Functional Significance of the Old South Arabian "Town"Author(s): A.F.L. BeestonSource: Proceedings of the Seminar for Arabian Studies, , A.F.L. Beeston at the ArabianSeminar and other papers (2005), pp. 87-88Published by: ArchaeopressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/41223852 .

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Edited version of a paper first published in Proceedings of the Seminar for Arabian Studies 1 (1971): 26-28

Functional Significance of the Old South Arabian "Town"

The following remarks do not aim at communicating any new information, but rather at delimiting a prob- lem which still remains to be solved.

Ancient South Arabian culture, as we know it from the monumental inscriptions, was based on agricul- ture, with a certain amount of petit bétail stockraising. Agriculture was pursued on two types of terrain: terrace cultivation on the steep sides of the precipitous ravines which form the upper part of a watercourse, such a ravine being called in Epigraphic South Arabian by a term which corresponds to Arabic sirr; and the cultivation of alluvial soil in the oases and in the relatively flat lower part of a watercourse, the dahãb. Stockraising took place on the high plateaux, mar of i "pasturegrounds". The typical agricultural settlement is the village, bayt.

Urban centres are by definition those whose inhabitants do not gain their livelihood from agriculture, but from trade, handicrafts etc. Such centres may arise, (i) by evolution from a village which has gained political predominance over the neighbouring villages

(eg. Rome); or, (ii) by reason of being a centre of trade (Alexandria); or, (iii) by religious prestige (Mecca); or, [27] (iv) around a nucleus originally established as an administrative or military centre (Baghdad).

The presence of these factors does not necessarily, however, entail urbanization: Siwa, in spite of being one of the most famous shrines of the ancient world, was never urbanized; administrative centres may stay as such; and Philby has remarked that the suqs of Najran are populous only at times when the market is being held, and for the rest of the year consist of a mere handful or houses. Moreover, population centres may be merely overgrown villages, and not true urbanized "cities", when, as was often the case in mediae- val Europe, they are simply the residences of a population which goes out daily to work in the surrounding countryside.

In spite of the fundamentally territorial nature of the village, village communities in ancient South Ara- bia (as sometimes in Lebanon today) consisted often of a single extended family, or clan; the name of the village was commonly that of the clan. These formed the substructure of ancient South Arabian society. Above this level, a group of clans would form a consortium, the šďb, motivated in the first instance by the need for irrigational works serving the lands of more than one clan; but in some cases the agglomeration far transcended this primary aim. The headquarters of a šďb was a hagar, "town", again commonly known by the same name as the šďb, though not invariably so (Timnac does not seem, on the basis of our present evidence, to have been the name of šďb). The primary function of the hagar would thus come un- der the heading of an "administrative centre"; for although it can be assumed pretty certainly that any an- cient social grouping would express its sense of unity and identity under the form of a common religious cult, the temple associated with a hagar seems to have been normally outside the bounds of the hagar it- self.

These bounds were delimited by walls, often of impressive dimensions and appearance. Yet in spite of the size of many of them, were such areas really urban centres? The question has most obvious relevance in the case or Timnac, which inscriptional evidence shows had a resident population, while from the ar- chaeological angle it is significant that three-quarters of the area within the walls was built-up. The popu- lation consisted of Qatabanians, Minaean traders, and others. Yet it is still an open question whether the Qatabanians in Timnac may not have been agriculturalists (significant is the fact that one of the gates [28]

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88 A.F.L. Beeston

of Timnac was named "the field gate"), working daily outside the walls, and the Minaean "houses" simply bases for trading journeys, and neither group truly urbanized.

At many sites, on the other hand, such as Khirbat Macin/Qarnaw and Naqb al-Hagar/Mayfacat, the greatest part of the area within the walls shows no trace of buildings at all. Admittedly this does not ex- clude the possibility of a population housed in huts of mud or branches; yet at Mayfacat the area includes a fairly steep-sided watercourse, totally unsuitable for such constructions, which would be swept away in every flood; and the disposition of the main gate on the west (Beeston 1962: 46) is manifestly defensive, with the characteristic device of a sharp right-hand turn on entry which leaves the unshielded side of a per- son exposed. Here at least, it seems likely that the function of the walled area was to afford protection in time of danger to a population normally living outside the walls.

The situation is different again at Qarnaw. Here, the eastern "gate" is no less than 15 m. wide, which must surely have made the place wholly impractical for defensive purposes, and I am forced to conclude that the walls of Qarnaw were for prestige rather than practical purposes.1

The curious nature of the buildings in Šabwa has been pointed out by Hamilton (Lord Belhaven and Stenton) - small cells without door or window.2 Whatever purpose they served, they were surely not habitations.

All in all, it seems likely that no true urbanization existed in ancient South Arabia, except perhaps at the international port of Cane [Qäni3], where the ground plan does suggest this. But Cane is not specifi- cally termed a hagar, and it had no walls: its defensive needs were served by the adjoining "citadel" (curr) of Husn al-Ghuräb/Mawiyat. Each true hagar seems to have evolved, alongside its primary function as headquarters of the šďb, distinctive characteristics dictated by local conditions. Investigation of such con- ditions, and the manner in which they have affected the hagar should form a topic of future research.

Notes 1 See Beeston 1952:39. 2 See Brown & Beeston 1954: 43-45.

References

Beeston A.F.L. 1952. Review of M. Tawfik, Les Monuments de Mďin, (Le Caire: Institut français d'archéologie

orientale, 1951). Bibliotheca Orientalis 9: 39-40. 1962. Epigraphic and archaeological gleanings from South Arabia. Oriens Antiquus 1: 41-52.

Brown W.L. & Beeston A.F.L. 1954. Sculptures and Inscriptions from Shabwa. Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society 1954: 43-

62.

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