Yemen Times, Yemen
June 15 2004
Accessing Yemen’s historical importance and possible future role –
past traits predestine future’s potentialities:
Yemen’s great past and future (Part 1/2)
By Prof. Dr. Muhammad Shamsaddin Megalommatis For the Yemen Times
General View of Zabid showing old castle. (Hodeidah Gov)
It is certainly an auspicious event to see Yemen’s intellectuals
joining forces to face the various challenges of the future, and to
express their ideas about the possible ways the country will catch up
with the developed countries within our global world. The weight they
may exercise within the future politics of the country will certainly
determine the speed of the development, and the extent of the good
news anybody truly wishes to hear from the Great Old Land of the
Hadrami Frankincense and the Sabaean Wisdom. On this way towards fast
recovery, there is a need for criticism, when one needs an analysis
of what went wrong, but there is also a necessity for an overall
synthesis and better perception of the great historical past.
Geographical and Historical Determinism
Throughout world history, few factors have been so determining as the
geography of a land, and the basic traits of civilization that a
people developed at a certain historical moments. Egypt and Meroe in
today’s Sudan have been the Nile valley countries, flat and
delineated by the propinquity of the desert. Babylonia was the flat
land between two rivers (Mesopotamia, Beyn un Nahreyn); Assyria was
the land of Transtigritane, combining the vast Mesopotamian plains
and the surrounding mountains. Persia was the land of the plateau at
the east of Zagros series of mountains, and the Hittites felt at home
at the Anatolian plateau of Cappadocia that is demarcated by the
Taurus and the Pontus series of mountains. Greece is the land of
small plains among isolated mounts, and of little islands. In Lebanon
the phenomenon is very striking; at the coast, the Phoenicians of
Tyros, Sidon, Arad, Byblos, and other cities – states were turned to
long navigations and open seafaring, whereas 50 km inland Aramaeans
at the Bekaa valley, as well as further on in Damascus, Haleb, Homs,
were excelling in cattle-keeping, agriculture and land route trades
(as far as China!), being totally disinterested in the sea!
A unique turning point called Yemen
Where does Yemen stand in the ‘global’ world of the ancient Middle
East?
Land of the mountains and the small valleys among them, area of an
unprecedented Wadi-phenomenon at Hadramawt, focal point of land
routes and desert routes of trade, territory encompassing long and
rich coastal strips, turned to various seas, to the Red Sea and to
the Indian Ocean as we call these seas now, Yemen has long been the
most African part of …. Asia, or… the Asiatic part of Africa!
Undoubtedly, Yemen linked India with Egypt, East Africa with Assyria,
Persia with Sudan, Rome with China, all ways – land, desert and sea –
involved. But whenever a certain expansion of the many, various and
diversified Yemenite peoples, tribes and states took place in the
past, it was manifested in Africa. This is probably due to physical
delimitations, the Oman coastal strip being too limited a place for
expansion, the Hedjaz coastal strip being an uninviting place, the
greatest part of the peninsula being desert (Rub’ al Khali), and
other lands being simply … too far! What is closest to Yemen is
either the high seas or Africa…
Notwithstanding the great achievements of the Sabaean kingdom dating
back to the beginning of the first pre-Christian millennium, which
can be admired by modern visitors in several places of the Yemenite
North, and were hinted at within the Biblical texts (Books of Kings)
by ancient narrators, the first historical mention of the kingdom of
Sabaa goes back to the middle of the 8th century BCE. It is a
reference to tribute and gifts presented to the Assyrian emperor
Tiglat-Pileser (Tukulti – apil – Esharra) III (745 – 727) by Sabaa,
as well as by Arabs of the Hedjaz, and other countries. Despite the
Assyrian and the Babylonian expansion in the East and the North of
the peninsula (Yathribu was the summer residence of the Babylonian
Nabonid Kings in the 6th century BCE), Sabaa was too far for the
Sargonid Assyrian empire and the Nabonid Babylonian royal
pretensions.
Assurbanipal (669 – 625) ruled from Central Iran to Upper Egypt, and
from the eastern coast of the Persian Gulf to the western coast of
Turkey, but Yemen escaped his dominion by simply paying tribute.
Cambyses, the Achaemenid Shah of Iran, in the second half of the 6th
century, was ruling from Napata of Kush (today’s Karima in Sudan) to
Central Asia, but again Yemen was spared! Alexander the Great, at the
end of the 4th century, invaded all the lands between Macedonia and
India, but Pentapotamia (Pundjab), not Yemen, seemed closer to either
Pella (his first capital) or Babylon (his ultimately chosen capital)!
During all these long centuries, the peoples and the tribes of
ancient Yemen could not be kept united under the scepter of a
descendant of the famous Queen Balqis. Yet, writing was introduced as
early as the 6th century BCE, or to put it better, it was invented!
It would be essential at this point to stress the originality of the
event! At a moment the Assyrian – Babylonian cuneiform (‘al kitabeh
al mesmariyeh’ in Arabic), syllabogrammatic Writing (the term means
that the cuneiform characters were of syllabic phonetic value) was
diffused in Iran (introduction of the old Persian Ach
Shibam’s skyscrapers, in Hadrmout Gov.
aemenid cuneiform writing system that was in use for about 300 to 400
years), and the Phoenician and the Aramaic alphabetic writings were
diffused throughout the Eastern Mediterranean and the Middle East
(more precisely among Greeks, Israelites, Romans, and Persians), the
different peoples of Ancient Yemen, instead of adopting a foreign
writing system, developed their own syllabogrammatic writing, no less
than 1200 years before the arrival of Islam!
Through a historical overview of almost 1400 years of Yemenite
pre-Islamic history (based on Assyrian – Babylonian, Yemenite,
Persian, Ancient Greek, Latin and Aramaic sources), we can get a
clear diagram of several basic cultural characteristics. The
geographical divisions of the land of Yemen, many mountains and
plains, various coastal strips, all oriented differently to the outer
world, were probably the reason of the political disunion that mostly
characterized Yemen. Of course, this was repeated throughout Islamic
times, but it would be wrong for us to perceive disunion in terms of
enmity, fratricide or civil wars. We should rather see the various
ancient Yemenite states in terms of specific task assignments. The
war of Sabaa and Himyar against Qataban (around 115 BCE) is rather
due to Sabaean and Himyarite reactions to the Qatabanic performance
in respect of preserving the Yemenite thalassocracy and the complete
navigation control throughout the Red Sea at a moment of rise of
Ptolemaic Egyptian seafaring and sea trade in which Aramaeans seem
definitely involved. The different Yemenite states, Sabaa, Awsan,
Hadramawt, Main, Timna, Qataban, Raydhan and Himyar, were often in
agreement with regard to the role each one had to play in its own
domain with regard to a generally conceived Yemenite interest.
However, reunification considerations we attest only as late as the
end of the 2nd century CE, and it is the Himyarites, who seem to be
more conscious in this regard.
Yemenite expansion in Africa, in terms of population, language and
scripture.
Despite the lack of unity, or perhaps due to this phenomenon, many
waves of Yemenites have reportedly crossed the Bab el Mandeb straits,
and settled either in the African Red Sea shore opposite the Yemenite
coast, or further in the African inland.
What the famous Abyssinian legend and the great epic text Kebra
Negast (the Glory of the Kings) narrate is rather an extension to the
Biblical and the Quranic texts’ references to the legendary Queen of
Sheba – Balqis – Makeda, and to her contacts with Solomon, the King
of Israel. But it reflects perfectly well the reality of the
millennium-long, repeated Yemenite waves of Asiatic immigrants to the
Horn of Africa area. Menelik, as son to Solomon and Balqis – Makeda,
is an abstraction made for poetic reasons within the text, and it
concerns all the numerous Yemenites, who repeatedly and in successive
waves expressed their predilection for Africa.
It is not only literary sources and archaeological evidence that
testify to this event; full epigraphic and linguistic support is
offered for this assertion, since the ancient Abyssinian language and
scripture (dating back to the early Christian era) have derived from
the earlier attested ancient Yemenite semitic dialect and
syllabogrammatic writing. Gueze, as is called the ancient Abyssinian
language, is very important to Christianity, as one of the languages
and the scriptures of the Evangiles and the New Testament – along
with Aramaic – Syriac, Greek, Coptic, Latin, Armenian and Georgian.
Gueze is the ancestral linguistic form of modern Abyssinian languages
like Tigrinia, Tigre and Amharic (Amarinia) that are widely spoken in
Eritrea and Abyssinia.
The name itself of Abyssinia (‘-b-sh-t, Abashat) is mentioned in
Ancient Yemenite texts and epigraphic documentation as the name of a
… Yemenite tribe! This tribe, or at least a sizeable part of it,
migrated to Africa and transferred there its name that lasts until
now, as ultimate proof of the Yemenite origin of a large part of the
populations of Abyssinia and Eritrea.
‘Returning’ the compliment, Gueze – that was never lost, since it
still is the religious language and scripture of the Christians of
Ethiopia and Eritrea – helped a lot in the deciphering of the ancient
Yemenite epigraphic monuments. It was as useful as Coptic to
Champollion deciphering Egyptian hieroglyphics. Without Coptic,
Champollion would have failed; without Gueze the likes of Conti
Rossini and Rhodokanakes would have failed too.
Part 2 next issue
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From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress