The Historical And Cultural Heritage Of The Middle East

[Kamal900]

What's interesting is that they adopted greco-roman iconography and culture somewhat but only for arts. They seem to have preserved their traditions and customs despite accepting this greco-roman influence.

True since they had great contacts with the Greeks and later Romans who became part of the Roman empire peacefully since they wanted to protect their goods and etc from nomadic bandits of the area at the time.

[Kamal900]

The ancient Semitic kingdoms of Yemen and South-Western Arabia:

Sabaeans
[quote]The Sabaeans or Sabeans (Sabaean: ������, s¹bʾ; Arabic: ٱلسَّبَئِيُّوْن‎, as-Sabaʾiyyūn; Hebrew: סבאים) were an ancient people of South Arabia. They spoke the Sabaean language, one of the Old South Arabian languages.[2] They founded the kingdom of Sabaʾ (Arabic: سَـبَـأ‎),[3][4] which is the biblical land of Sheba[5][6][7] and "the oldest and most important of the South Arabian kingdoms".[8]

The date of the foundation of Sabaʾ is a point of disagreement among scholars. Kenneth Kitchen dates the kingdom to between 1200 BCE and 275 CE, with its capital at Ma'rib.[9] On the other hand, Israel Finkelstein and Neil Asher Silberman write that "the Sabaean kingdom began to flourish only from the eighth century BC onward" and that the story of Solomon and the Queen of Sheba is "an anachronistic seventh-century set piece."[10] The Kingdom fell after a long but sporadic civil war between several Yemenite dynasties claiming kingship;[11][12] from this the late Himyarite Kingdom arose as victors.

Sabaeans are mentioned several times in the Hebrew Bible. In the Quran,[13] they are described as either Saba’,[3][4] or as the people of Tubba' (Arabic: قَـوْم تُـبَّـع‎, romanized: Qawm Tubbaʿ).[14][15]










Qatabanites:

Qataban or Katabania (Arabic: مملكة قتبان‎; Qatabanian: ��������) was an ancient Yemeni kingdom. Its heartland was located in the Baihan valley. Like some other Southern Arabian kingdoms it gained great wealth from the trade of frankincense and myrrh, incenses which were burned at altars. The capital of Qataban was named Timna and was located on the trade route which passed through the other kingdoms of Hadramaut, Sheba and Ma'in. The chief deity of the Qatabanians was 'Amm, or "Uncle" and the people called themselves the "children of Amm".

It was a prominent Yemeni kingdom in the 2nd half of the 1st millennium BCE, when its ruler held the title of the South Arabian hegemon, Mukarrib.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qataban

Kingdom of Awsan

The ancient Kingdom of Awsān in South Arabia (modern Yemen), with a capital at Ḥajar Yaḥirr in Wādī Markhah, to the south of Wādī Bayḥān, is now marked by a tell or artificial mound, which is locally named Ḥajar Asfal. Once it was one of the most important small kingdoms of South Arabia. The city seems to have been destroyed in the 7th century BCE by the king and Mukarrib of Saba' Karab El Watar, according to a Sabaean text that reports the victory in terms that attest to its significance for the Sabaeans.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingdom_of_Awsan

This is how some of their languages sounded like:


I'll do the rest later.

[Babak]

Inb4 theoldnorth comes in and tries to claim longhouses were more advanced.

Anyway, good stuff. I was aware arabs had a rich civilization even before islam. Though, the majority of persians only recognize that islam=arabs and that arabs were barbarians. Its the same when many people, including arabs, think persian culture was wiped out and that modern Iranians are primarily descendant of arab peoples.

[Kamal900]

Inb4 theoldnorth comes in and tries to claim longhouses were more advanced.

Anyway, good stuff. I was aware arabs had a rich civilization even before islam. Though, the majority of persians only recognize that islam=arabs and that arabs were barbarians. Its the same when many people, including arabs, think persian culture was wiped out and that modern Iranians are primarily descendant of arab peoples.

True. These things that are propagated by nationalists which is not based on historical facts or whatever just for the sake to demonize the peoples that they hate. I mean, most Jewish and gentile Zionists think that us Palestinians are purely of Arab origins even though genetically we're mostly descendants of the indigenous Canaanites(Israelites, Phoenicians mostly) and that our Arabian admixture on average is between 16 to 20%. Like I said, it's not based on evidence or historical facts but rather based on nationalistic hatred against the people they hate. I mean, let's be honest here, the reason why there are Iranians(not all of them btw) do dislike the Arabs is because of Saddam Hussein. Arabs and Persians had no problems with one another for many centuries.

[Kamal900]

Ahmad al-Jallad on some new Thamudic and old-Arabic inscriptions:

ΜΝΗΣΘΗ ΜΑΞΙΜΟΣ "May Maximos be remembered" , perhaps a Roman soldier stationed at the edge of the Province of Arabia, passed by Tabuk and added these words to a stone covered with inscriptions in the ancient languages/scripts of Arabia. Let's look briefly at these pics.

This is the pic containing the Greek (at the bottom). Above it is a Thamudic D inscription stating ʾn mkf' -I am Makaff(?)' this language is still very poorly understood, but at least one text dates to the 3rd c. CE. Nabataean names and šlm 'peace, security' cover the stone.


This stone contains a Safaitic(old-Arabic) inscription, in the square script - l-ḥnʾl bn rmn 'By Ḥennʾel son of Rummān'. Well I am not sure how to vocalize the last name but I like the idea that he was called 'Pomegranate'. The text sits next to an early Islamic-Arabic inscription.


And this stone contains a signature in the ASA musnad, but transcribes a north Arabian name - Garmallāt. Above the crescent moon with two dots is the term ḥll. It is impossible to say by how many centuries the aforementioned carvings antedate the Arabic-script texts.


A few more names in the south Arabian script - Mnḥrm and wʾlt bʿn qyḍn 'Waʾilat son (?) of Qayḍān - it is possible that this same man carved an inscription at Jebel Ramm http://dasi.cnr.it/index.php?id=30&p...72%2C001%2C003 …. Though we would have to take the ʿayn after b as an error.


Waʾilat may have been a South Arabian trader moving through the area on his way to the markets of the Levant. Connections with Nabataea may be confirmed by the crude carving of Nabataean šlm 'peace, security' on the same stone, perhaps done by an inexperienced hand.

I tell my students that the Jahiliyyah and pre-Islamic Arabia are 2 different places. The Jahiliyyah, an isolated wasteland of warring Arab tribes, is a place in literature while pre-Islamic Arabia, a connected and diverse past world, is out there, on stone and under the earth.
https://twitter.com/Safaitic/status/1187000135537938432

In other words, Arabians were not simply some stupid barbarians who didn't know any better, and they had good and healthy connections with the outside world before Islam. The whole "Jahiliyyah" or "ignorance" in Arabic is nothing more than a myth in Islamic literature really.

[Kamal900]

For the Greeks:

According to legend, the Arabian nomads were mostly isolated from the outside world until the rise of Islam. This rock (MISSI.I 1), bearing Safaitic and Greek inscriptions, from the desert of southern Syria (near Zalaf) suggests otherwise.


The Greek wasn't produced by a lost Roman. It states: ϹΑΑΡΟϹ ΧΕϹΕΜΑΝΟΥ ϹΑΙΦΗΝΟϹ ΦΥΛΗϹ ΧΑΥΝΗΝΩΝ ‘Shaʿār son of Keḥsemān the Ḍayfite of the lineage of Kawn’. Ḍayf was a large Arabian tribe, and Kawn was a sub-tribe. This Arabic-speaking nomad clearly knew Greek!

Later, another nomad came by and produced the following Safaitic inscription in a cartouche: le-ʾatamm ben rabb u-wagada melāya šaʿār ‘By ʾatamm son of Rabb and he found the words of šaʿār’! Not only could he read the Greek, but he also used the Aramaic word for 'word', melāy.

This Arabic speaker's Greek was not as good; perhaps he only picked up the alphabet. He begins writing his name in Greek: Aws son of Hud son of Kazim son of Banna', and then switches to Arabic, but in Greek letters! (see final tweet for bibliography).


He gives his Nisba, al-idami, the Edomite, and explains that he came from Si' to this place from a village in southern Syria in the winter with Banna' (a man's name) to pasture on fresh herbage in the month of Kanun (December‒January). The Old Arabic in Greek follows:

αλ-Ιδαμι αθαοα μι-Σεια ζαθαοε ω̣α-Βαναα α-δαυρα αουα ειραυ βακλα βι-Χανου[ν] = ʾal-ʾidāmī atawa mis-seʿīʿ šatāw wa-bannāʾa ad-dawra wa yirʿaw baqla bi-kānūn = الادامي اتو من سعيع شتاو وبناء الدور ويرعوا بقلا بكانون. Note that seʿīʿ = Si', a village in southern Syria.

Arabic-speaking nomads probably learned Greek in the Roman military, trading with or residing in towns. Aramaic seemed to have been much less widespread among the nomads, but in the settled areas there is plenty of evidence for Arabic-Aramaic bilingualism. (pic: warrior hunting)


Sources: [MISS.I] 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: 435-494. Pages: 480-484.
https://t.co/zJ1W4aVIDv

From the ancient city of Thaj.

This burial, for a girl as young as 14 years old, contains a wooden funerary bed and carriers made of bronze statues of a Greek character, and contained a huge amount of gold, silver and pearls. Face mask of gold, two hundred gold pieces in the form of tablets. And lots of gold samples.

[renaissance12]

Persians and arabians use the same alphabet.. WHY ?
Persians Language is not a semitic language

[Kamal900]

Persians and arabians use the same alphabet.. WHY ?
Persians Language is not a semitic language

So? That's like saying that German is a Latin language simply because they're using the Latin alphabet to write their language. Before the evolution of the Arabic scrip that derives from the Nabatean script, Arabs of antiquity used many scripts to write their language. Persians used the Perso-Arabic script due to the Islamic culture of the Abbasid period where Persian culture blossomed under the Abbasid, and the Islamic culture was spread far and wide which was heavily based on Persian culture. Greek culture blossomed under the Roman empire, and the fusion between the two cultures emerged as Greco-Roman culture which was spread most of the ancient world which became the fundamental basis of modern western civilization.

[Nazarene]

I hope this history is preserved, Arabia is one hell of a fascinating place.

[renaissance12]

So? That's like saying that German is a Latin language simply because they're using the Latin alphabet to write their language. Before the evolution of the Arabic scrip that derives from the Nabatean script, Arabs of antiquity used many scripts to write their language. Persians used the Perso-Arabic script due to the Islamic culture of the Abbasid period where Persian culture blossomed under the Abbasid, and the Islamic culture was spread far and wide which was heavily based on Persian culture. Greek culture blossomed under the Roman empire, and the fusion between the two cultures emerged as Greco-Roman culture which was spread most of the ancient world which became the fundamental basis of modern western civilization.

I know that persian is an indoeuropean Language with "sounds" that can be shared with many other indoeuropean languages but with no arabic language that lacks some sounds typical of indoeuropean languages..