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Two Bi'r Ḥīma inscriptions re-examined

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 December 2009

A. F. L. Beeston
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Extract

The Sabaic rock inscription published by A. Jamme under the siglum Ja 1028, from a Location at Bi'r Ḥimā, 85 km. north-east of Najrān, is among the most important documents that we have for the history of Yemen in the period beford Islam. Attention has hitherto been mainly centred on exploiting its historical data; less notice has been accorded to the detailed linguistic (and specially syntactic) features, which are my topic here.

Type
Articles
Information
Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies , Volume 48 , Issue 1 , February 1985 , pp. 42 - 52
Copyright
Copyright © School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London 1985

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References

1 Sabacan and Ḥasaean inscriptions from Saudi arabia (Studi Semitici, 23). Roma,1966, 39 sqq.

2 Contrasting with the normal functions of the Sab. particle, which rather resemble those of Heb.ki.

3 At first, I had (looking only at the occurrence of ‘ly/brd in line 4) fancied thet ‘ly was the preposition; but I now see that this is incompatible with the syntax of line 3.

4 The strict syntactic analysis should not prevent the use of the temporal conjunction ‘when’ in an English translation, since ‘the termination of which at which…’ Would be intolerable.

5 ‘Inscriptions sub-arabes, 10e sér,; Mus. 66 (1953), 314.

6 The first, under the siglum RY 444, by G. Ryckmans, ‘ Inscription sud-arabes 9e sér’., Mus.64 (1951), 94 sqq.; the second, by the same editor, op.cit., note preceding; the third, by W., Caskel, Enldeckungen in Arabien, Köln, 1954, 17 sqqGoogle Scholar. The first of these was wholly superseded by the second; and Caskel’s work is on improvement on the second.

7 Lundin, A. G., Yužnaya Araiya v VI ueke (palestinskii Sbornik, 8,1961), p. 33, n.49.Google Scholar

8 Ryckmans, J., La Persécution des chrétiens himyarites (Istanbul, 1956), p. 13, n. 47.Google Scholar

9 ibid., n.48.

10 J.Ryckmans (ibid., n.49) takes the opposite view, on the ground that Ry 508 details firstly the golbal sphere of operations in the order Mokhā, other strongholds, al-Aš’ār, and then returns to the oprations at Mokhā. But in fact the scheme of thet is: the king goes down to al-Aš’ār and sends the qayl to assault Mokhā and the fortresses while he himself was campaigning in al-Aš’ār. The simultaneity of these two operations does not, I feel, allow us to infer anything about the order in which they might be mentioned in our text. And since we appear to have an m a sfirst letter of the name following Rima‘, it seems preferable to place Mokhā there.

11 ibid., n.51.

12 Op.cit., n.68.

13 In the same note 68. Obsere that the r of dhrw corresponds to the letter which.G R. had resd s2; this has a relevance in connexion with my proposal for reading [hw]rhw in the later part of the line.

14 Op.cit., n.50

15 Op.cit., n.70

16 ‘A note ESA’S1Y ’ (Raydan,2,1979,101–5).

17 Schaffer, B., Sammlung E.Glaser X (österr. akad. d. Wiss., Phil.-hist. Kl., Sitzungsbe., 299/3), Wien, 1975, 9.Google Scholar

18 That ‘Killing’ can be included among the objects of this verd is explicable by the fact that the personal possessions of a dead warrior were salab ‘spoils’.

19 Boissonade, J. F., Anecdota Graeca, vol. 5, Paris, 1833, 49 sqq.Google Scholar

20 Descriptio Arabica Meridionalis, ed. Lüfgren, O., pars I, Leiden, 1951, 95–6.Google Scholar