Hanan A. Al-esawee, Abdulmukrem M. Alezzi
Abstract: This paper derives from the study of confiscated texts in the Iraq Museum. Here we publish an Umma tablet with the accession number IM 205090, a square school text with three columns on one side and a single one on the other that lists the distribution of very large quantities of silver to various people; it concludes with an invocation to the goddess Nisaba by the learner, who describes himself as an apprentice scribe.
In Search of Dugurasu
By: Maria Giovanna Biga, Piotr Steinkeller
Abstract: The identity of the toponym Dugurasu, which is mentioned some fifty times in the ED IIIb documentation from Ebla, is a highly contested issue. While M. G. Biga had proposed an identification with Egypt, A. Archi then argued that Dugurasu was situated in northwestern Iran. This study offers a systematic examination of all the attestations of Dugurasu, focusing on the types of materials traded between Dugurasu and Ebla. It also considers evidence bearing on Ebla’s commercial partner named DUlu. Characteristically, Ebla and DUlu exchanged the same types of goods as those traded between Ebla and Dugurasu. Our investigation strongly suggests that Dugurasu is either Egypt itself or some place in Palestine that served as an intermediary in exchanges between Egypt and Ebla, while DUlu denotes either Byblos or one of its immediate neighbors.
By Order of the King: Ammi-Ditana’s Letter on the Provision of Fodder Barley for the Sheep and Oxen of the Nakkamtum
By: Caroline Janssen
Abstract: Di 1353 is a letter by King Ammi-ditana of Babylon to the chief lamentation priest of Annunītum. It contains a simple instruction to provide fodder for the oxen and the sheep of a temple storehouse, the nakkamtum. One wonders though what this direct intervention meant on a pragmatic level. The king does not explain himself. But this question can be approached from different angles. What do we know so far about the relation between the palace and the nakkamtum? Does this letter fit into a pattern of royal letter writing? Can we benefit from the fact that we have an archival context for this letter?
HS 200B: A Bridal Gift (Tuppu Bibli) from the First Sealand Dynasty
By: Jacob Jan de Ridder
Abstract: An unusual tablet from the Hilprecht-Sammlung in Jena describes the biblu, “bridewealth,” paid for a girl at her betrothal. Paleographic features and onomastic arguments suggest that the text may be dated to the late Sealand I period, with similarities to documents from the reigns of the Kings Pešgaldarameš and Ayadaragalama. A first edition is offered together with a brief introduction detailing its legal context and historical setting.
A New Reading of the Middle Elamite Text Shun I 9
By: Jalil Bakhtiari
Abstract: There are four complete or almost complete unprovenanced bricks and twenty-one brick fragments from the site of Toll-e Bard-e Karegar in Khuzestan belonging to the only Elamite inscription mentioning the god Kamul. All of them represent exemplars of the one and the same text (ShuN I 9), written in the name of the Elamite king Shutruk-Nahhunte I (ca. 1190–1155 BCE). The text describes a temple that the king had rebuilt and dedicated to the god Kamul. In this article, a new reading and translation of the last sentence of the text that is divided into four sections and compared with parallels in Old and Middle-Elamite texts, is suggested. In addition, the brick fragments TBK 16 and 28 are reread and classified and TBK 89, 114, 122, and 127 are published.
Elamite War Chariots and Military Equipment At Ancient Kabnak (ca. 1400 bce)
By: Javier Álvarez-Mon, Yasmina Wicks
Abstract: After entering the second millennium BCE as a military superpower, Elam faded into historical obscurity upon its withdrawal from the broader Near Eastern political scene in 1763 BCE and only reemerged much later as a major player with a sequence of incursions in Mesopotamia beginning in the thirteenth century and culminating in the 1155 BCE fall of the Kassites. During the intervening centuries, neither written nor archaeological sources offer clear signs that Elamite territory had come under the authority of any foreign power. Here the authors propose that a reexamination of evidence from the ancient settlement of Kabnak (modern Haft Tepe), approximately seventeen kilometers southeast of the Elamite lowland capital of Susa, discloses a mid-fifteenth to mid-fourteenth century BCE state-controlled arsenal of war chariots and weaponry that may hold a key to comprehending Elam’s apparent continued resistance to outside forces and its rise as a military superpower in the thirteenth century.
Keeping Alive Dead Knowledge: Middle Assyrian Glass Recipes in the Yale Babylonian Collection
By: Shiyanthi Thavapalan
Abstract: Although they describe Bronze Age technologies and techniques, the Akkadian glassmaking texts are primarily known through later copies from Ashurbanipal’s libraries. The first portion of this paper provides editions of three fragments of previously unknown glass texts from the Middle Assyrian period and examines how and why they came to be written down. The second portion discusses metaphors concerning kinship and bodily experience that explain the relationship between the glassmaker in Mesopotamia, his tools, and his creative process. It is argued here that only by embracing the entire context of the craft process—this includes the behaviors chosen during manufacture as well as the allusions made to social relationships through language, performance, and materials—can we begin to appreciate how knowledge about technologies was transmitted.
Inscribed Bullae Found during Excavations on the Northern Slope of Ayanis Fortress in 2015 and a New Urartian Building Name, ÉTamali
By: Kenan Işık, Oğuz Aras, Ayşegül Akın Aras
Abstract: The 2014 season of excavations at the Ayanis Fortress of the Urartian Kingdom, located on the eastern shore of Lake Van, revealed a trash layer on the northern slope of the fortress that contained densely packed animal bone remains as well as several inscribed bullae. During the excavations carried out in the same area in 2015 four more inscribed bullae were recovered in the northern fortification wall. This article provides information on the 2015 excavations of the outer side of the northern fortifications and trash layer at Ayanis, with a first edition of the new bullae. These short inscriptions mention the names of people, cities, countries, and professions, as is common in such Urartian bullae. The inscription on a newly discovered bulla mentioning a construction named tamali is important as it informs us about a new building unit whose function is unknown at present.
Ancient Mesopotamian Divinatory Series from the British Museum: New Texts and Joins
By: Nicla De Zorzi
Abstract: This paper contains editions of three previously unpublished omen texts and one commentary text from the collections of the British Museum. BM 36165 and BM 34999 are Late Babylonian manuscripts of Šumma ālu tablet 1 while K 6260 is a join to Šumma izbu tablet 4. BM 47684+ is part of a large Late Babylonian four-column tablet containing a new commentary on physiognomic omens. The edition of these tablets is accompanied by an extensive commentary that discusses the placement of the tablets within the divinatory series, as well as orthographic and interpretative issues.
Minor Archives from First-Millennium BCE Babylonia, Part II: The Balīḫû Archive
By: Ludovica Cecilia, Johannes Hackl
Abstract: The article presents editions of all known texts belonging to the archive of the Sipparean prebendary Marduk-bēlšunu, son of Nabû-balāssu-iqbi, that is, the Balīḫû archive. It is the second part of a series of articles that aims to make available the so-called satellite archives of the Ṣāḫiṭ-ginê A archive (“Marduk-rēmanni archive”) and related and unrelated smaller archives from Sippar, all dating to the long sixth century BCE.
Journal of Islamic Studies (Volume 33, Issue 1)
ʿAlī b. al-Madīnī (161–234/778–849): A Critical Reconstruction of His Biography and Evaluation of His Contribution to ḤadĪth Criticism
By: I-Wen Su
Abstract: Considered precursors of ḥadīth criticism, the opinions of ʿAlī b. ʿAbdallāh b. Jaʿfar al-Madīnī (161–234/778–849), extensively cited by later ḥadīth scholars, have given considerable weight to the credibility of a ḥadīth and its transmitters. Despite his centrality to the science of ḥadīth, there is not a single monograph dedicated to him and his intellectual output in the scholarly literature in English. This article presents a critical reconstruction of his life. Although the biographical sources on ʿAlī b. al-Madīnī are copious, the earliest details, especially on evaluation of his scholarly accomplishment, are often tendentious and contradictory. There is also a controversy related to his submission to the miḥna. Analysis of these biographical reports intimates that the questioning voices mainly came from the early Ḥanbalī circle, while other scholars, comprising Yaḥyā b. Maʿīn’s disciples and non-Baghdadis, especially of Basran and Khurasani origins, tended to defend ʿAlī b. al-Madīnī. This paper argues that ʿAlī b. al-Madīnī’s unfaltering status as a leading ḥadīth critic can be attributed to the geographical outreach of his supporters, whose overall attitude towards the createdness of the Qurʾān is more tolerant compared with that of the Ḥanbalīs. More importantly, ʿAlī b. al-Madīnī’s contribution to the formation of ḥadīth criticism as a discipline was realized from early on, which is manifest in his knowledge of ʿilm al-rijāl and mastery of ʿilal al-ḥadīth. His theorization of ḥadīth transmission through the framework of the madār al-isnād also laid the epistemological foundation for the following ḥadīth critics in their formulation of the disciplinary history.
From kolkHoz to pulpit: Rashida abïstay and female religious authority in Soviet and post-Soviet Russia
By: Rozaliya Garipova
Abstract: This article focuses on the life and activities of Rashida Iskhaki, an ordinary Soviet woman from a kolkhoz near Kazan who became one of the most authoritative religious figures in Soviet and post-Soviet Tatarstan. Her path-breaking career demonstrates the development of the institution of female religious authority, abïstay, in post-WWII Russia and under the anti-religious Soviet regime. While the male religious elite was decimated before the war and remained under strict state control in the post-war period, women played a crucial role in the transmission of Islamic knowledge. Making use of public and private spaces Rashida Iskhaki developed into a full-fledged religious authority among the Muslims of Kazan. She contributed immensely to the formation of the female and male religious elite of early post-Soviet Russia. She and other women actively connected Muslims in and around the city of Kazan through home classes and majlises. The article suggests rethinking the dichotomies between ‘male’ and ‘female’ spheres, between ‘official’ and ‘unofficial’ Islam and argues that contemporary abïstays are very much a ‘Soviet phenomenon’, whose authority developed in the conditions of the Soviet regime and its collapse.
Authoritarian Resilience and the Absence of Democratic Transition: Implications of 2011
By: George Joffé
Abstract: By the end of 2021 it will be a decade since the events of the ‘Arab Spring’ (al-rabīʿ al-ʿarabī) profoundly disrupted the Arab world, particularly in North Africa, raising hopes that the region overall would, through a permanent democratic transition, shake off its apparent exceptionalism in endorsing authoritarian governance. A decade later, such aspirations would appear to have been dashed, except in Tunisia, although fresh rounds of protest in Lebanon and Iraq, and especially in Algeria, during 2019 and 2020, might have suggested that this could be too peremptory a judgment. Nonetheless, authoritarian resistance appears to have been far more resilient than expected at the time. Yet, do the experiences of the decade therefore demonstrate that political liberalization within the region, specifically within North Africa, is not possible and, if not, what were the factors that made such an outcome seemingly impossible to achieve? This comment is designed to address some aspects of these concerns with particular emphasis on the theories behind democratic transition derived from different sets of hypotheses about the origins and principles of participatory socio-political action.
Journal of Qur'anic Studies (Volume 24, Issue 1)
Qur'an Translations into Central Asian Languages: Exegetical Standards and Translation Processes
By: Mykhaylo Yakubovych
Abstract: One of the most important issues when studying Qur?an translation is the question of the extent to which the translation process is informed by a specific hermeneutical strategy. By analysing three translations published by one of the most active international actors in this area, the King Fahd Qur?an Printing Complex in Medina, the current study is an exploratory attempt to systematise common features of Qur?an translations produced for Central Asian Muslim communities (in this case, Kazakh, Kyrgyz, and Tajik). By comparing selected verses and supplementary materials, the analysis undertaken in this article suggests the existence of a specific dynamic in exegetical strategy, according to which both typical ?Salafi? visions of the text (mostly in terms of theological issues) are combined with ?domestic? interpretations of the Qur?an that are popular in Central Asian Islamic milieux. Despite a predominantly ?static? Salafi trend in exegetics, the translations addressed in this study show some level of variation, which appears in the way the overall exegetical framing of the translation is made relevant to the local Muslim context.
Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient (Volume 64, Issue 7 and Volume 65, Issue 1-2)
Ottoman Archival Documents on the Shrines of Karbala, Najaf, and the Hejaz (1660s-1720s): Endowment Wars, the Spoils System, and Iranian Pilgrims
By: Selim Güngörürler
Abstract: This study introduces and publishes an array of Ottoman archival documents on the shrines of Ahl al-Bayt imams in Iraq, the endowments dedicated to these shrines, and the Shiite-Iranian pilgrims visiting these sites as well as the Kaaba and the shrine of Muhammad in the Hejaz. Focusing on the later seventeenth and the early eighteenth centuries, it discusses the political-economic function of Islamic endowments, interconfessional contacts resulting from pilgrimage by Shiites in Sunni territory, and the potential use of Ottoman archives to enrich our knowledge on trans-Ottoman themes.
Poetry, Magic, and the Formation of Wahhabism
By: Nadav Samin
Abstract: The Sunni revivalist Muḥammad Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb (d. 1792) has been subjected to rigorous scrutiny by a number of scholars. Much remains unknown about Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb’s life and work, however, not least the rationale behind his idiosyncratic style of authorship. Examining the scholar’s theological writings from the vantage point of Arabia’s oral vernacular and popular religious traditions casts new light on the particularities of Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb’s appeal. That appeal, this paper argues, is rooted in phenomena that were seemingly peripheral or even anathema to his puritanical religious mission, namely, poetry and magic.
Mamlūk Studies Review (Volume 24)
Reassessing the Significance of Archival Material in Mamluk Diplomatic Studies. A Survey of Florentine-Mamluk Relations through the Lens of Chancery Sources (fifteenth-sixteenth centuries)
By: Alessandro Rizzo
Abstract: A set of documents in the State Archives of Florence and the Laurentian Library of Florence related to the exchanges established between that city and the Mamluk Sultanate is (aside from a few chronicles) the sole historical testimony available for outlining the framework of the diplomatic and trade relations maintained by these two powers from the third decade of the fifteenth century until the beginning of the sixteenth. This article describes the essential features of such documentary material in order to highlight its diplomatic significance and to offer an overview of the historical development of these relations. It also shows on what chancery modalities and strategies the dialogue between Florence and the sultanate could be established and how it developed.
Marriage and Kinship among the Amirs of the Banū al-Ḥusayn: The Rise of the Buḥturid Qadis in Rural Mamluk Syria (Eighth/Fourteenth Century)
By: Wissam H. Halawi
Abstract: The clan structure of the Banū Buḥtur is particularly well documented during the third reign of al-Nāṣir Muḥammad. Within this extended family from rural Syria, the amir al-Ḥusayn was renowned for his political skill, which allowed his descendants, the Banū al-Ḥusayn, to become local authorities for nearly two centuries. In this article, I focus on the role played by this eminent figure in founding an amirate in his native village of ʿBayy and advancing the economic and political interests of his kin, known as “the amirs of Gharb.” Through an anthropological reading of the local chronicles, I show how al-Ḥusayn implemented a bilateral rather than a purely patrilineal kinship system, which became the good practice (sunnah) of the Banū Buḥtur and drove their esprit de corps. I also examine al-Ḥusayn’s redefinition of clan kinship, including the notion of elective kinship, which resulted from exogamous matrimonial alliances forged with families outside the house of Buḥtur and enabled the amir to confer the local judicature (niyābat al-quḍāh) to members of his family. The case of the Banū Buḥtur enriches our knowledge of the Mamluk judicial organization in which the exercise of justice in the outlying territories was delegated to qadi substitutes from local families.
Waste, Excess, and Obsession in the Mamluk Harem
By: Tara Stephen
Abstract: Royal women, in spite of the restrictions of seclusion, engaged with the urban space of the Mamluk Sultanate at its capital in Cairo in a variety of ways. Modern scholarship has focused primarily on their pilgrimage processions and building projects, the most “visible” manifestations of their influence on Mamluk society and governance. Less studied has been how medieval Islamic scholars constructed their narratives about royal women. What kind of categories and assumptions were in use? What choices did they make in depicting these women? How were accounts of royal women similar or different across different texts, and what can that tell us about Mamluk chronicle-writing more broadly? Using descriptions of royal women written by three prominent Mamluk chroniclers—al-Maqrīzī, Ibn Iyās, and Ibn Taghrībirdī—I emphasize the differences in chronicles in terms of the value judgments that the authors made about royal women and events in their lives and what they chose to emphasize and neglect in weaving together an account of Mamluk reigns. In doing so, I argue that motifs of waste, excess, and obsession are frequently used: waste of precious resources by sultans or the members of their harem, excessive displays of wealth, and sultans’ distracting obsession with wives and mothers. Through these themes this article explores broader issues of how chroniclers depict royal women and the variation in such narratives.
Copper or Silver? The Monetary Situation in Late Mamluk Damascus
By: Wollina Torsten
Abstract: The economic history of the medieval Arabic Middle East is difficult to reconstruct. Before the sixteenth century, systematic documentary evidence is lacking on all levels, the current state of the region makes further archaeological excavations almost impossible, and the many narrative (mostly historiographical) texts are often inadequate to allow for any statistical approximation without corroborating evidence from other sources. Based on five annalistic texts—two by Muḥammad Ibn Ṭūlūn (d. 1546) and one each by Aḥmad Ibn al-Ḥimṣī (d. 1528), ʿAlī al-Buṣrawī (d. 1500), and Aḥmad Ibn Ṭawq (d. 1509)—this article returns to the long-standing debate of whether the so-called “age of copper” indeed came to an end during the fifteenth century or extended into the Ottoman period. In the monetary context, we know much more about issues and uses of gold coins—which were restricted to small segments of society—than about the relations between silver and copper coinage and their impact on small-scale, everyday transactions, which would have made up the vast majority of the local economy. Most work on the subject has focused on Cairo; Syria has only been regarded as secondary. This study focuses on a long neglected period, approximately the later 1480s until the early 1520s, and on developments in Mamluk Syria. It engages exclusively with Damascene narrative sources, whose authors were immersed in Syrian society and paid closer attention to events there than counterparts in Egypt. This approach puts Damascus and other Syrian cities on the map of the economic and monetary history of the Mamluk period and shows that the monetary situation there differed from that in late Mamluk Cairo.
Archaeological Excavations of Bāb al-Ghurayb Cemetery: Plague Epidemics and the Ruin of Fourteenth-Century Cairo
By: Stéphane Pradines
Abstract: Greater Cairo is a megalopolis with nearly 17 million inhabitants. As the city has few green spaces, in 1998 the Aga Khan Trust for Culture (AKTC) launched a project to create a new panoramic park at the edge of historic Cairo. In 2000, a scientific cooperation was established between the Egyptian Ministry of Antiquities, the French Institute of Oriental Archaeology (IFAO), and the AKTC to excavate and document the archaeological sites along the al-Azhar Park. From 2001 to 2009, the main archaeological site was the Darrāsah parking lot, also called the “Archaeological Triangle.” This site is remarkable for its location in the city, less than 350 meters east of the al-Azhar mosque and along the Fatimid and Ayyubid city walls. Eight missions, totalling 18 months of excavations, were carried out on this site. For historians, Cairo is one of the best known and most well documented Middle Eastern cities during the medieval period, as it was the capital of several important dynasties, including the Fatimids, Ayyubids, and Mamluks. Mamluk Cairo faced a series of epidemics of plagues and the Black Death from the fourteenth until the fifteenth century and later. These plague epidemics were described in detail by historians but have never been observed physically. Our archaeological excavations have revealed this tragic story through a unique source of documentation: the cemetery of Bāb al-Ghurayb.
Oriens (Volume 49, Issue 3-4)
The Question of Providence and the Problem of Evil in Suhrawardī
By: Jari Kaukua
Abstract: Šihāb al-Dīn al-Suhrawardī’s philosophical works seem to contain two conflicting views on providence: in the Talwīḥāt and the Mašāriʿ, he endorses the Avicennian view, only to deny providence altogether in the Ḥikmat al-išrāq. This contribution aims to explain the seeming inconsistency by investigating it in light of the underlying question of God’s knowledge of particular things. I will also argue that despite his qualms concerning providence, Suhrawardī accepts the closely related Avicennian answer to the problem of evil.
Considering Divine Providence in Mullā Ṣadrā Šīrāzī (d. 1045/1636): The Problem of Evil, Theodicy, and the Divine Eros
By: Sajjad Rizvi
Abstract: Despite the extensive work on the Safavid thinker Mullā Ṣadrā Šīrāzī (d. 1045/1636) nowadays in metropolitan academia, certain areas of philosophical and theological concern remain understudied, if studied at all – and even then, there is little attempt to consider his work in the light of philosophical analysis. We know of a venerable philosophical tradition of analysing the question of providence as a means for examining questions of creation (ex nihilo or otherwise), the problem of evil, determinism and free will, and the larger question of theodicy (and whether this world that we inhabit is indeed the ‘best of all possible worlds’). I propose to examine these questions through an analysis of a section of the theology in al-Asfār al-arbaʿa (The Four Journeys) of Mullā Ṣadrā (mawqif VIII of safar III) and juxtapose it with passages from his other works, all the while contextualising it within the longer Neoplatonic tradition of providence and evil. The section of the Asfār plays a pivotal role in outlining a wider theory of divine providence: following the analysis of the Avicennian proof for the existence of God as the Necessary Being and her attributes, and before the culmination on the emanative scheme of creation (or the incipience of the cosmos – ḥudūṯ al-ʿālam), Mullā Ṣadrā discusses the question of divine providence where one can clearly discern the influence of previous thinkers on him, namely Avicenna (d. 428/1037, al-Šifāʾ and Risālat al-ʿišq) al-Ġazālī (d. 505/ 1111, Iḥyāʾ ʿulūm al-dīn), and Ibn ʿArabī (d. 638/1240, al-Futūḥāt al-makkīya). The section can be divided into four discussions: defining providence as well as the nature of good and evil, accounting for the ‘presence’ of evil in the cosmos, the ‘best of all possible worlds’, and erotic motion of the cosmos as well as the erotic attraction of humans for one another and back to their Origin. What emerges, however, is an account of providence that is subservient to Mullā Ṣadrā’s wider ontological commitment to the primary reality of being, its modulation and essential motion – the tripartite doctrines of aṣālat al-wuǧūd, taškīk al-wuǧūd and al-ḥaraka al-ǧawharīya – and fits within his overall approach to the procession of the cosmos from the One as a divine theophany and its reversion back to the One through theosis. Thus, an analysis of providence and evil demonstrates that underlying significance of Mullā Ṣadrā’s metaphysical commitments to a modulated monism.
Proceedings of the Seminar for Arabian Studies (Volume 51)
The sixteenth-century Portuguese Suma Oriental and the Arab pilots: A comparative summa orientalis?
By: Juan Acevedo
Abstract: Starting from a consideration of Tomé Pires’ 1515 Suma Oriental, this article considers the feasibility, nature, and relevance of a summa orientalis in the form of a Portuguese Early Maritime Corpus. When this corpus is compared with Arabic nautical literature, primarily Ibn Mājid and Sulaymān al-Mahrī, and especially with attention to the technical aspects of their writings, then the desirability of an Indian Ocean Maritime Corpus is envisaged. The centrality and the mediating role of Arab pilots and Arabic nautical literature indicate that the first step is the delimitation of an Arabic Early Maritime Corpus.
Neolithic settlement patterns and subsistence strategies on Marawah Island, Abu Dhabi Emirate, United Arab Emirates
By: Mark Jonathan Beech, Noura Hamad Al Hameli, Richard Thorburn Cuttler, Kevin Lidour, Howell Roberts, Rémy Crassard, Nurcan Yalman, Talfan Davies
Abstract: Recent work has revealed that there are three major Neolithic settlements present on Marawah Island, Abu Dhabi, known as MR1, MR2.5, and MR11. Excavations at the settlement of MR11 are radically changing our ideas of Neolithic architecture, in particular the spatial organization of settlements. MR11 comprises a group of seven mounds (Areas A to G), the first of which (Area A) was subject to excavation in 2003 and 2004 (Beech et al. 2005). Work has continued every year since 2014 on Areas A, B, C, and F. Radiocarbon dating of charcoal fragments have demonstrated that this settlement was occupied from c.8000 to 6500 years ago (Beech et al. 2019). The excavation of each of these areas revealed different forms of architecture. It is now clear that a part of the tripartite house in Area A post-dates an earlier building. Areas B and C comprise a series of differently shaped rooms and paved areas with multiple entrances. Preliminary excavations on Area F indicate the presence of a multi-celled structure that is very different in character from the other areas. Some of the key finds from the excavations are discussed, including lithics, plaster vessels, fish bones, marine shells, mineralized date stones, and radiocarbon dates.
Multi-species analysis of stable carbon and nitrogen isotope data from Qalʿat al-Baḥrayn
By: Caitlin Bonham Smith, Judith Littleton
Abstract: Isotope analysis of archaeological bone collagen is standard for investigating diet and animal husbandry practices. In the Arabian Peninsula, however, stable carbon and nitrogen isotope analysis is uncommon due to poor collagen preservation. We used a revised extraction protocol for fragile material and obtained collagen from Qalʿat al-Baḥrayn (QAB) adult human (n=19) and animal (n=45) bone.
Petrographic analysis of ceramics from Murwab, an early Islamic site in Qatar
By: Jose Carvajal Lopez, Alexandrine Guerin, Myrto Georgakopoulou
Abstract: Murwab is one of the most important early Islamic archaeological villages in the Arabian Peninsula and the Persian Gulf, and one of the best-known. Excavated since the 1950s, the site has yielded a complete pottery assemblage which allows the site to be dated from the late eighth to the late ninth century AD.
This paper presents an analysis of the ceramics of Murwab. The analysis is undertaken on a selection of 134 pottery sherds of common ware/‘kitchen’ ware without glaze and encompasses a petrographic study and elemental analysis using wavelength dispersive X-ray fluorescence spectrometry (WDXRF). The results of the petrographic analysis and some preliminary thoughts on the chemical analysis are discussed in the text. Twelve ceramic fabrics have been detected in the assemblage studied. The composition of the fabrics allows some preliminary suggestions about provenance to be drawn: none of the fabrics was locally made in Qatar and most of them seem to come from Mesopotamia, eastern Arabia, and southern Iran.
The technology of the ceramics reveals an approach to the manufacture of common wares that is characteristic of the Upper and Central Gulf (corresponding roughly to the Gulf coast west of the Musandam Peninsula, including Khuzestan and Bushehr in Iran). It is not known when this technological approach started, but it does not seem to be documented in the Bronze Age.
Al-Arid, an Early Bronze Age settlement site in the interior of the Oman peninsula: Results of the second season’s excavations (2020)
By: Corinne Castel Castel, Jacques É. Brochier, Olivier Barge, Blandine Besnard, Elsa Ciesielski, Lionel Darras, Yasmine Kanhoush, Georges Mouamar, Frédéric Rivière, Séverine Sanz, Margareta Tengberg, Pauline VÉZY
Abstract: Following a first season of joint investigations carried out at the two settlement sites of Bāt and al-Arid (15 km north-west of Bāt) in the Sultanate of Oman, during winter 2019 (Castel et al. 2020), the MBA Mission (Mission archéologique de Bāt/al-Arid) carried out a second season of excavations at the settlement site of al-Arid in 2020.
Traditional architecture of Ras al-Khaimah: Digital mapping and characterization of a key heritage resource
By: David Connolly, Hana Kdolska
Abstract: The Traditional Architecture of Ras al-Khaimah Project (TradArch) was entrusted with systematically and digitally recording the location and typologies of the surviving vernacular architecture of the northernmost Emirate of the UAE. The Emirate of Ras al-Khaimah is unique within the UAE in having an unparalleled diversity and number of surviving historical buildings. The rich variety of this resource is a result of the country’s distinctive history, which is reflected in its architectural legacy — representing a tangible but ever diminishing link with the past. It is hoped the TradArch data set will form an important part of the foundations for a much-anticipated digital National Sites and Monuments Record. This paper aims to present the methodology and highlight key results from the first two seasons (2018, 2019).
New evidence from excavations at the Iron Age settlement of Shimal (Ras al-Khaimah)
By: Michel de Vreeze, Samatar Ahmed Botan, Tibor Paluch, Stefan Weijgertse
Abstract: This paper discusses the results of the first new excavation season in the Shimal (Shamāl/Shimāl) area (Ras al-Khaimah/Rās al-Khaymah). The Shimal plain has shown favourable conditions for settlement throughout time. The area has long been known for its important Bronze Age settlement and tombs, with continuity into the early Iron Age (Vogt & Franke-Vogt 1987). Nevertheless, the Iron Age II period has so far been less visible in the area, with sparse evidence from disturbed shell middens and reuse of certain tombs. Recent surveying ‘rediscovered’ an important area of multiple low hills rich in Iron Age surface material. New excavations in this area have so far unearthed two building units, with multiple phases of Iron Age II and possibly Iron Age III–pre-Islamic recent (PIR) occupation. The lowest phase reached so far in one of the buildings attests to a conflagration. Secondary evidence of copper working was found in and around these buildings. Together with ceramic vessels including snake appliqué, this suggests these structures might not have been strictly domestic but resemble contemporary cultic buildings elsewhere in the Emirates (Benoist 2007). These finds call for a comparison with the contemporary settlement evidence in the region. The possible relation with a wider destruction episode at the end of the Iron Age II will also be reviewed.
Late Bronze and Iron Age animal exploitation in Masāfī, Fujairah, UAE
By: Delphine Decruyenaere, Marjan Mashkour, Kevin Lidour, Karyne Debue, Thomas Sagory, Maria Paola Pellegrino, Julien Charbonnier, Anne Benoist
Abstract: Over the past fifteen years the French archaeological mission in the UAE has excavated several areas of Masāfī in Fujairah. A Late Bronze Age settlement was found in MSF-5 and Iron Age architectural remains in MSF-1, MSF-2, and MSF-3 that include, respectively, a public building, fortified settlements, and a temple possibly dedicated to the cult of the snake, similar to Bithnah. The oasis environment in this rather arid region makes it suitable for agro-pastoral activities. The study of the faunal remains of these four areas (NISP 1657) indicates that domesticates — predominantly sheep and goat with a ratio of 1:2 — were the main meat/dairy component of the diet. Cattle are only present in a few remains and dromedary remains were recovered in the public areas of MSF-1 and 3. Wild taxa are only represented by gazelle remains. The absence of wild animals is the main difference from most contemporaneous sites in the UAE, where they have economic and social importance alongside domestic animals. While fish remains are scarce in Masāfī sites, molluscs are surprisingly abundant and confirm the existence of exchange between the coast and the hinterland. They were consumed or used for craft production.
Renewed excavations at Tell Abraq, Umm al-Quwain, 2019–2020 — insights into the site’s occupation from the mid-second millennium BC to the late pre-Islamic period
By: Michel Degli Esposti, Federico Borgi, Maria Paola Pellegrino, Simona Spano, Camille Abric, Rania Houssein Kannouma
Abstract: In late 2019, stratigraphic excavations were restarted in the eastern part of Tell Abraq, a multi-period site located immediately south of the capital town of Umm al-Quwain and divided between its Emirate and the Emirate of Sharjah. The site is known to have hosted continued human occupation between c.2500 BC and AD 300; within this wide range, the new research project aims specifically to focus on the Late Bronze Age/Iron Age I transition and possibly on the late pre-Islamic occupation of the site. During the first evaluation season in 2019 and more extensive excavation in 2020, relevant stratigraphic sequences were studied and a substantial building preliminarily dated to the early first millennium BC was discovered, which changes the picture of this phase of the site’s occupation. The first overview of these results is provided here.
Walk the line: the 2020 field season of the Al-Mudhaybi Regional Survey
By: Stephanie Döpper
Abstract: The Al-Mudhaybi Regional Survey seeks to produce a detailed and comprehensive knowledge of the landscape of the Al-Mudhaybi region in Central Oman. This paper presents the results of the 2020 field season, in which transects throughout the survey area were field-walked. The transects were equally spaced, at 4 km distance from each other, and ran north to south. Each transect was walked by a team of four, recording all surface finds with a hand-held GPS device. This method helped to identify more ephemeral structures, such as find scatters, thus providing statistically relevant data on site and artefact density in the region and, ultimately, on the settlement pattern and its diachronic development. At the southern end of the first transect completed in 2020, an Iron Age settlement was recorded near Sinaw. Additionally, this paper discusses small excavations carried out at three sites — Al-Batha, Mukhtru, and Al-Fath — which were conducted to provide a more precise chronology for them by radiocarbon dating. While radiocarbon dates on charcoal from the Mukhtru settlement site fall well into the Umm an-Nar period (2450–2050 BC), radiocarbon dates and pottery sherds from the presumably third-millennium BC tower at Al-Fath clearly indicate a reuse in the middle and late Islamic periods.
Boats, horses, and moorings: maritime activities at al-Balīd in the medieval period
By: Alessandro Ghidoni, Alexia Pavan
Abstract: The importance of the medieval city of al-Balīd and its harbour was mentioned in many different sources, and mirrored by a large number of finds and pottery that confirm a primary role of the port as a pivotal hub in Indian Ocean trade during the pre-modern Islamic period (tenth–fifteenth century AD). This paper will examine maritime activities at al-Balīd from a different perspective, combining recent data from the study of ship timbers discovered at the site with the archaeological record, along with evidence of possible harbour facilities.
The study of the ship timbers has provided invaluable information about the technology, size, material, type, and function of the watercraft involved in the trade at al-Balīd. The reuse of these timbers in a terrestrial context also alludes to a variety of activities carried out at the site, such as boatbuilding, maintenance, repair, and salvaging. Collectively, this data yields useful insights into the relationship between the different vessels operating at al-Balīd and the structure of the site itself, mainly in connection with one of the most lucrative commercial activities at the port city — the trade of Arabian horses.
Settlement patterns in Qatar during the early Islamic period (7th–10th century) — house, mosque, and complex in the North Qatar Region
By: Alexandrine Guérin
Abstract: This paper presents an ongoing study of selected human occupations during the early Islamic period (seventh–tenth century) in the north-western region of Qatar. Taking into account the excavations at Murwab and Yoghbi, which are our only stratigraphic references in Qatar for this period, this is an examination of the organization of the occupation of territories, from single isolated cells to larger complexes. Through the study of architecture and spatial organization we aim to complement the surface data that has been collected over the past decades, up to the high-resolution kite survey carried out in 2018 by Carter and Stremke (2021). In addition to the houses and villages for which we have a large sample both in excavation and in survey, we have focused on the study of a fort and large complexes whose interpretation and function remain to be defined.
Mapping the Shimal plain, Ras al-Khaimah: Introducing the Shimal Plain Palm Gardens Project
By: Hana Kdolska, David Connolly
Abstract: The Shimal plain in Ras al-Khaimah is an area rich in archaeology and history, which has been subject to archaeological exploration since the 1960s (de Cardi & Doe 1971; Donaldson 1984; 1985; Vogt & Franke-Vogt 1987). Despite this, questions relating particularly to the development and character of prehistoric and early historic settlement in the area persist. Having prime agricultural conditions, a large portion of the Shimal was once given over to palm-garden cultivation, these recently experiencing a considerable decline caused by loss of underground water, socio-economic changes, and inevitable development. Paradoxically, these very circumstances present an unparalleled opportunity to investigate previously inaccessible areas — a focus of the Shimal Plain Palm Garden (SPPG) Project. The project, designed as a rapid rescue survey of areas under imminent threat from development, was to map and record all archaeological sites and heritage structures onto a geospatial resource and to collect representative ceramic assemblages from these, to serve as a resource for subsequent research. The paper aims to review the project methodology and highlight results from the first two seasons (2018 & 2019).
Study and mapping of wells in the oasis of al-ʿŪla (poster)
By: Céline Marquaire, Julien Charbonnier, Gaël Gourret, Ahmad Fraidoon Said, Vincent Bernollin, Yasmin Kanhoush
Abstract: Despite al-ʿŪla’s arid climate, the earliest sedentary settlement in the wadi dates as far back as the first millennium BC and has been continuously inhabited up to the present day. Rare and short-duration rainfall forced the inhabitants of the wadi to develop several methods to exploit underground water resources. While the well-known qanat network has been partially studied (Nasif 1988), there remains a significant lacuna in the understanding of the wells. The al-‘Ūla Cultural Oasis Project (UCOP) — led by Archaïos, funded and steered by the French Agency for Al-Ula Development (AFALULA), on behalf of the Royal Commission for Al-Ula (RCU) — highlighted the study of the wells in its research programme. The preliminary study took place during the autumn of 2020 with a corpus of almost twenty structures detected by remote sensing, followed by a systematic field survey and photogrammetry of a relevant example. This work enabled the establishment of a preliminary typology and a relative chronology of these structures. The study of the distribution of the wells is furthermore essential to the understanding of the spatial development of the oasis.
Documentation and evaluation of maritime endangered archaeology in the Kingdom of Bahrain (the MarEA project)
By: Rodrigo Ortiz-Vazquez, Robert Carter, Lucy Blue, Salman Al-Mahari
Abstract: This paper outlines some of the research goals and methodological objectives of the Maritime Endangered Archaeology (MarEA) project, taking the maritime and coastal archaeology of the Kingdom of Bahrain as a case study. The Arabian Gulf’s exponential population growth and fast rate of urban development, particularly in the coastal margins, has had a profound impact on the maritime cultural heritage (MCH) of the region and in particular, on the coastal heritage of the Kingdom of Bahrain over the last decades. Therefore, the need to document and assess threats to the maritime and coastal archaeology of the island has never been so urgent.
MarEA aims to document and record submerged and coastal archaeology of the Middle East and North Africa, through the analysis of satellite imagery, extant datasets, and literature, working closely with local partners. The project evaluates disturbances and threats acting upon the cultural heritage. It does so by consolidating the information in EAMENA’s (Endangered Archaeology in the Middle East and North Africa project) open-access database. This paper highlights MarEA’s methodology by demonstrating an analysis of threats and changes that have destroyed, impacted, or continue to impact maritime cultural heritage sites in Bahrain, including Qal’at al-Bahrain, the coastal towns of Manama and Muharraq, and offshore sites.
Eleventh–twelfth century — political and economic balances in the western Indian Ocean in the light of historical and ceramic evidence from the site of Banbhore/Daybul
By: Valeria Piacentini Fiorani, Agnese Fusaro
Abstract: This paper focuses on a critical phase that witnessed new maritime equilibriums in the western waters of the Indian Ocean under the Seljuq military umbrella, with the support of Hormuz and Daybul’s fleets and the harbours/markets along the Omani seaboards. Textual sources provide detailed information and chronologies. Daybul’s siege by the Seljuq army, the following peace agreement that confirmed its reorganization as the capital city of an autonomous nāḥiya, the Seljuq conquest of Oman and annexation within its system as a mulk, delimit a fluid space destined to become the core of international trades. Ceramic finds from the site of Banbhore attest to it, enhancing the role of Daybul as the pivot of a well-integrated network in the western Indian Ocean, favoured by its strategic location as a heading port of the monsoon routes and cabotage trade with South-East Asia. Extremely significant is the abundant presence of imported items found at Banbhore/Daybul until the late twelfth–very early thirteenth century. They belong to the same wares and morphological typologies as those recovered in eastern and southern Arabia, coastal East Africa, Gujarat, and the southernmost Indian regions. Following the same trading routes, typical unglazed grey and red pots produced at Banbhore reached the westernmost coasts of the Indian Ocean.
The inscriptions in Ancient South Arabian script from Ḥimā: A preliminary historical and cultural appraisal
By: Alessia Prioletta
Abstract: Since 2007, the Saudi-French Archaeological and Epigraphic mission to Najrān (MAFSN) has been conducting surveys in the area of Ḥimā, located about 100 km north-east of Najrān. In the area, which in antiquity was on the route leading from South Arabia to the north and east of the Arabian Peninsula, thousands of rock engravings have been found, carved on the suitable local sandstone by the region’s population and by the armies and caravans that stopped over at Ḥimā during their long-distance journeys.
This paper attempts a preliminary general assessment of the inscriptions carved in Ancient South Arabian (ASA) script that have been recorded so far by the MAFSN. Thanks to the geo-referenced archive of the MAFSN mission, the distribution of the graffiti can now be visualized on spatio-temporal geographical maps. Moreover, by analysing their textual content and script style, it is often possible to determine the identity and provenance of the authors along with the period in which they were produced. Many of these texts contain direct or indirect references to the coeval historic situation in southern Arabia and even abroad, and confirm the importance of Ḥimā as the northern commercial offshoot of the Najrān oasis in the pre-Islamic trans-Arabian trade network.
From raw materials to finished products: pottery production at Sumhuram (Khor Rori, Sultanate of Oman)
By: Carlotta Rizzo, Stefano Pagnotta, Marco Lezzerini, Alexia Pavan, Giulia Buono
Abstract: The aim of this paper is to analyse the dynamics related to the pottery production in Sumhuram, the easternmost port of call between the Red Sea and the Indian continent along the southern coast of Arabia (second century BC–fifth century AD). Being a rich hub of international trade, receiving and redistributing local products and goods from many different areas, Sumhuram was able to provide for its needs through its own agriculture and a number of local activities, as attested by the presence of kilns and furnaces. Previous studies on the topic have suggested a possible connection between local pottery manufacturing in Sumhuram, and the Hadrami tradition, although kilns have not been found until recently. In 2015 archaeological investigations unveiled the first evidence of such a connection with the discovery of a pottery kiln and some production waste inside the city wall, along with the identification of pottery sherds in the area of the kiln. In order to identify their mineralogical and petrographic composition, thin-section analyses were made on a number of selected sherds. The preliminary results demonstrate that the raw materials used are compatible with a local production. This allows us to describe the different phases of the pottery cycle in Sumhuram as well as the structure of the pottery kiln, which represents an uncommon find in the pre-Islamic archaeology of southern Arabia.
On the root NḪY in Ancient South Arabian inscriptions: An etymological and contextual study
By: Irene Rossi
Abstract: This article discusses the meanings of the Ancient South Arabian lexemes derived from the root NḪY, which appear in circumscribed yet diverse epigraphic contexts. Because of such diversification, distant semantic values have been proposed in previous literature for these lexemes, leading to an assumption of the existence of homograph NḪY roots in ASA. One is related to the penitential contexts of the so-called ‘confession’ inscriptions in the Minaic and Amiritic languages; these texts draw their appellation from the current interpretation of the verb nḫy at the T-stem as ‘confess’, based on a parallel with Ethiopic. The other one refers to the hydraulic contexts of some Sabaic and Qatabanic inscriptions, attesting to the causative stem of the verb nḫy , in relation to water management issues and to the word mnḫy, which has been alternatively analysed as a preposition loci (‘towards’) or a noun indicating an irrigation device (e.g. a canal). Recently, the noun nḫy in the formula introducing names of kings and deities in some Ethio-Sabaic inscriptions, with one possible instance also in Hadramitic, was interpreted as attesting the ‘guidance’ or ‘instruction’ of such authoritative figures. Besides the diversification of the contexts of use, there is no consensus on the etymological comparisons of NḪY. By means of an analysis of the available evidence on this root and the reconsideration of previous interpretations, this paper aims to verify the possibility of reconciling those lexemes within one semantic value and of considering NḪY to be an Ancient South Arabian isogloss.
Funerary archaeology in Qatar: Old data and new discoveries
By: Ferhan Sakal, Marica Baldoni, Muna Al-Hashmi, Sara Tomei, Cristina Martinez-Labarga, Faisal Al Naimi
Abstract: This paper reports preliminary findings from select re-analyses and new excavations conducted under remit of the project ‘Human Populations and Demographics in Qatar from the Neolithic to the Late Iron Age’ (performed in cooperation with Sidra Medicine, the Department of Biology of the University of Rome Tor Vergata, and Qatar Museums Authority). Due to the absence of large settlements, our understanding of pre-Islamic societies in Qatar has until recently been extremely limited. However, progress in bioarchaeological research methods offers new possibilities to address this knowledge gap. Several thousand pre-Islamic burials can now be used as an important resource to elucidate the relationship between population dynamics and socio-cultural changes in pre-Islamic Qatar. In addition to analysis of previously excavated skeletal remains, new excavations can be conducted in carefully chosen cemeteries from different pre-Islamic periods, thereby allowing bioarchaeological samples to be retrieved from undisturbed burial contexts.
Kalba: new insights into an Early Bronze Age trading post on the Gulf of Oman
By: Christoph Schwall, Michael Brandl, Mario Börner, Katleen Deckers, Susanne Lindauer, Ernst Pernicka, Eisa Yousif, Sabah A. Jasim
Abstract: The fieldwork conducted at the coastal site of Kalba on the Gulf of Oman revealed continuous occupation from the Early Bronze Age to the Iron Age (c.2500–600 BC), and the significance of trade networks on the south-eastern Arabian Peninsula from the third millennium BC onwards. The renewed investigations at Kalba focus especially on the occupation during the Umm an-Nar period in order to gain insights into the origins and developments of these trading networks. In this context, the excavations concentrate on a highly promising section in the east of the settlement, including a massive Early Bronze Age retaining wall that represents the base of the Umm an-Nar tower constructed above. The recent fieldwork revealed interesting results regarding the construction of this stone wall with an exterior ditch and the subsequent use of this area in later periods.
Besides archaeobotanical and radiocarbon analyses, chert and copper artefacts from the excavations and potential raw material sources are of special interest. Results of material analyses illustrate the significance of mineral resources for the settlement. This indicates that Kalba could have functioned as a trading post connecting maritime and inland trade routes leading into the inner region of the Arabian Peninsula.
Al Ain Museum: an ancient landscape beneath the carpark
By: Peter Sheehan, Tim Power, Sophie Costa, Steve Karačić
Abstract: Al Ain (National) Museum was established by Shaykh Zāyid b. Sulṭān Āl Nahayyān in 1969 next to the Sulṭān Fort on the eastern edge of al-ʿAyn Oasis, now one of the seventeen components of the Cultural Sites of Al Ain, inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List in 2011. In 2019, the Abu Dhabi Department of Culture and Tourism (DCT) commenced a long-planned project to restore and extend the museum, retaining the main museum building and supplementing it with new facilities on the site of the former museum offices, stores, and parking. Careful recording and dismantling of the remains of the twentieth-century village of Ḥārat al-Ḥiṣn, demolished in the 1980s, was followed by an archaeological watching brief during the initial 2 m excavation of deep underlying deposits of sand and silt. When excavation reached more compact deposits, the presence of numerous deep cut features was revealed and works were halted while these were investigated. The subsequent archaeological works have provided important new insights into the natural and cultural landscape of the oasis, including evidence for Iron Age aflāj, a late pre-Islamic (PIR) tomb and a number of PIR wells reused as middens, and a substantial early Islamic falaj. Finds from the excavations have thus filled several significant lacunae in the archaeological and ceramic sequences of al-ʿAyn. This paper describes the progress of the works and discusses its significance for our understanding of the development of the oasis landscape of al-ʿAyn.
Navigating the Gulf: Aḥmad b. Mājid’s poem on Gulf navigation
By: Eric Staples
Abstract: Aḥmad b. Mājid is the most renowned author of Arabic navigational literature. Although he is reported to have come from the southern Gulf port of Julfar, the vast majority of his work focuses on navigating the Indian Ocean and the Red Sea, and his compositions contain few details relating to Gulf navigation. The one exception is a short, undated poem describing sailing routes in the Gulf. This paper analyses this unique poem and compares the navigational practices it describes with those in his other navigational works in order better to understand the specific characteristics of Gulf and Indian Ocean navigation in the fifteenth century.
Foodstuffs and organic products in ancient south-east Arabia: Preliminary results of ceramic lipid residue analysis of vessels from Hili 8 and Hili North Tomb A, al Ain, United Arab Emirates
By: Akshyeta Suryanarayan, Sophie Méry, Arnaud Mazuy, Martine Regert
Abstract: Exchange networks in the Bronze Age between south-east Arabia, Mesopotamia, south-east Iran, south-west Pakistan, and the Indus Valley moved a variety of raw and finished products, especially pottery. However, we have little understanding of what organic products were a part of these exchange networks, as well as what foodstuffs were prepared in ceramic vessels as part of everyday activities. This paper presents the preliminary results of lipid residue analysis of local and imported vessels from Hili 8 and Hili North Tomb A in al-Ain, United Arab Emirates (UAE). Absorbed lipids were extracted and analysed via gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS) from a range of vessels including local, regional, Indus, Mesopotamian, and Makran wares. A majority of the lipid profiles were indicative of degraded animal fats, although some vessels, including Fine Red Omani Ware and imported Black-Slipped Jars from the Indus Valley, had evidence of plant oils. Further analyses that will shed light on the possible origin of the animal fats and plant oils are ongoing. The preliminary results provide new insights into the use of pottery at Hili, with broader implications for our understanding of subsistence and exchange networks in the region.
A new example of proto-hamzah in the early Islamic graffiti of Wādī al-Khirqah (poster)
By: Risa Tokunaga
Abstract: It has long been considered that the authors of the earliest Islamic Arabic documents did not write hamzah, a sign for the glottal stop. For instance, the Qurʾān was compiled with an orthography representing the Hijazi dialect, which lacked hamzah. After the expansion of Islam to those speaking other Arabic dialects and to non-Arabs, hamzah was added to some Qurʾān manuscripts as coloured dots, but a universal rule did not exist. Hamzah only came to be written consistently after the new scripts, such as Thulth, gained popularity on paper in the eleventh century.
The Jabal al Yamh tombs (Hatta, Dubai, UAE): The architecture, spatial distribution, and reuse of prehistoric tombs in south-east Arabia
By: Tatiana Valente, Fernando Contreras, Bernardo Vila, Adrián Fernández, Domingo Lopez, Ahmed Mahmud, Mansour Boraik Radwan Karim, Mahra Saif Al Mansoori, Hassan Mohammed Zein
Abstract: On the slopes of Jabal al Yamh (Hatta, Dubai) there is a necropolis with more than seventy tombs, which tell of an occupation of the Hatta valley since prehistoric times. With their varied architecture, these tombs seem to represent styles associated with the Hafit, Umm an-Nar, Wadi Suq, and Iron Age periods. Although they span a long chronology of more than two millennia, they all appear to have similar construction techniques, distribution patterns, and orientation with the hydrological network of the Hatta wadi. Interpretation through GIS allowed us to establish parameters that showed a preference for certain features of the landscape that were always associated with water. Despite the decreasing number of artefacts found, the diversity of the excavated tombs allowed us to identify an architectural evolution in these periods based on particular features of some tombs. On the other hand, from the human remains dated by their biological apatite, we were able to confirm that these tombs were reused over millennia until the twelfth century AD, perhaps indicating the importance of such monuments for the inhabitants of the region even in such relatively recent times.
Cross-cultural maritime technological exchange in the first-millennium Indian Ocean
By: Tom Vosmer
Abstract: Extensive trade networks in the Indian Ocean generated contact among cultures and spheres of maritime technology across a huge geographical area. Inevitably, these networks resulted not only in exchange of foodstuffs, raw materials, luxury goods, spices, and manufactured goods, but also in cultural and religious concepts and technological knowledge and practices. With the intensity of maritime trade these exchanges engendered the borrowing of shipbuilding designs, materials, and methodologies and generated a certain hybridization of technology, design, and the ways in which ships were conceived. This hybridization is particularly evident in the Belitung and Phanom-Surin ships discovered in Indonesia and Thailand respectively (Flecker 2001; 2008; Jumpron 2019; Wongnai, Jumpron & Premjai 2016). While echoing shipbuilding practices from outside South-East Asia, they also incorporated materials and concepts from South-East Asia, and yet remain distinct from the dominant lashed-lug construction of the region. Using archaeological material from Oman and South-East Asia as well as ethnographic data from the western Indian Ocean, East Africa, India, Oman, Iran, and South-East Asia, this paper explores current archaeological and ethnographic shipbuilding information and raises some questions about the place of Belitung and Phanom-Surin in first-millennium shipbuilding practice.
Reconstructing a changing landscape of human activities in the Iron Age II at Saruq al-Hadid (Dubai)
By: Zuzanna Wygnańska, Otto Bagi, Joanna Rądkowska, Iwona Zych, Sidney Rempel, Karol Juchniewicz, Mansur Radwan Boraik
Abstract: This paper summarizes the results of the Polish excavations in Area F at Saruq al-Hadid in Dubai (UAE), a well-known Iron Age site in the Rub al-Khali. The site was seasonally occupied by groups engaging in large-scale copper production. Despite the limited extent of the Polish study area, conclusions can be drawn regarding the organization of work, long-term changes in site use, and the spatial distribution of various artefact categories within the Iron Age II levels. Two distinct phases were discerned in this period: an older one with traces of extensive metal production, and a younger one with ‘caches’ of metal objects of economic nature and/or ritual significance but no evidence of metallurgical activity. The first phase included a series of charcoal piles, as well as vast quantities of metallurgical artefacts. The area was seemingly divided into specialized zones, each one displaying a different distribution of artefact categories. The disparity in the spatial distribution between different sectors suggests that mass production coexisted with small-scale manufacturing and/or trade activities. In the following phase, industrial practices were entirely abandoned and at some point, the area changed its character and became primarily a place for hoarding metal artefacts, a practice not recognized in earlier levels.