The Historical And Cultural Heritage Of The Middle East

[Kamal900]

Petra - Exploring the Amazing Rock City of Jordan:


Made me proud to be an Arab when I watched the video. It's amazing feat of the ancient nomadic Arabic speakers managed to create a civilization in an environment that is harsh.

More of Ahmad al-Jallad:

How did Arabic speakers render their names in Greek in the Roman Empire? Several of our Safaitic writers left Greek inscriptions in the Ḥarrah, so lets see!

Σααρος Χεσεμανου Σαιφηνος φυλὴς Χαυνηνῶν
śaʿār son of Keḥsemān (the) Ḍaifite of the lineage of Kawn


1st: You had to Hellenize your name, that is, add the correct declension endings. Most Arabic masculine names were Hellenized in the second declension, so Σααρος reflects Arabic śaʿār = شعار. or śaʿar. We'll talk about exceptions to this pattern at the end. 2nd: Then you give your father's name, Hellenized as well, in the genitive, while the author's name is in the nominative. So Χεσεμανου is the genitive of Χεσεμανος and renders Arabic keḥsemān, in Safaitic as kḥsmn. This name has disappeared from the Arabic onomasticon. 3rd: You can give your tribal affiliation. Arabian tribes were Hellenized with the Greek gentilic suffix -ηνος -ēnos. Our author belonged to the tribe of Ḍaif, ḍf in Safaitic, which yields Σαιφηνος /saiphēnos/. Now, why is the ḍ written with Greek sigma? That comes later. 4th: You can indicate to which section of the larger tribal group you belong with the term φυλή 'clan, tribe'. So śaʿ-ār belonged to lineage of Kawn, a section of Ḍaif. If we render śaʿār's inscription in Old Arabic, we get:
le-śaʿār ben keḥsemān ḏī ʾāl ḍayf ḏī ʾāl kawn

So, for fun, how would we render the name of King Abdullah II of Jordan?

Answer:
Αβδαλλας Αλοσεινου Κοραισηνος φυλὴς Ασεμηνῶν

Abdallās Aloseinou Koraisēnos phulēs А̄semēnōn

Addenda:
Most Arabic masculine names were Hellenized in the second declension, so Taym became Θαιμος /Taimos/. But if the name ended in a vowel or a laryngeal following a, then the first declension was used: Wahballāh became Ουαβαλλας /wahballās/. Arabic names ending in *ay (ى) are Hellenized as masculine -es nouns, cf. Σωκράτης. Αβδουσαρης = Abd-ḏū-śarē 'worshipper of Dusares'. Ḍād ض is rendered with Sigma in the pre-Islamic Arabic of the southern Levant suggesting it was voiceless and certainly not a plosive or interdental. On its pronunciation and rendering Arabic in Greek in this period, see:
https://www.academia.edu/7583140/Al-...outhern_Levant

Bibliography:
Photo: MCA Macdonald via OCIANA
Text is published in: Macdonald, M.C.A., Al Muʾazzin, M. & Nehmé, L. Les inscriptions safaïtiques de Syrie, cent quarante ans après leur découverte. Comptes rendus des séances de l'Académie des Inscriptions & Belles-Lettres 1996.

The tetraskelion is the letter /t/ in the Safaitic square script. It is the final letter of the name /bannat/ in this inscription.
https://twitter.com/Safaitic/status/1195708510136352769

Somebody asked Ahamd this question:

How were feminine Arabic words Hellenized, both given names and sub/tribal ones?

His response:

Usually as 1st declension feminine long a-stems. I recall the name of a woman from Umm al-Jimal Μορεαθη /morei’at/, dim. of mar’at “woman”. I’ll get the reference when I’m at my computer later today. No Greek inscriptions by women in the Harrah are known though. But masculine names terminating in -at remained 2nd declension masculine, so you can have names like حارثة as Αρεταθος. Hellenization depends on the natural gender of the referent and not on the name’s morphological gender. Masculine names that end in -at but have undergone the at>ah sound change are hellenized as first declension masculine a-stems, So ‘obodah < ‘obodat yields Οβοδας, Οβοδου.
https://twitter.com/Safaitic/status/1195708510136352769

This is how old Arabic dialect of Safaitic sounded like by Ahmad al-Jallad from 2,000 years ago:
https://twitter.com/safaitic/status/...041605?lang=en
https://twitter.com/safaitic/status/...405377?lang=en

It's funny really that after all these years, an Arab like myself can understand most of it with no trouble whatsoever. I mean, hell, even English speakers today don't understand Shakespearean English so well without help and that was a couple of centuries old which is still an early modern English.

[faisalsaud1987]

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.

Lihyanites precede the Nabataeans and the onomastic evidence shows that they have Arabic naming conventions. Speaking of the Arabic language, the people of the region wrote a classic Arabic inscription, one of them might dated to the fourth century BC (way before safaitic and Hismaic in 1st BC)
http://krc.orient.ox.ac.uk/ociana/co...A_0034210.html

This inscription written by tribe of ḥnk in Ḥigra, a century later, the tribe moved to south in Northern yemen, al faw and Najran.

[Qamari]

Beautiful

[Kamal900]

Lihyanites precede the Nabataeans and the onomastic evidence shows that they have Arabic naming conventions. Speaking of the Arabic language, the people of the region wrote a classic Arabic inscription, one of them might dated to the fourth century BC (way before safaitic and Hismaic in 1st BC)
http://krc.orient.ox.ac.uk/ociana/co...A_0034210.html

This inscription written by tribe of ḥnk in Ḥigra, a century later, the tribe moved to south in Northern yemen, al faw and Najran.

I don't know about the language of this inscription, but the ancient Dedanite people had their own unique Semitic language and etc. In the region, there had been Arabs and the Minaeans as well.

[Kamal900]

By Ahmad al-Jallad:

"We live in the desert ... a land [with nothing] that pertain[s] to the necessities of life among you. For we, who are in no way willing to be slaves, have all taken refuge in a land that lacks all the things that are valued among other peoples" A Nabataean quoted in Diodorus


The love of freedom and autonomy by Arab(ian) nomads is a common topos in ancient Greek histories. The disdain for government comes up in the Safaitic:
KRS 1023: By ʿālem son of Ṣaʿb and he rebelled (marada) against King Agrippa to break (kasr) the chains (selselāt) (of bondage)


ANG 1: by Ḫolayṣat son of Maʿn of the lineage of Saʿd and he rebelled (mrd) for three years against Nepos, who was unjust (ẓālem).

C 1952: the year the lineage of Qamar attacked (ṭaraqa) the governor (solṭān)

My favorite "freedom" moment is this:
https://twitter.com/Safaitic/status/1125040375851298816

Diodorus' Nabataean spoke those words to King Demetrius who desired to conquer Arabia. The reasoning worked and the Macedonian king withdrew, being satisfied with gifts instead. Diodorus explains the philosophy of a nomadic lifestyle.

"They live in the open air, claiming as native land a wilderness that has neither rivers nor abundant springs from which it is possible for a hostile army to obtain water. It is their custom neither to plant grain, set out fruit-bearing trees, use wine, nor construct any house"

"They follow this custom because they believe that those who possess these things are, in order to retain the use of them, easily compelled by the powerful to do their bidding."

While this view is certainly a bit exaggerated, it is not hard to see where the Greeks got it from - anyone familiar with the Ḥarrah or the deserts of Nabataea can witness these features of desert life for themselves. Or any reader of the Safaitic inscriptions, for that matter!

Bibliography:
Diodorus Siculus:
http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/...ulus/19E*.html

Pic of KRS 1023: OCIANA

Cover pic: by me (@safaitic) in the Ḥarrah of NE Jordan

[Kamal900]

bump

[Kamal900]

Ahmad al-Jallad:

According to Genesis 25:13, the first born of Ishmael was called Nebaioth /nəbāyōt/ נְבָיֹת. In Targumic lit, Nebaioth is equated with the Nabataeans, and this connection has been picked up by some modern scholars as well. Is there anything to this? Photo:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hagar#...His_Mother.png

In fact the Nebaioth and the Nabataeans only look related in Latin transcription, esp. without diacritics. Nebaioth comes from n-b-y with a plural feminine ending āt > ōt. Nabataean comes from n-b-ṭ and is a collective noun, not a plural. Both appear in inscriptions

Nebaioth appears in the inscriptions of Ancient North Arabia. The ancient writings of Taymā, in a language and script called Taymanitic, record a war between the oasis and a group called nbyt, which can be none other than Biblical Nebaioth, spelled in the Bible as <nbyt>.


WTay 11:
fḥk b ḥgg nṣr l-ṣlm b-ḍr nbyt
'Fḥk son of Ḥgg guarded for Ṣalm (the god of Taymāʾ) during the war against Nebaioth'


WTay 15:
nṣr l-ṣlm ʿrm b fsḥ b-ḍr nbyt
'ʿrm son of Fsḥ guarded for Ṣalm during the war against Nebaioth'

GGTay 34
yʿzryl b ḥgg nṣr b-ḍr nbyt
'Yaʿzirayil son of Ḥgg guarded during the war against Nebaioth'

*see addendum on Ṣalm

The eighth son of Ishmael is also mentioned, massā(ʾ) = מַשָּׂא, spelled in Taymanitic as msʾ.

WTay 16:
ṣr nṣr b-ḍr msʾ
'Ṣr guarded during the war against Massaʾ'

The Taymanitic inscriptions are hard to date - they seem to have been composed sometime in the first half of the first millennium BCE down to the conquest of Nabonidus. he Nabataeans on the other hand are attested in the Ancient North Arabian inscriptions from Jordan and Syria, where they are called simple nbṭ /nabaṭ(o)/ 'Nabataeans' or ʾāl nabaṭ(o) 'the people of Nabataea'. They also composed inscriptions of their own in Aramaic and Arabic. I tweeted one of my favorite inscriptions mentioning the Nabataeans here:
https://twitter.com/Safaitic/status/1131771774570573826

While we cannot know what language the Nebaioth wrote or spoke since they have not left for us any inscriptions (so far!), it is clear that the Nabataeans were speakers of Old Arabic, although they used Aramaic as a language of business and admin.
https://twitter.com/Safaitic/status/1003649768210489347

Addendum:
The town of Taymāʾ was referred to by its patron deity Ṣalm in military contexts. A prayer to him is repeatedly carved in and around the oasis that would have certainly resonated among soldiers:

HE 24
mn smʿ l-ṣlm l twy
'Whosoever heeds Ṣalm shall not perish'


Bibliography
HE: Parr, P.J., Harding, G.L. & Dayton, J.E. Preliminary Survey in N.W. Arabia, 1968 [Part I: Archaeology (continued), and Part II: Epigraphy, by G.L. Harding, A.F.L Beeston and J.T. Milik]. Bulletin of the Institute of Archaeology, University of London 10, 1971
WTay: Winnett, F.V. & Reed, W.L. Ancient Records from North Arabia. with contributions by J.T. Milik and J. Starcky. (Near and Middle East Series, 6). Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1970. Pages: 96 Plates: 18
Photos: OCIANA
On the language of the Taymanitic inscriptions, see @Folk_Kootstra:
https://www.academia.edu/27953337/Th...Classification

https://twitter.com/Safaitic/status/1197567536767725569

[Kamal900]

Ahmad al-Jallad:

@shahanSean has an excellent thread on the earliest evidence for the Ḥajj in the Islamic period. But what evidence do we have for pre-Islamic Arabian pilgrimage? Various traditions of pilgrimage are attested in the epigraphy of Arabia, dating to the early 1st millen. BC (thread)
https://twitter.com/shahanSean/statu...59614676570112

Let’s begin with Safaitic (2st BCE (maybe earlier) until at least the 3rd c. CE). The inscription B.Renv.a 1 is dated sanata baṭala ḥagg seʿīʿ ‘the year the pilgrimage to Seʿīʿ failed’. Seʿīʿ is a town in s. Syria (https:///2OKAX1y ). Why a pilgrimage to this place?


Seʿīʿ was home to the sanctuary of Baʿal-Šamīn ‘master of the heavens’ (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baalshamin ). He is invoked as lord of Seʿīʿ in inscription CSNS 424: marada ʿal-ʾāl rūm fa hā baʿal-samīn ʾelāh seʿīʿsalema ‘he rebelled against the Romans so, O Baʿal-Šamīn, may he be secure’


Why did the pilgrimage to Seʿīʿ fail? Is.M 198 may give us a clue. It is dated perhaps to the same year, and states: ṣalafa ham-māl sanata baraḥa haʾ -ʾaṣlām seʿīʿa ‘the livestock perished the year the idols were removed from Seʿīʿ.


Perhaps the aforementioned idols came from the temple of Baʿal-Šamīn and their removal rendered the pilgrimage void, causing the nomads to interpret the death of their livestock that year as somehow connected to this sacrilegious event. But who removed them and why?

The Safaitic inscriptions don’t tell us what rituals the pious nomads performed on their pilgrimages. One text suggests that some kind of ritual cleansing was involved. WH 3053 states: raḥaḍa be-han-nagm le-yaḥogga ‘he cleansed himself during Virgo to perform a pilgrimage’.


It is unclear if the nomads performed sacrifices at the temples of their deities, but the corpus abounds with examples of animal sacrifice. C 4410 states ḏabaḥa le-baʿal-šamīn ‘and he made an animal sacrifice to Baʿal-šamīn.


Sacred stones representing a deity, naṣab, could be erected before a sacrificing, as attested in JaS 100.1: naṣṣaba wa ḏabaḥa ‘he erected a cult-stone and made an animal sacrifice’. Unfortunately, the author omits the name of the god to whom the sacrifice was dedicated.

Animal sacrifices were made to gain favor from the gods. The author of KRS 818 climbs to a high place (ṣmd) and writes wa ḏabaḥa gamala ʿalay -h fa-sallama yayṯaʿ meś- śonnāʾ ‘and he sacrificed a camel upon it so may Yayṯaʿ (a god) protect (him) from enemies’.


The author of MA 1 asks from something more concrete: ṭahora wa ḏabaḥa le-roḍay wa-ġannama nāqata ‘he purified himself and made an animal sacrifice to Roḍay (a god) so may he grant (him) a she-camel’.


The sacrifice of a camel in KRS 68 is followed by a beautiful prayer of devotion to the god Shayʿ haq-Qawm. It's worth repeating.
'O Śʿhqm, he sacrificed a camel (to you); you are the one he seeks and the one he follows and through your guidance comes deliverance from death’

KRS 68: hā śayʿhaq-qawm ṣammaya nāqata fa-ʾennaka baġy-oh w qafyat-oh wa be-ẖafrat-ka foltān mem-mawt.

WH 3053 suggests that the nomads performed the pilgrimage at certain times, this one @ Virgo, but it is unique. AMM 24 simply states that its author: ḥaggaga sanata mayeta monoʿat ben raḍāwat 'he performed a pilgrimage the year Monoʿat son of Raḍāwat died'.


Finally, the sanctuary itself was called ‘bayt’. The sanctuary of Allāt (bayt allāt) is attested in an inscription from Wādī Ramm (ancient ʾIram), see this thread:
https://twitter.com/Safaitic/status/1004991503511572480

https://twitter.com/Safaitic/status/1031511403390291969

[Kamal900]

Ahmad al-Jallad:

Did the "lost" Arab tribe of Ad really exist? The Quran mentions Ad, with their territory "Iram of the pillars", as an ancient people destroyed by God (Q89:6-7): "Have you not considered how your Lord dealt with 'Aad; of Iram of the lofty pillars?" pic:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iram_o...of_Pillars.jpg

Muslim-period sources and local folklore claimed Ad were a people of southern Arabia and Iram was a place in present-day Oman. In 1992, the search for Iram was popularized by the book "Atlantis of the Sands: In search for the lost city of Ubar" (R. Fiennes).


Using space photography the ruins of a site in Oman were assumed to be Ubar, supposedly Iram of the lofty pillars. Despite these efforts, not a single shred of evidence was found to suggest any ancient site in Oman had to do with Ad; scientists have dismissed such claims.


So is there evidence that Ad even existed? Yes! In 1998, Farès and Zayadine published a Hismaic inscription from the temple of Lât in the area of Wadi Ram, Jordan. pic:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wadi_R...,_Wadi_Rum.jpg

It reads: le-Ghawth ben Aslah ben Thokam wa-banaya bayta allât dhî âl 'âd "by Ghawth son of Aslah son of Thokam and he constructed the temple of Allât, of the people of Ad".


And last year I deciphered a signature of a man, written in the Safaitic script:
le-zohay ben ʿâmer ḏî ʾâl ʿâd "By Zhy son of ʿâmer of the lineage of ʿâd" from northern Jordan. A few more unpublished texts by men from 'Ad have been discovered and will be published soon.


Iram is not in South Arabia. It is in southern Jordan! Iram is mentioned by name in a Nabataean inscription from Wadi Ram (Savignac 1932): May Abdallâhi son of 'Atmo be remembered for all time before Allât the goddess of Iram. Here are the crude remains of Allât's temple.


The famous Jebel Ram inscription also gives us the ancient name of the region: 1. ...w br 'lyw ktb / ydh b-'rm "…w son of 'Aliyyo wrote (this) / with his own hand in Iram" 2. Ήbybw br … b-šlm w-b-T[b] Habībo son of … in peace and wellbeing Trans. R. Hoyland. pic: L. Harding.


These discoveries give us a unique glimpse at a people who were already long gone by the time of the Quran. 'Ad were an Arabic-speaking people of the southern Levant and north Arabia (in the Nabataean realm). They wrote in the Hismaic and Safaitic scripts around 2k years ago.

Why did Islamic-period writers put Ad in South Arabia? Clearly no historical memory of this group survived to the 8th c. CE. Historians and commentators assumed like most things "ancient" and "Arab", they must have come from South Arabia.

Bibliography:
Farès, S. and Zayadine, F. (1998) “Two North-Arabian inscriptions from the temple of Lât at Wady Iram”,(ADAJ) 42: 255-258.
Savignac, M. Raphael 1933. Le sanctuaire d’Allat à Iram (1). Revue Biblique, 42: 405-422, pl. 24.
https://twitter.com/Safaitic/status/1004991503511572480

What about the 'lost' tribe of Thamud? The Quran presents them as the successors of Ad. Contextually, they are equated with the ʾaṣḥāb al-Ḥiǧr (Q15:80) ‘dwellers of Al-Hijr’, the Nabataean site of al-Ḥegr/Ḥegrā ~250 mi NW of Medina. Can we find Thamud in the epigraphy?


Unlike Ad tweeted before, there are several references to Thamud in ancient sources. They appear much earlier than Ad. Sargon II (8th c. BCE) claims to have defeated Thamud in distant Arabia. They were described as never bringing tribute to any king, a well-known topos.


Sargon II then claims to have deported Thamud, resettling them in Samaria. Some experts doubt the veracity of this royal boasting. Later sources mention Thamud in NW Arabia. Ptolemy places Thamud on the Red Sea coast, NW Arabia, while Uranius locates them near the Nabataeans.

One Safaitic inscription makes mention of the Thamud. The text is dated: sanata ḥāraba gośam ʾāla ṯamūd ‘the year Gośam waged war against the people of Thamud’ (WH 3792.1). But we can’t be certain of where this would have taken place or even when.


While you might have heard of ‘Thamudic’ inscriptions across the Arabian Peninsula, “Thamud” in this context is a misnomer given by 19th century explorers to mysterious writings in South Semitic scripts which they could not understand. Do any of these inscriptions mention Thamud?


There are some uncertain cases, but at least one text, from northern Arabia, does! The inscription reads: h ʾlh ṯmd mḥllh{g}{r}… It is a prayer to the God of Thamud (ʾilāh Thamūd) but the meaning of the remaining letters is anyone’s guess. Is it even Arabic?


The only clear text commissioned by the Thamud is the famous Nabataean-Greek inscription of Ruwwafa, a site 200km NW of al-Ḥegr. The text mentions in the Nabataean šrkt tmwdw and in Greek [Th]amoudēnōn e[thnos]. Macdonald takes šrkt /sharekat/ to refer to a Roman military unit.


The Notitia Dignitatum, a 5th c. CE register of of Roman admin, names two Roman military units including Thamud: equites Saraceni Thamudeni and equites Thamudeni Illyriciani. So do we have any evidence connecting Thamud to al-Ḥegr (Mada’in Saleh) as suggested in the Qur’an?

So far, no texts associated with Thamud have appeared at Al-Ḥegr/Mada’in Saleh itself. Nabataean occupation of the site begins in the 1st century CE. We know from the inscriptions that its impressive structures were not terrestrial homes but tombs!


But, Rohmer and Charloux (2015) demonstrate in a recent paper that an autonomous power existed at al-Ḥegr before the Nabataean take over. They speculate that this could have been Thamud, but caution that more evidence is needed to confirm.


The Nabataean world appears to have been the setting of the Qur’an’s ‘lost’ Arabian tribes, as both Ad and Thamud can be located within it. These references, together with the Arabic language and script of the Qur’an, could point to a Nabataean heritage for its original audience.

Bibliograpy:
Rohmer, J. & Charloux, G. (2015), “From Liḥyān to the Nabataeans: Dating the End of the Iron Age in Northwestern Arabia”. Proceedings of the Seminar for Arabian Studies 45, 297-320
Macdonald, M.C.A. 2015. The Ruwwafa inscriptions. in Arabs and Empires (ed. G. Fisher). Oxford (p. 43-57).

https://twitter.com/safaitic/status/1008721344232476673

[Kamal900]

More archaeological findings of Arabia recently.

Terracotta statue (late 2nd c. BC) of an unidentified monarch sitting on his throne, the statue was originally painted with various colors, mainly red and blue and he appears to be wearing trousers and satrapal headgear (Indicating Parthian overlordship). From Failaka, Kuwait.




Golden bridle (1st-2nd cent. CE) of an Arabian horse that was slaughtered and buried with its owner in a funerary rite. Mleiha, UAE.




Bimetallic dagger (1000 BC) from Saruq al-Hadid. The blade was made of iron while the hilt was of bronze. Interestingly, the dagger, like many other weapons from the site, was deliberately bent and deposed to stop it from circulation, perhaps as part of strong symbolic practice.




Ancient Animals by Ahmad al-Jallad:

<Ancient Animals> The Syro-Arabian desert today appears barren but centuries ago the landscape was teeming with wild animals: gazelle, lions, ostriches, etc., along with domesticated horses and camels. This ancient ecosystem is preserved in the Safaitic inscriptions & rock art.


This image (CEDS 237) depicts a lion, /'asad/ or /layṯ/, common in the ancient Near East but now extinct, attacking a man. Some writers mention keeping watch for lions stalking their flocks. One man remarks: wa kallama-h ha'-'asad 'the lion injured him'.


This beautiful example from the Damascus Museum depicts a nomadic warrior, with a feathered headdress, in pursuit of a horse with a hunting dog. A musician playing a reed instrument watches on; the meaning of the scorpion is unclear.


Ostriches, /naʕāmat/, flocked in great numbers in the ancient Harrah. They are sometimes depicted as the object of hunts. The nomads used the shells of their eggs as water containers. (Right Ms 5 and left KRS 3044).



The Arabian oryx was known as /daṣy/, cognate with Aramaic dayṣā 'ibex'. (Inscription SIAM 26).



The bull oryx was known as /ṯawr/ -- check out these exaggerated horns! (Inscription ZMQJ 10)


The Ibex, /waʕl/, is beautifully depicted in this Hismaic inscription. You can distinguish these from the oryx by their curved horns. (Inscription KJC 51).


On the left, one writer draws two wild asses /ʕayrayn/ (WH 3642); the image on the right depicts a she-ass, /ʔatān/ (BTH 91).



Horses are called /faras/; the colt is a /mohr/ and mare a /mohrat/. They are in my opinion the most beautifully depicted. In this scene (WH 865), a mounted rider faces off with a felid, possibly a lion.


But by far the most commonly depicted animal is the camel. They are often drawn in an idealized form, with their necks stretched to sky. The young she-camel is called a /bekrat/ and one that has given birth is a '/nа̄qat/. The bull-camel is /gamal/. (Right ms 28, left KRS 3291).



Why did the nomads carve these images? There is probably no single correct answer, but a few texts suggest that some of these 'graven(?) images' may have been offerings to a deity. This inscription (Is.M 92) states that the she-camel is dedicated to the god nohay.


The nomads didn't depicted every animal they encountered in their rock art. Sheep and goats are rare, even though they are mentioned frequently in the texts. Birds (aside from the ostrich) as well as insects and reptiles are rarely, if ever, depicted. The rock art depicts many other things, such as wars and raids, entertainment, hunting scenes, and magical events. But we'll leave these for another day.

https://twitter.com/Safaitic/status/1024680734328537089

An ancient Arab sailor by Ahmad al-Jallad:

A fascinating new text by an Arab sailor who served in the Roman navy for 14 years, 1 of the longest Safaitic texts so far. He spent 4 months back in the desert and already complains "he remembered Rome and longed (for it) so O Allāt may he return again".


The Old Arabic in the excerpt I shared above reads: wa-ḏakara har-rūma fa-taśawwaqa fa-hā-llāt moʿāwadat ! Look forward to the publication of this inscription and many others from this season in the near future. or if the author omitted the w on purpose, then /moʿādat/
https://twitter.com/Safaitic/status/1147429035124953088