Old South Arabian Era DatingsAuthor(s): A.F.L. BeestonReviewed work(s):Source: Proceedings of the Seminar for Arabian Studies, , A.F.L. Beeston at the ArabianSeminar and other papers (2005), pp. 141-146Published by: ArchaeopressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/41223863 .Accessed: 23/10/2012 05:29

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Edited version of a paper first published in Proceedings of the Seminar for Arabian Studies 1 1 (1981): 1-5

Old South Arabian Era Datings

We possess a series of around twenty-five Sabaic language texts covering the years 493 to 669 of an era which is now conventionally called "Himyarite", though when I first studied this question in 1956 I had termed it "Sabaean", and for the purposes of the present discussion it might be more convenient to call it the "monotheistic era"; since all the texts of earlier periods are pagan, and all texts from 493 onwards are, with two exceptions only, monotheistic. One of those exceptions is dated 5122 and is from Bani Zubayr just north of Jabal Din, a rather remote backwater where we might well have expected a pocket of pagan- ism to have survived; the other is an undated inscription3 from Zafar showing features which would lead us to attribute it to a late period, but as it is very fragmentary the puzzle of its pagan reference is not at present soluble.

It is generally believed that the monotheistic era had its theoretical reference point (from which it was calculated) in 1 15 B.C. This conclusion was originally based on Halévy's equating the year 640 mentioned in CIH 621 with 525 A.D.; and although his arguments for that particular equation are not convincing, other evidence has since turned up which tends to suggest that it is very nearly correct, at least with a pos- sible error of a year on each side. However, as I hope to show later, there are no texts earlier than the late 3rd century A.D. dated by this era, and hence we ought not to suppose that the era actually came into use at the end of the second century B.C., but rather that, when it did come into use, it referred to some event already in the remote past. One will recall that the era which we currently use, running theoretically from the birth of Christ, did not come into use until that event was already more than four centuries in the past. In Roman history, it is extremely doubtful whether the founding of Rome really took place precisely two hundred years before the year conventionally called 200 ab urbe condita. I stress this because it implies that it is somewhat futile to attempt to identify some externally datable event (such as an eclipse) occur- ring in 1 15 B.C. which might have been commemorated in the era. Such an identification must always be a speculative possibility and not a demonstrable fact, unless of course some totally new texts turn up.

There have indeed been suggestions that we are dealing not with one era but several in the period from the late fourth to the sixth century A.D. These have not won general acceptance, and seem to have a very fragile basis. I will here only call attention to one fallacy, in J. Pirenne's paper given at this Seminar in 1973.4 She claimed that there was another era (which she styles "Sabaean"), running from 1 10 B.C., on the grounds that the Kawkab inscription Ry 508, dated 633, has to be assigned to 523 A.D. and not 518 A.D. because it "refers to the Najran martyrdoms of 523 A.D." Quite apart from the question of whether this is the true date of the martyrdoms, the argument is invalid because this text and two others of the same year (Ry 507 and Ja 1028) contain no reference to the martyrdoms: they depict a situation when there had been massacres of Abyssinians in Zafar and Mokha, and simply an investment of Najran and threats to it, with- out as yet any attack on it. This phase corresponds to what we learn from Greek [2] and Syriac sources, which show an attack on the Abyssinian Christians in South Arabia in 517 or 518 A.D. followed by a pe- riod of negotiations with, and threats to, Najran before the final assault and the martyrdom of Aretas and his companions; the latter events must therefore be dated some time later than 633 Himyarite. I can see no positive grounds for supposing that the monotheistic datings refer to more than one standard era, converti- ble into modern datings by the subtraction of 1 15 (perhaps plus or minus one).

There are two texts dated 493 (Gl 389 and B. al-Ashwal 2) belonging to a coregency of Mlkkrb YhDmn with two sons5 Abukarib Ascad and DrDDmr "ymn II (there was, as we shall see, an earlier king of this name with a different patronymic). Apart from these two texts, we have only two others with a fifth century dat-

141

142 A.F.L. Beeston

ing, YMN 13 of 409 and DJE 25 (Masnacat Märiya) of 434; both are pagan and not monotheistic. The gap of 59 years between 434 and 493 is slightly disconcerting, both in relation to the frequency of dated texts (averaging one for every five years) of the post-493 period and of the couple of decades immediately be- fore 409, and in relation to the regnal sequence. The king mentioned in the text of 434 is prn Yhncm son of Drněly Yhbr, while three undated texts (J 669-671) speak of prn Yhncm and his son Mlkkrb Ytťmn. This requires us to assign a somewhat lengthy reign to prn or Mlkkrb or both; but this is not impossible, since we have a near parallel in Abukarib Ascad who appears as junior partner in the coregency of 493 and as the first-named (and hence probably senior) partner in a coregency exactly fifty years later (Ry 534 + MAFY Rayda 1). Occamist principle would therefore lead us to suppose that the Märiya era was identical with the later monotheistic one. At the same time, this is the only text we have from Masnacat Märiya, and there is just a possibility that the era in use there could have been calculated a few decades later than the monotheistic one.

The text dated 409 mentions the famous Shammar Yuhaťish alone, not in a coregency; three texts, dated 385 (CIH 46), 389 (Gl 1594) and 396 (CIH 448), refer to a coregency of Yasir Yhncm and his son Shammar Yuharísh. Here again, the principle of economy of hypotheses would suggest identifying all four datings with the era based on 1 15 B.C., thus implying the disappearance of Yasir somewhere around 400 ofthat era, i.e. 285 A.D. One must, however, remark that while the evidence of the Nemara inscrip- tion as to a Shammar contemporary with Umru3 al-Qays who died in 328 A.D. is perfectly reconcilable with this, it does noř in itself provide conclusive proof of the identification of the eras. Umru3 al-Qays was "governor of the Arabs" for thirty years, and his attack on the "realm of Shammar" could have been at any time during that period; and it could also have occurred at any time during Shammar's reign. The most, therefore, that we can infer from the Nemara text is that the beginning of Shammar's reign was not later than 328 A.D., and this would theoretically allow the possibility that the era used in those three Sa- baic texts of 385-396, and perhaps the one of 409, was calculated anything up to approximately thirty years later than the monotheistic one. I am afraid that the Nemara text is less constructively useful for South Arabian chronology than has sometimes been thought.

A striking feature of the three texts of 385-396 is that their datings are all said specifically to be reck- oned "from the year of Mbhçi b. Dbhd", unlike all other datings discussed so far, which do not specify the era used. Besides these, there is only one text with a similar specification, namely RES 4196, of unknown provenance, dated 316 "from the year of Nbt" and also mentioning a Yasir-Shammar coregency. It still seems to me that all four texts belong to the same coregency, during which two competing eras, of Mbh<J and of Nbt, were concurrently in use; I remain sceptical of J. Ryckmans' proposal of 19647 that the 316 dating is calculated on the same basis as the others, thus requiring us to assume the existence of an earlier pair of homonyms. If, as I would think likely, all four texts belong to the same coregency, the Nbt era must have been calculated from a [3] date some 70-80 years later than the Mbh<J one.8 It is necessarily somewhat speculative to try to assess the significance of the use of competing eras, but it is at least tempt- ing to associate it with the fact that in the Muslim sources Shammar Yuharish figures as "the first Tubbac", suggesting some kind of dynastic upheaval such as might well be accompanied by era changes.

There are some undated texts of apparently the same period which raise further problems. A Gadanid chieftain named Scdt Э1Ь Ytlf held an appointment as "commander (kbr) of the king's Arabs (i.e. Bedouin mercenaries)" under two reigns: that of Dmťly Yhbr the predecessor of prn Yhncm (mentioned above) in Iryani 32; and under the coregency of Yasir Yhncm and his son DrDDmr 3ymn I9 in Ja 665; in addition we have a coregency of Yasir Yhncm with a certain prn Dyf in Ja 664. J. Ryckmans10 proposed to place these two coregencies successively after the sole reign of Shammar. This on the face of it would seem to imply a coregency of Yasir and Shammar, then the disappearance of Yasir (but not by death), then a return of Yasir with two other coregents; a scheme which I find unconvincing. But this is a point to which I must return later.

Old South Arabian Era Datings 1 43

Some mention must be made of a very problematic text, VL 29a with a dating of 345. The provenance is Shirjan, considerably to the south of Bayhan; it contains an otherwise unattested month-name cddn; it contains no royal names but acknowledges the overlordship of some members of the clan Hçbh. This clan is attested in several Qatabanic-language texts (RES 3878, etc.), and figures among the clan affiliations of the author of RES 4196 (the Nbt era text). However, the palaeographic characteristics of VL 29a are dis- tinctly late, and it would seem impossible to assign it by the "monotheistic" era to 230 A.D., and even not very easy to assign it to circa 300 A.D., unless we were prepared to suppose that the palaeographical de- velopments of the late period started in the far south, and only spread to the north later on. Professor W.W.Müller informs me that there is further an inscription from Hasi, mentioning the same overlord clan as the Shirjan text, and dated 365: this is prima facie most likely to be the same era as the Shirjan text, whatever that is.

We possess no texts dated to the third or first century of any era. Of second-century datings we have a little cluster including three which belong very closely together inasmuch as they all have the same author, Nsr Yhhmd the Mucahirid qayl of Radman-Khawlan, who acknowledges the over-lordship of °lcz Ylf king of Hadramawt. These are YMN 10 and 9, dated respectively 144 and 146, both from Waclan in Radman; and RES 3958 dated 144 from Jabal Qarneim in the Wadi Bayhan. There are strong indications that this group is of the latter third century A.D.: the palaeography of RES 3958 (of which I have been able to see a photograph taken by Dr Brian Doe), the dating of the Hadramite king to that period (by Jamme), and Had- ramite over-lordship in the Wadi Bayhan which suggests a time subsequent to the disappearance of the Qatabanian kingdom in the early third century - all these factors point in that same direction. The era involved must therefore be one reckoned from somewhere in the first half of the second century A.D. It would moreover be plausible to regard this era as a Hadramite one.

Two other second-century datings are in fragmentary texts which reveal very little. One is Gr 4011 dated 167, with provenance Hakir. The other is RES 4197bis dated 172, for which no certain provenance is known though it is perhaps from the Bayhan area; the overlord in this case is a non-royal personage named Sbhm Drs3l. These two could belong to the same era as is used by Nsr Yhhmd, but positive indica- tions are lacking.

To sum up, it seems that the custom of using an era dating was unknown before the middle of the third century A.D., and to start with was mainly confined to the south. The Sabaeans of Marib clung to their system of dating by eponyms so long as the pagan temple there was in use, and no era [41 datings appear there until much later. Third-century A.D. datings show a (probably locally distributed) diversity of eras, but from the fourth century A.D. onwards, the unifying influence of the Tubbac dynasty led to the general adoption (VL. 29a possibly excepted) of a common era based on a theoretical reference point in 1 15 B.C. It is a possible working hypothesis that the Mbhçl datings (plus probably the unspecified 409 dating) have in fact also this reference point, as has hitherto been commonly supposed. But it is no more than a working hypothesis, and the known facts would be equally concordant with a reference point some three or four decades later.12 It is vitally important that, if and when new evidence turns up, it should be examined im- partially with that possibility in mind and not interpreted with any preconception that the identity of the Mbh<J era with the "monotheistic" era is necessarily an established fact.

Ever since the 1960s it has been recognised that royal titulature can not be used for narrow datings in the first four centuries A.D., because a king with the shorter title of Saba and the Raydan can be contem- porary with or even posterior to one with the longer title including Hadramawt and Yamnat, and similarly with the title of Saba alone versus Saba and the Raydan. Yet it seems to me to be still sometimes assumed that in the case of any one king, a description of him by a longer title must be later than a description of the same individual by a shorter one. But I am inclined to doubt the validity even of this. The Marib texts uniformly assign the longer title, including Hadramawt, to all three of the series Dmrcly Yhbr, his son prn Yhncm, and the latter's son Mlkkrb YhDmn; yet the Masnacat Märiya text refers to prn Yhncm with the

144 A.F.L. Beeston

short title, son of Dmi^ly Yhbr with the same short title (in both cases without Hadramawt). It appears to me that, at least when subjects are speaking of their overlord, they do not necessarily use the full titulature which he himself would claim. For them, the significance of a title lay not in defining the total area of au- thority exercised by the person concerned, but the capacity in which he functioned as their own specific overlord. For the people of Märiya, it was irrelevant that their overlords claimed also the title of Had- ramawt; for the people of Marib on the other hand, the fact was of significance because Sabaean territory proper had a common frontier (north of the Sayhad) with Hadramawt, and probably with some disputed territory.

In connection with this paper, the point just outlined has a special relevance for the text dated 409, which is the only one mentioning Shammar alone, and not in a coregency; everywhere else he figures in the formula "Ysr Yhncm and his son Shammar Yuhartsh". It would, however, be unwise to deduce from this that in 409 Ysr Yhncm had "disappeared", either by death or by removal from power (with a subse- quent return to power as J. Ryckmans1 chronological scheme implies). We should preferably deduce that Shammar alone is mentioned because he was the direct overlord (mr*) of the Waclan area; it should not be supposed that he would not in other contexts, but at the same time, have been mentioned in a coregency. The case, consequently, is similar to the issue concerning titulature mentioned above. Work still needs to be done on the concept of "kingship" in this period, which was probably not (any more than in the earlier periods with which my study elsewhere13 was mainly concerned) congruent with European notions of "sovereignty". [51

Notes 1 Beeston 1956: 35ff. 2

MAFYBaniZubayr2. 5 Gr27. 4 Pirennel974. 5 For the purposes of this paper, I shall use "son" as a conventional rendering of textual bn, without

prejudice to my view that the relationship thus described may at times have been that of a junior coad- jutor or designated successor rather than of a "son" in the strict sense. The view that it does seems to be fairly widespread, and was voiced for instance by one speaker at the Second International Colloquium on the History of Arabia held in Riyadh in 1979.

7 Ryckmans J 1964: 82-84. I also find it impossible to assent to his other proposal that bn/hrf/nbf means "in the (eponymate-)year of N." [1964: 83]: eponyms are always mentioned with their clan name, and "during" an eponymate year is always b-. However, in fairness to him it should be remembered that 1964 is a long time ago, and there is a possibility that he would now adhere to neither of these proposals. 9 See above on DrDDmr Dymn II.

10 Ryckmans 1964: 83-84. 11 Grjaznevič 1978. 12 This would help somewhat to close up the uncomfortable (apparent) gap of 59 years in our series of dated texts, mentioned above.

13 Beeston 1972.

Old South Arabian Era Datings 1 45

Sigla

В. al-Ashwal 2 Inscription in Garbini 1970. CIH Corpus Inscriptionum Semiticarum. Pars IV. Inscriptiones himyariticas et

sabaeas continens. Paris: Reipublicae Typographeo, 1889-1932. DJE 25 Inscription in Müller 1 978. Iryani 32 Inscription in al-Iryani 1973. G1389 = RES 3383. Gl 1 594 Inscription in Schaffer 1 972. Gr 27 and 40 Inscriptions in Grjaznevič 1978. Ja 664, 665, 669-671 Inscriptions in Jamme 1962. Ja 1028 Inscription in Jamme, 1966. MAFY Bani Zubayr 2 Inscription in Robin 1977: 395. MAFY Rayda 1 Inscription in Robin 1977: 305-309. Masnacat Märiya Inscription in al-Iryani & Garbini 1970. RES Répertoire ďépigraphie sémitique. Paris: Imprimerie nationale, 1900-1968. Ry 507, 508 Inscriptions in Ryckmans G 1953. Ry 534 Inscription in Ryckmans G. 1955. VL 29a Inscription in Doe 1964. YMN9-10, 13 Inscriptions in Y.M. cAbdalläh, Mudawwanat al-nuquš al-yamaniyyat al-

qadïmah. Dirãsãt Yamaniyyah 3, 1979: 29-64.

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