The Historical And Cultural Heritage Of The Middle East

[Kamal900]

Contrary to popular belief that Arabia was nothing more than a wasteland before Islam, Arabia is rich in archeological findings that destroys the notion that there was an age of ignorance before Islam. Post any archeological findings or articles on the pre-Islamic history of Arabia.

Ancient city of Al-Ula of North-Western Arabia:











The ancient Lihyanites/Dadanites were a Central Semitic Arabian people closely related to Arabs and other Central Semites who spoke Dadanitic before they got Arabized by the Nabateans 2,000 years ago.

Their written language:


http://mnamon.sns.it/assets/img/nord...tal2013_9a.jpg





There were even ancient Arabs living in the Lihyanite kingdom, and they attempted to write their language using the Dadanite script:


Classification of the Semitic languages of ancient Arabia:
https://www.academia.edu/33917069/Al..._North_Arabian

[Trouble]

Middle East has fascinating history and amazing beauty. One thing it lacks though compared to India is wildlife.

[lameduck]

Very good thread

There are ancient links between Indus Valley/gandhara region with arab world specially coastal region of Sindh and Balochistan was always in contact with arab world.

modern day close ties between Pakistan-China-Arab world are just another manifestation of history

[Kamal900]

The ancient city of Tayma that was inhabited by the ancient Semitic Taymanite peoples before they too got assimilated by the Nabatean Arabs.

Recent archaeological discoveries show that Tayma has been inhabited since at least the Bronze Age. In 2010, the Saudi Commission for Tourism and Antiquities announced the discovery of a rock near Tayma bearing an inscription of Egyptian pharaoh Ramesses III. This was the first confirmed find of a hieroglyphic inscription on Saudi soil. Based on this discovery, researchers have hypothesized that Tayma was part of an important land route between the Red Sea coast of the Arabian Peninsula and the Nile Valley.

The oldest mention of the oasis city appears as "Tiamat" in Assyrian inscriptions dating as far back as the 8th century BC. The oasis developed into a prosperous city, rich in water wells and handsome buildings. Tiglath-pileser III received tribute from Tayma, and Sennacherib named one of Nineveh's gates as the Desert Gate, recording that "the gifts of the Sumu'anite and the Teymeite enter through it." It was rich and proud enough in the 7th century BC for Jeremiah to prophesy against it (Jeremiah 25:23). It was ruled then by a local Arab dynasty, known as the Qedarites. The names of two 8th-century BC queens, Shamsi and Zabibei, are recorded.

The last Babylonian king Nabonidus conquered Tayma and for ten years of his reign retired there for worship and looking for prophecies, entrusting the kingship of Babylon to his son, Belshazzar. Taymanitic inscriptions also mention that people of Tayma faught wars with Dadān.[1]

Cuneiform inscriptions possibly dating from the 6th century BC have been recovered from Tayma. It is mentioned several times in the Old Testament. The biblical eponym is apparently Tema, one of the sons of Ishmael.

According to Arab tradition, Tayma was inhabited by a Jewish community during the late classical period, though whether these were exiled Judeans or the Arab descendants of converts is unclear. During the 1st century AD, Tayma is believed to have been principally a Jewish settlement. The Jewish Diaspora at the time of the Temple’s destruction, according to Josephus, was in Parthia (Persia), Babylonia (Iraq), Arabia, as well as some Jews beyond the Euphrates and in Adiabene (Kurdistan). In Josephus’ own words, he had informed “the remotest Arabians” about the destruction.[2] So, too, in pre-Islamic Arabic poetry, Tayma is often referred to as a fortified city belonging to the Jews, just as the anonymous Arab poet has described:[3]

“Unto God will I make my complaint heard, but not unto man; because I am a sojourner in Taymā, Taymā of the Jews![4] ”
As late as the 6th century AD, Tayma was the home of the wealthy Jew, Samau’al ibn ‘Ādiyā.[5][6]

Tayma and neighboring Khaybar were visited by Benjamin of Tudela some time around 1170 who claims that the city was governed by a Jewish prince. Benjamin was a Jew from Tudela in Spain. He travelled to Persia and Arabia in the 12th century.

In the summer of 1181 Raynald of Châtillon attacked a Muslim caravan near Tayma, despite a truce between Sultan Saladin and king Baldwin IV of Jerusalem, during a raid of the Red Sea area. [7]

The historic significance of Tayma is centralized around three main points:

The existence of an oasis which used to attract people and animals
Its location that served as a commercial passage
The residence of the Babylonian king Nabonidus in the mid-6th century BCE.[8]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tayma

Their written language:







However, the ancient peoples of Central and Eastern Arabia written their texts in imperial Aramaic that was brought to the peninsula by the babylonians even though Arabian Aramaic remained the language for administration purposes while speaking their own Semitic languages in their everyday lives. Ahmad al-Jallad:

1st millennium BCE, long before the development of spirantization. In a masterful study, P.Stein (2018) suggested that the Achaemenids and Babylonians introduced Aramaic tocenters of commerce and power in East and North Arabia, where it then took root as anadministrative language. Arabian Aramaic pronunciation was therefore based on theAramaic of the mid-first millennium BCE and acted as filter through which later Aramaic vocabulary passed.

Like Indian English, Arabian Aramaic reflects certain fixed grammatical constructions as well, such as the optative use of the suffix conjugation andparticiple (Gzella 2015, 243). The latter half of the first millennium BCE probably witnessed the earliest layer of Aramaicloans into North Arabian languages, which included vocabulary like ktb ‘to write’. Indeed, as I have already mentioned, the verb is present in Dadanitic (pre-1st c. BCE). A loanfrom Aramaic is clear; the Liḥyānite kings used Aramaic as an administrative language abroad and Aramaic documents have been found at the oasis of Dadan as well (Stein2018). Indeed, a certain masʿūdu, king of Liḥyān carved an Aramaic graffito in his own hand employing this verb:JSNab 334/1-2 mšʿwdw mlk lḥ
yn | ktb dnh Masʿūdu, king of Liḥyān, wrote this.

Unlike other parts of the Near East in this period, there is no evidence that Aramaic whatsoever a vernacular in Arabia - foreign powers introduced it for the purpose of administration and it survived thereafter as a chancellery language. Since the spoken languages of the peninsula were entirely different from the written register, ‘Arabian’ Aramaic was able to preserve certain archaic features, apparently like the absence of spirantization. Steingoes on to make a crucial suggestion in his 2018 paper:The fact that the language of the Nabataean inscriptions is considered more‘conservative’, that is, more closely related to Imperial Aramaic than the other contemporary variants of so-called ‘Middle Aramaic’, could easily be explained by assuming a continuity in a traditional chancellery language eventually to be traced back to the Babylonian/Persian administration in the sixth-fifth century BC (p. 46).

It is now clear that the large parts of the Nabataean kingdom were Arabic speaking, and Arabic likely served as a liturgical and oral legal language.
While it seems entirelypossible that parts of the kingdom, especially its northern frontier and areas in the Jordan plateau were Aramaic speaking as well, people from these areas would have spoken dialects of western Aramaic. As the written register of Nabataean is based on the administrative dialect of the Babylonians and Persians (eastern), it would not have reflected the vernacular of Arabic or Aramaic speakers of the kingdom. Following Stein, Nabataean Aramaic seems to be a archaising variety of Arabian “Official” Aramaic going back to the mid-first millenium BCE.

In this light, the Aramaic vocabulary and toponyms in Safaitic may reflect borrowings from Nabataean Aramaic - a variety of Arabian Aramaic without spirantization - rather than the living pronunciation of Western Aramaic speakers.In the same way, we can explain the spelling tdmr in the Jabal Riyām inscription versus the contemporary tḏmr spelling of the Shabwa inscriptions - the former reflects an ancient loan from Arabian Aramaic pronunciation, which simply became the name of the town in Sabaic, versus the local Palmyrene Aramaic pronunciation reflected in an inscription commissioned or written by men from that town. Likewise,yhd/yahūd/ ‘Judaea’ would reflect an Arabian Aramaic pronunciation, regardless of whether or not the inhabitants of Judaea pronounced it with spirantization in the 4th c. CE.
https://www.academia.edu/40235915/Al...rabian_Aramaic

Aramaic inscriptions of Saudi Arabia:





There's also Egyptian hieroglyphics found in the ancient city as well more than 3,000 years old:


Despite what some peoples like the Persians claiming that Arabians are nothing more than lizard-eating barbarians, that assumption is pretty false and etc.

[Jana]

wow, amazing
Middle east is very interesting and fascinating region for me.

[Kamal900]

The ancient Semitic city of Qaryat al-Faw:

Qaryat Al Faw (Arabic: قرية الفاو‎) was the capital of the first Kindah kingdom. It is located about 100 km south of Wadi ad-Dawasir, and about 700 km southwest of Riyadh, the capital city of Saudi Arabia. The Al Faw archeological site reveals various features such as residential houses, markets, roads, cemeteries, temples, and water wells.[1]

Researchers know little about the city. According to archaeological excavations, the city dates to the fourth century BC.[2] The city was originally known per the corpus of inscriptions in the site as Qaryat Dhu Kahl. Kahl was the main deity worshiped by the Arab tribes of Kindah and Madh'hij.[3] It is also known by the names of Qaryat al-Hamraa (Red City) and Dhat al-Jnan (City of Gardens) by the inhabitants in its period of prosperity.

The golden age of the city stretched for nearly eight centuries between the 4th century BC and 4th century AD before it was abandoned. In its long period, the city survived various attacks from neighboring states, as suggested by late 2nd century AD Sabaean accounts. Also the inscription of Namara mention the expedition of Imru' al-Qays ibn 'Amr into Najran where he reached Qaryat al-Faw and drove the ruling tribe of Madh'hij from the city.[4] It was never mentioned after that incident again, except in a brief account by al-Hamdani.

Archaeological digging revealed that the city developed from a small caravan passing station, into an important commercial, religious, and urban centre in central Arabia, Najd.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qaryat_al-Faw

The city was a Semitic multi-ethnic city where Arabs and other Central Semites like Sabaeans, Maneans and etc lived.

[Kamal900]

The ancient cities of South-Eastern Arabia(UAE and Oman).

Ed-Dur:

Ed-Dur or Ed-Dour (Arabic: ٱلدُّوْر‎, romanized: Ad-Dūr, lit. 'The Houses')[1][2] is an Ancient Near Eastern City located in Umm Al Quwain, in the United Arab Emirates (UAE).[3] One of the largest archaeological sites in the emirates,[4] comprising an area of some 5 km2 (1.9 sq mi), the coastal settlement overlooks Al-Beidha Lake. One of the most important archaeological finds in the UAE, It has been dubbed 'one of the most significant lost cities of Arabia'.[5]

It is thought that Ed-Dur is the site of Omana, mentioned by both Pliny and Strabo as an important town in the Lower Gulf.[9] The city is referred to in the anonymous Periplus of the Erythraean Sea, a documentation of trade between Alexandria and India, and the Periplus indicates that Omana was the most important port in the Gulf during the first century CE and was linked with the port of Apologos at the head of the Gulf, which has been linked to Basra. This trade down the Gulf, via camel trains inland from the Gulf to Syria would explain the richness of finds of Roman materials at Ed-Dur.[10] Contemporary Greek manuscripts have given the exports from Ed-Dur as 'pearls, purple dye, clothing, wine, gold and slaves, and a great quantity of dates'.[5]

The site has been associated with the inland historical development of Mileiha in the Emirate of Sharjah, with which it is thought to have had strong ties.[11] Similarities in burial rituals — of laying animals to rest with their owners — and vessels, decorations and small bronze snake figures have also been unearthed.[6] Camels buried with their heads reversed are a common feature of both the animal burials at Ed-Dur and inland Mleiha.[12]

Ed-Dur had a rich trading past, with artefacts found at the site showing links both with Mesopotamia and India.[3] Macedonian style coinage unearthed at Ed-Dur dates back to Alexander the Great,[4] while hundreds of coins have been found featuring a head of Heracles and a seated Zeus on the obverse, and bearing the name of Abi'el in Aramaic. These coins match coin moulds found at Mleiha.[13] Their dating to 100 AD, when Ed-Dur was in its prime, is complicated by similar coins found in Bahrain in a hoard dated to 200 BC. It is thought that Abi'el lived on in coinage much as Alexander did on coins minted centuries after his death.[13]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ed-Dur

Mleiha:

An extensive fortified compound, 'Mleiha Fort', nearby the site of the present archaeological centre, was discovered in the late 1990s and is thought to have been possibly the seat of an ancient South Arabian kingdom dating back to 300 BCE.[8]

The period from 300–0 BCE has been dubbed both the Mleiha period and the Late Pre-Islamic period, and follows on from the dissolution of Darius III's Persian empire. Although the era has been called Hellenistic, Alexander the Great's conquests went no further than Persia and he left Arabia untouched.[9]

Mleiha is strongly linked to the Ancient Near Eastern city of Ed-Dur on the UAE's west coast.[10] Macedonian-style coinage unearthed at Ed-Dur dates back to Alexander the Great.[11] Hundreds of coins were found both there and at Mleiha featuring a head of Heracles and a seated Zeus on the obverse, and bearing the name of Abi'el in Aramaic. These coins match moulds found at Mleiha which, together with finds of slag at the site,[12] suggests the existence of a metallurgical centre.[13] Contemporary Greek manuscripts have given the exports from Ed-Dur as 'pearls, purple dye, clothing, wine, gold and slaves, and a great quantity of dates'[14] and there is a strong history of trade between the coast and the interior. Similarities in burial rituals — of laying animals to rest with their owners — and vessels, decorations and small bronze snake figures have also been unearthed.[15] Camels buried with their heads reversed are a common feature of both the animal burials at Ed-Dur and inland Mleiha.[16]

Mleiha represents the most complete evidence of human settlement and community from the post-Iron Age era in the UAE. A thriving agrarian community benefited from the protection of the Mleiha Fort. It was here, and during this period, that the most complete evidence of early iron usage in the UAE has been found, including nails, long swords and arrowheads as well as evidence of slag from smelting.[17]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mleiha...logical_Centre

More about the city: http://www.kmkg-mrah.be/sites/defaul...els_2018_1.pdf

The peoples of South-Eastern Arabia spoke a language called Hisaitic which is a central Semitic language like Arabic, Dadanitic, North-Western Semitic languages like Aramaic, Hebrew and etc with Arabian Aramaic written with it.






The kingdom that ruled both eastern Oman and the UAE was called ancient Oman.

[21993]

Very nice

[Kamal900]

Very nice

Yeah. Refresh the page since I added some new pictures as well. I made the thread to destroy the arguments laid out by some Persians and other peoples who hate the Arabs in general by claiming that they were nothing more than barbarians with no interactions with the world before Islam which is nonsense.

[Kamal900]

The ancient city of Thaj of Eastern Arabia:

Riyadh- Thaj city is considered one of the best historical sites in the Eastern region of Saudi Arabia. It is known for being an archeological treasure that was hiding pieces of jewelry and gold in one of its 2000-year-old cemeteries.

These discoveries echoed widely among archeologists worldwide. Saudi archeologists suggest this site to be the capital of the old Gerrha Kingdom, which was known with its wealthy people and the important economic role it played in the Arab Gulf region around 300 B.C.

Historical information showed that settlements in Thaj ancient city, about 95 km west of Jubail, date back to the Stone Ages.

Saudi Archeologist Awad al-Zahrani, who conducted a field and scientific research on the site of Thaj, said that the residential area located inside the historic wall and the expanded surface including cemeteries and wells, point out to a huge population in the region, which worked in trade and engaged in some other activities like agriculture. They also drilled wells outside the fenced residential area and worked in pottery utensils industry.
https://eng-archive.aawsat.com/theaa...s-saudi-arabia

The ancient city of Al-Okhdood:

THE archaeological site of Al-Okhdood in Najran, in the south of Saudi Arabia, lie in a village carrying the same name and is considered an historical treasure dating back to more than 2,000 years.

The site is rich with artifacts and remnants of ancient drawings and engravings on stones, such as a human hand, a horse, a camel and snakes carved, in addition to remnants of a mosque.

Al-Okhdood witnessed historical events and wars 2,000 years ago, and consequently led to its burning with its residents leaving it in ruin and ashes, when the last king of that era wanted to take revenge on Christian residents who refused to convert to Judaism.

Considered a touristic attraction, travelers and enthusiasts can visit Al-Okhdood's many ancient sites dating to the Byzantine, Umayyad and Abbasid periods, proving that it was once a crucial area for trade and agriculture, along with a cultural touch.

Al-Okhdood, just over a 5 sq. km area south of Najran, tells the story of the people who lived there, referred to as “People of the Groove” and were mentioned in the Holy Qur'an in Surah Al-Burooj (The Constellations):

Cursed were the companions of the trench. (Containing) the fire full of fuel.

When they sat by it. And they, to what they were doing against the believers, were witnesses.

They had nothing against them, except that they believed in Allah, the All-Mighty, Worthy of all Praise! (Holy Qur'an 85:4-8)

Najran’s history witnessed important historical events and was subjected to many military campaigns at different times in history, leading to its siege and occupation and once to its complete destruction. One of these events is the incident of “Al-Okhdood”, which is mentioned in the Qur'an, when Judaic King of Himyar Dhu Nuwas chose to seek revenge on Christian residents for refusing to convert to Judaism.
http://www.saudigazette.com.sa/article/537403

Jurash of South-Western Arabia:

JEDDAH: Two mountains guard Jurash: Mount Hamouma to the east and Mount Shakar to the west.

Jurash, near Abha in the southwest Asir region, is one of the most important archaeological sites in the history of the Arabian Peninsula, with excavation teams unearthing relics dating back thousands of years.

It was famed for manufacturing weaponry, including catapults and war machines that could be described as tanks, as well as being a rest stop and meeting point due its trade route location.

Jurash was an important city in the pre-Islamic era, playing a cultural and economic role due to its industries, and the Saudi Commission for Tourism and National Heritage (SCTH) has been exploring the area for almost a decade.

A soon-to-be-open visitors center will feature a main hall where archaeological findings, photos, maps, drawings and presentations about Jurash and its history will be on display. There will also be a VIP lounge, staff areas and public facilities for tourists.
https://www.arabnews.com/node/1418156/saudi-arabia