Arabic typography, fonts, Arabic typeface design, Arabic language history, Arabic script history, Arabic Calligraphy, Arab history, Islam history, Akkadian, Musnad, Nabataean, ???? ?????? , ????? ????? ???????, ????? ???? ??????, ??????, ?????? , ????, ??, ???, ?????, ????, ????, ?????

This study was published for the first time in 2011 in a book titled:  DeArabizing Arabia: Tracing Western Scholarship on the History of the Arabs and Arabic Language and Script (ISBN: 978-0-9849843-0-5)

by Saad D. Abulhab

 

 

 

CHAPTER 3

 

The al-Namārah Nabataean Arabic Inscription (328 CE)

 

 

3.1 Introduction

The inscription of al-Namārah is by far the most important, controversial, and challenging pre-Islamic Arabic inscrip­tion— it is the earliest discovered but youngest dated in­scription of only three Nabataean inscriptions considered by Western scholars today as fully Arabic. It is also the oldest Arabic doc­ument on record with relatively good classic Ara­bic language. Dated 328 AD and written in clear cursive forms, it was hailed by many scholars as definite evidence that the modern Arabic script had evolved from the late Nab­ataean script. Many prominent Muslim scholars (who lived only a few centuries after the script’s assumed birth around the 3rd century) be­lieved it was derived from the Arabic Musnad script. al-Namārah inscription is also extensively cited by historians as an important reference to the historical events of the early dec­ades of the prominent pre-Islamic Arab Lakhmid kingdom (al-Lakhmiyyūn) of Hīrah, modern day Iraq. Despite more than a century since its discovery in 1901, the reading of al-Namārah inscription is still questionable, even at present time.

Dussaud, the French archeologist who discovered al-Namārah stone near Damascus and transferred it to Paris for further examination, had possibly misread the most im­portant part of the inscription—the first line. Based on his reading, it is generally believed today that al-Namārah was the gravestone of king Umruʾū al-Qays al-Bidʾ, the second king of the king­dom of al-Ḥīrah and the most significant pre-Islamic Arab leader. Dussaud’s reading was partially influ­enced by an un­fortunate mistake in today’s Arabic language grammar text­books. To make matters worse, other scholars who read al-Namārah in the past century uncritically strived to uphold Dussaud’s reading fundamentals thus reinforcing its equally uncritical acceptance. To prove, at any cost, that al-Namārah was Umruʾū al-Qays tombstone, some were even willing to present readings that manifestly contradicted the rules of Ara­bic grammar, geographical facts, and recorded history.

In order to re-read al-Namārah inscription, I found it necessary to re-read the Umm al-Jimāl Arabic Nabataean in­scription as well since the two inscriptions had contained identi­cal words and shared similar historical facts and timeframes. To read the two inscriptions, I had to also read Raqqush and numerous other Nabataean, Palmyran, and Ar­abic Musnad inscriptions to study the linguistic usage of sim­ilar words and phrases.  

Regarding al-Namārah inscription, I will, using the tools of the Arabic language, demonstrate through in-depth analytical reading that it is not the tombstone of King Umruʾū al-Qays bin ʿAmrū, or even about him. Written, most likely, several years after his death, the inscription rec­orded the im­portant accomplishments of a previously un­known personality, ʿAkdī, who was possibly one of Umruʾū al-Qays bin ʿAmrū army generals, an Arab tribal leader who collabo­rated with the Romans, or maybe a top ranking Arab soldier in the Byzantine Roman army. According to my reading, the opening sentence was only a swearing (vow) to the soul of King Umruʾ al-Qays bin ʿAmrū, similar to the customary opening sentence used by Arabs and Muslims since the 7th century, Bism Allāh al-Raḥmān al-Raḥīm بسم الله الرحمن الرحيم. The main topic of the inscription was the apparent defeat of the prominent Mid­hḥij tribe of southern Ara­bia in the hands of ʿAkdī’s fighters and the possible subse­quent control of Yemen by the Byzan­tine Roman Empire. The final sentence concluded the inscrip­tion by informing the reader about ʿAkdī’’s death, maybe in the battlefield, and stating that his parents should be happy and proud of him. This narration is consistent with how sol­diers are typically mourned. 

I am hopeful that my new readings of al-Namārah and Umm al-Jimāl inscrip­tions would prompt scholars in this field to re-examine the current readings in a fundamentally different way. I hope that future history textbooks and the Louvre mu­seum will not state as certain that al-Namārah in­scription stone was the gravestone or epitaph of King Umruʾū al-Qays bin ʿAmrū. I also hope that future publications would correct the obvious cur­rent readings’ errors of the Umm al-Jimāl Nab­ataean in­scription. As a linguistic side benefit, I am optimistic that future Arabic language grammar textbooks would cease repeating a common grammatical error regard­ing simple femi­nine demonstrative pronouns by re-examining a poem line from Alfiyyat Ibn Mālik. Certainly, my new readings could add even more critical, historical, and linguis­tic im­portance to al-Namārah inscription itself, since the lan­guage used in this inscription was clearly and essentially clas­sic Arabic. This can incontrovertibly prove that the grammar and language of the Quran are deeply rooted and developed in Arabia, long before Islam. That is, they are not Islamic or Abbasid inven­tions as many Western scholars claim.

          Because a successful reading of any involved inscription, like al-Namārah, requires a comprehensive and organized vi­sion, I divided my reading into convenient sections corre­sponding to the main topics conceived as preliminary tools to read the full inscription. I have also provided detailed sketches and images to guide the reader into a full visual un­derstanding of the topic of this particular study. Throughout this chapter, I will transliterate (following Library of Con­gress rules), trans­late, and write in Arabic various words and phrases to benefit the expert as well as non-expert readers.

 

3.2 Historical and Geographical Overview

It is problematic to read the inscriptions of Umm al-Jimāl and al-Namārah without studying first the historical events taking place during the second and third centuries CE — particularly during the early decades of the third century CE and during the reign of King Umruʾū al-Qays bin ʿAmrū of the city of al-Hīra,. The name of this king was mentioned in the first line of al-Namārah inscription. Arab and Muslim histo­rians knew Umruʾū al-Qays bin ʿAmrū, as Umruʾū al-Qays al-Bidʾ, mean­ing the first. (The desert town of al-Ḥīrah is lo­cated less than 30 miles south of Babylon, the famed Mesopota­mian city that had fallen to the Persians over eight centuries earlier.)

Luckily, al-Namārah inscription had provided a precise date that can easily be checked against the more accurate dates provided by the remains left by the three main power play­ers in the Arabian Peninsula during that time: the Per­sians, the Roman Byzantines, and the Yemenite Arabs. Sev­eral other Arab kingdoms existed too, but they were either very weak or tightly under the control of either the Persians or the Romans who fought for the conquest of new territories in the penin­sula. After the fall of the northern Arab Naba­taean kingdom of Petra at the hands of the Romans (105 CE), the kingdom of Yemen became the only Arab power challenging their rule in the south. Because of repeated Ro­man attacks, and in order to defend their territory, the Yem­eni kings had occasionally forged close ties with the Persians.  [6][30]

According to several Muslim scholars, ʿAmrū bin ʿUday, the father of King Umruʾū al-Qays bin ʿAmrū, was the first king of the ethnically Yemenite Lakhmid kingdom (later, called al-Manādhirah Kingdom by the Arabs) to designate al-Ḥīrah as the capital city. The Ḥīrah Kingdom became the most powerful member of a tribal alliance known as the Tannūkh Kingdom, which was established around the 1st century CE by Mālik bin Māhir of Yemen. The Tannūkh Kingdom controlled a vast area extending from ʿŪmān in the south to al-Ḥīrah and the Syrian Desert near Damascus in the north, occupying the entire west coast of the Persian Gulf, historically known as the Gulf of Baṣrah.  Islamic Arab era scholars linked the Lakhmid and Tannūkh kingdom to the powerful Maʿad tribe of Yemen. The three kings who ruled Tannūkh before king ʿAmrū bin ʿUday visited Ḥīrah exten­sively and regularly, but probably had their capital in Bahrain or even Yemen. Most of Ḥīrah’s original population had eventually moved north to the Anbār area before it was made the capital city by King ʿAmrū bin ʿUday. [14][20]

King ʿAmrū bin ʿUday’s father was probably a north­ern Arab. His mother was the sister of Judhaymah al-Abrash who was the first king and the founder of the Tannūkh Kingdom dynasty. He maintained close relations with the Persians and ruled before and after the time of King Ardashīr bin Bābik (224-241 CE), the first king of the third and last Sassanid dyn­asty, and the son of the Zaradust priest, Bābik, who had earlier toppled the last king of the second Sassanid dynasty. [15]

It seems that Judhaymah al-Abrash, a Yemenite Arab, had decided to offer his sister to a northern Arab from the Ḥīrah area to establish closer blood relation with the north­ern tribes. The practice of marrying sisters and daughters to link with other tribes is quite common among Arab tribes. As we shall see later, both of the words Tannūkh and Judhay­mah will appear briefly in the important Arabic Nabataean inscription, Umm al-Jimāl, found south of Damascus and be­lieved to be dated 250 CE. According to sources, King ʿAmrū bin ʿUday took advantage of the temporary weakening of the Sassanid Persian Empire after the death of King Ardashīr bin Bābik and decided to invade the Persian-controlled Arab ar­eas of Bilād al-‘Irāq (Mesopotamia) with the help of the Ro­mans and the Arab tribes north and west of Ḥīrah. [20][30] His action had therefore reversed the traditional alliance of the previous, purely Yemenite, kings of Tannūkh with the Per­sians. 

After the death of King ʿAmrū bin ʿUday in the year 288 CE, his son, Umruʾū al-Qays bin ʿAmrū took over and de­cided to expand on his father’s attacks even further to in­clude all Persian-controlled areas in Arabia. He was the first Arab leader who seriously attempted to unify all parts of the Ara­bian Peninsula in a single kingdom challenging both the Ro­mans and Persians, and was therefore considered the most revered man in Arabia before Islam. Taking advantage of fur­ther conflicts within the Sassanid Persian royal family, he had even crossed the Persian (Arabic) Gulf to raid the heart­land of Persia. Pre-Islamic Arabic poetry spoke of several vir­ulent raids by the Arab tribes against the Persians in Bilād al-‘Irāq. It is known that poems are the most important rec­ord-keeping evi­dence of the Arab tribes who traditionally re­lied on memory, not writing, to document their events. King Umruʾū al-Qays succeeded in bringing most of the Arabian Peninsula under his control except for the powerful Yemen and the Roman-con­trolled Arab kingdom in Syria, known as al-Ghasāsinah King­dom. History recorded that, because the Roman supported the campaigns of Umruʾū al-Qays, the Per­sians were forced to ac­cept a deal with the Romans (298 CE) whereby they ceded many of their previously captured terri­tories in Mesopotamia.

A decade later, a new powerful king took over Sassa­nid Persia.  He was Shabur II (309-379 CE) known to the Arabs under the nickname Dhū al-Aktāf ذو الاكتاف (the owner of the shoulders.) It was believed that he had pierced his Arab pris­oners’ shoulders to tie them together after captivity. Shabur II regained control over most of the areas lost to the Romans and their Arab allies. It was said that he had cap­tured Ḥīrah, the seat of King Umruʾū al-Qays, after a bloody battle in the year 225 CE, three years before the date men­tioned in al-Namārah inscription. [14][15] However, it is not known whether King Umruʾū al-Qays had survived that bat­tle. Only after the dis­covery of al-Namārah and subsequent Dussaudʾs reading had experts claimed that King Umruʾū al-Qays had escaped to Damascus and died in the city of Bosra on December 7th, 223 Bosra (equivalent to 228 CE), which is the date mentioned in the inscription.

I have to mention, however, that there is no other evi­dence supporting the above claim except the supposed evi­dence of al-Namārah inscription. Nonetheless, based on my reading of the first line of the inscription as a vow to his soul, I am prone to think that he died earlier, possibly in the battle of Ḥīrah, 325 CE. After the death of king Umruʾū al-Qays, the Roman and Persians fought extensively all over Arabia until the year 363 CE when they finally signed a treaty ac­knowl­edging Persian supremacy over Iraq. [15]

Consequent to fierce Arab attacks on the Sassanid forces stationed in Mesopotamia (330 -370 CE), descendants of king Umruʾū al-Qays were allowed to go back to al-Ḥīrah and rule under the protection of the Persians. Finally, the Muslim Arabs defeated the Persians in the battle of al-Qādisiyyah (638 CE) which effectively put an end to the Sas­sanid Empire. [14][30]

In the early decades of the 4th century CE, Yemen, the seat of the oldest known Arab kingdoms in the peninsula, was a prime target for both the Romans and the Persians. The Yemenites were generally referred to by the rest of the Arabs as al-Ḥimīriyyīn, and depending on whom and when, Yemen was additionally known as Midhḥij or Maʾad. The tribes of Midhḥij and Maʾad are the largest and most power­ful tribes in Yemen. Being the most powerful among the Arab kingdoms of that time, Yemen had maintained its status as an independent kingdom.

As mentioned earlier, King Umruʾū al-Qays was never able to control Yemen. In fact, during his time around the year 300 CE, a Yemenite king named Shammar Yuhar‘ish, was able to unify Yemen including Haḍramawt to create a powerful kingdom. [6] If logic matters, It would be impossible that a de­feated king Umruʾū al-Qays, who had just lost his capital city of al-Ḥīrah in a bloody battle around the year 225 CE, would accomplish the highest military victory of his times— the con­quest of Yemen— at the same time of al-Namārah (328 CE.)

Reportedly, king Shammar Yuhar‘ish had maintained close relations with the Persians by sending a diplomatic mis­sion to the Sasanian court at Ctesiphon, al-Madāʾin, Iraq. [6] Khawārizmī, a prominent Muslim scholar who lived during the early Islamic centuries called him Shimr Yarʿish or Abū Karab Bin Ifrīqis, which could mean he was of African ori­gins as per the use of the word Ifrīqis.  No diacritic vowel was placed on the first word shimrشمر . This could indicate that his name was either Shimr — a classic Arabic name—, or Shammar — a well-known name of a prominent Arab tribe in Northern Najd. I do believe though, it is the former be­cause al-Namārah inscription has one mīm letter in the name. Khawārizmī further wrote that King Shimr was called Yarʿish (trembling) because he was suffering of a nervous condition that made him tremble. According to Khawārizmī, King Shimr Yarʿish was, as claimed by some, nicknamed king Dhū al-Qirnayn (the one with two horns) contrary to the be­lief of many who thought this was a nickname for the Mace­donian conqueror, Alexander the Great. Further, Khawārizmī listed King Shimr Yarʿish as the 20th king of Yemen before Islam and listed king Umruʾū al-Qays bin ʿAmrū as the 21st king of al-Ḥīrah before Islam. [14] This means, the two kings had ruled approximately during the same period.  In fact, the dates re­ported by Khawārizmī’s coincide well with the dates provided by historians today. Most importantly, this coinci­dence would make it highly probable that King Shimr Yarʿish was indeed the king of Yemen during the times of al-Namārah inscription.

While it is not impossible that King Umruʾū al-Qays bin ʿAmrū could have died in the year 328 CE, the historical evidence, including al-Namārah inscription, indicates other­wise.  Again, I do believe that he died between the years 309 CE after Shabur II took power, in 325 CE, the year al-Ḥīrah was captured. As we shall see later, when reading al-Namārah, the historical analysis above could become vital to the under­standing of the events, dates, and names appearing in the in­scription.

 

3.3 Rereading the Umm al-Jimāl Nabataean Arabic Inscription

As mentioned earlier, according to Western scholars, among the numerous Nabataean inscriptions discovered so far, only three were written fully in the Arabic language. Dated 328 CE, al-Namārah was the latest inscription of the three. The two earlier inscriptions are Umm al-Jimāl, found in the same area, around Damascus, where al-Namārah was found, and Raqqūsh, found in Madāʾin Ṣālaḥ, not very far south of Da­mascus in Northern Ḥijāz. Both areas were previously Naba­taean territories. Raqqūsh indicated the date of 267 CE while Umm al-Jimāl, which explicitly mentioned the names Judhay­mah and Tannūkh, was dated around the year 260 CE, clearly a successful estimate when checked against our geo­graphical and historical review in the previous section. The two inscrip­tions are therefore older than al-Namārah by at least 60 or even 70 years. This would make them useful refer­ences for this study. As we shall see later, reading the three inscriptions to­gether is valuable for the separate reading of each one of them correctly.

While Raqqūsh and Umm al-Jimāl were decidedly gravestones, al-Namārah could be either a gravestone or an honoring monument (I shall come back to this later.) Further, as Raqqūsh and Namārah included several text lines, Umm al-Jimāl was brief. Unlike in Namārah Umm al-Jimāl the language used in Raqqūsh was not classic Arabic entirely.

Moreover, the Nabataean script used in both inscrip­tions was not solidly cursive, and did not follow closely cur­rent Arabic cursive rules. Both inscriptions clearly started with the word dnh دنه, but scholars read the word differently in Raqqūsh where the first letter dāl was slightly attached to the second letter nūn forming another possible shape. The Arabic word qabrū (tomb) was mentioned three times in Raqqūsh, and was read as such by all scholars. The same ex­act word though in Umm al-Jimāl was read as a person’s name, Fahrū, which clearly was an error, as I will demon­strate later. [11]

 

 

Figure (3.1) Arabic Nabataean inscription Raqqūsh, dated 267 CE, with author’s improved tracing. Numbers added to facilitate discussion.

 

 

 

 

 

Figure (3.2) Arabic Nabataean inscription of Umm al-Jimāl, dated around 250 CE, with current and author’s tracing and reading for comparison. Numbers added to facilitate discussion.

 

Unfortunately, I was unable to view enough photo­graphic de­tails of either inscription. However, for the purpose of this study, I feel it is adequate to rely on the available Nab­ataean tracing of Raqqūsh. A word of caution: without retrac­ing it personally, I would be reluctant to offer a full letter-by-letter transcription or modern Arabic reading.

As for Umm al-Jimāl, examining a high-resolution pic­ture of the stone was very sufficient to illustrate the valid­ity of my new tracings of a few key words in the inscription. Accord­ingly, I provided here the above original photo and another zoomed-in photoshoped image of the eroded re-traced area of the stone, along with current tracing — a let­ter-by-letter Ara­bic transcription and corresponding modern Arabic transla­tion. Based on this new tracing, a new detailed reading emerges that significantly differs from the current reading.

In Figure 3.1, the first word in Raqqūsh and Umm al-Jimāl was clearly a three letter word dnh, but scholars dif­fered both on its tracing and reading in Raqqūsh. Some read it as th ته, claiming it was an Arabic simple feminine demon­strative pronoun; this is neither correct nor possible since the follow­ing word qabr is a masculine noun. [23] Others read it as the Arabic letter dhāl, probably for the simple mas­culine demon­strative dhā ذا, which would contradict directly with the read­ing of word #4 in the same inscription showing dhā spelled as letter dāl with dot above followed by alif. [11] Yet, few traced it as dh.n.h for dhnah ذنه claiming this was a north­ern Arabic feminine demonstrative pronoun. 

However, most scholars traced word #1 in both in­scrip­tions as dnh, a word present in numerous other fully Naba­taean inscriptions, and read it as an assumingly Aramaic mas­culine demonstrative. I traced it in both as dnh, too, but I read it as adnāh, أدناه, a word used in Arabic to point to a nearby object or text that is located generally below the hori­zontal visual level. The beginning alif with hamzah above was possi­bly omitted because the word was possibly pronounced dnāh دناه, in the local Arab Nabataean dialect. Raqqūsh and most other inscriptions used several local dialect words, nota­bly bir for bin, or ʿabdh for ʿabd. Otherwise, beginning alif-hamzah could have been omitted, just as the second alif be­tween the letters nūn and hāʾ was omitted, consistent with Arabic writing throughout the 8th century CE, as evident in all available in­scriptions and manuscripts.

          The Arabic word adnāh is utilized extensively today in the meaning of “see by, or near, you”, “see below” or “the fol­low­ing below.” It can be used effectively as a gender neu­tral demonstrative in the meaning of hunā هنا as in “here” or “here in”. When I searched for the use of this word in older Ara­bic references, I was surprised that I could not find any doc­u­mented evidence of its usage in that contest. Assuming my reading is correct, which it is, this would make the two inscrip­tions the earliest Arabic references documenting the usage of the word in such manner. The word danā, a classic Arabic verb, means “became physically close or near to someone or some object.” [13] Among numerous examples, the Quran (53:9) used it in ثُمَّ دَنَا فَتَدَلَى فَكَانَ قَابَ قوْسيْن أَوْ أَدْنَى. Also, the Islamic Ḥadīth used ʾadnāh min nafsih to describe how Prophet Muhammad had a visiting Arab king sitting — physi­cally — very close to him. [17][26] Less likely, this word could be idnah إدنه for the imperative: “come close to,”omitting begin­ning alif-hamzah with kasrah. Regardless of how one would read the first word dnh, the most im­portant fact is that it was explicitly used as a word pointing to a masculine object: qabr قبر and consistently used as an open­ing word for most Naba­taean gravestones, including these two.

In Umm al-Jimāl scholars spelled the next word after dnh, as n.f.sh.ū, and read it نفشو supposedly from a “Se­mitic” feminine noun napšʾ or from Arabic nafs as in the Quran (89:27)يَا أَيَّتُهَا النَّفْسُ المُطْمَئِنّةُ . This same word can also be pronounced in Arabic as nafas in the sense of “inha­lation or breathing” which would be a masculine noun. It is not clear, how scholars pronounced this word found in vari­ous Naba­taean inscriptions as napš or napiš, still, in both cases it would be a feminine noun. Even before analyzing the meaning and usage of nafsh, one can already suspect through Umm al-Jimāl that its current reading is questionable since the word dnh was used in Raqqūsh, and many other Naba­taean inscriptions to point to qabrū, a masculine noun. This contradiction can only be solved by relating dnh as adnāh, a neutral Arabic demon­strative pronoun, as I have argued above. As we shall see later, dnh was used to point to a femi­nine noun, mqbrtʾ, in at least one Nabataean inscription from Petra. Alternatively, dnh could be pointing to a third mascu­line noun and the second word nafsū is not a noun (I shall discuss this soon.)  Still, it is also possible that the word nafsū was actually naqshū نقشُ, for the clas­sic Arabic masculine noun, naqsh (etching), used to indicate the act of writing or sketching on all mediums including epi­taph’s stones and even sand. [13][22] Unlike the Nabataean letter fāʾ, which is a left starting loop with a right side downward vertical stem, the letter qāf is a circle attached in the middle to a downward vertical stem. This was evident in the three in­scriptions.

Reading the second word (let us call it #2) of Umm al-Jimāl as naqshū can conflict with the current reading of word #3 of the inscription, which is thought to be Fihrū for Fihr فهر, a classic Arabic name. Even though it is possible to read the opening phrase (based on our reading of the second word as naqshu) as adnāh naqshu Fihrū bin Sāllī, after examining the photo of Figure 4.1 and even according to the current tracing it is clear that word #3 of Umm al-Jimāl is not Fihrū. It is qabrū, followed by a first name containing the letters fāʾ , rāʾ and alif/hamzah as in Faraʾ فَرء or Firāʾ فِراء, an old Arabic male name meaning “wild donkey” which is known for its excellent skills to escape hunters! This name was possibly modified to Faruʾ فرُء according to old Northern Arabic and Aramaic practice of using wāw sound at the end of names.

In the Hadith, Prophet Muhammad told Abū Sufyān:  You are as they say, all hunting is in the belly of the wild donkey’”. Translated from the Arabic text: يا أبا سفيان! أنت كما قال القائل : كل الصيد في جوف الفرإ . [13] The three partially dam­aged letters for Faruʾ can clearly be traced in the subsequent space, which is suspiciously wide for an intentional space! To illustrate my point, I provided a partial image of the stone utilizing the Brush Strokes filter utility in Photoshop to em­phasize stroke edges and reveal the new traced letters. The third word (we indicated with #3) has only one prominent long horizontal stroke connected to the letter rāʾ on the left, just as it was the case with medial letter bāʾ in qabru of Raqqūsh (words #3, #4, and #5). There is a short downward line pointing to the left that seems to be stone discoloration, not a stroke. Nevertheless, even if it were a stroke, the formed shape would surely not resemble the Nabataean letter hāʾ. A second short, left-pointing, downward line just below the letter rāʾ is not a stroke either, as it resembles an exten­sive crack. The only difference between the word qabr we see in Umm al-Jimāl and the one in Raqqūsh is that the upward line stroke forming the medial letter ʾ  in Umm al-Jimāl was not vertical. Instead, it was pointing left as it was the case with the previous word nafsū and the following word Faraʾ— clearly a scribe hand-writting style. One can even spot an­other faded parallel, left-tilted line connecting to the hori­zontal stroke of that letter thus forming a classic Nabataean medial letter bāʾ, slightly affected by a possible scriber style or error, stone discoloration and crack, or a subsequent altera­tion. Moreover, the first letter of this word is clearly qāf, not fāʾ, which can easily be compared to the many letters qāf in al-Namārah and Raqqūsh.

Reading word #3 in Umm al-Jimāl as qabrū or qabr would allow more possibilities for the meaning and usage of the previous word. An alternative to my reading of the word as naqshū, could be nafsū, but in the meaning of nafsuhū, hūwa nafsuhū, for “itself”, referring to qabr. This reading would fit well with reading dnh, either as a masculine, or as a neutral demonstrative. The beginning phrase could then be “this itself is the tomb of” similar to hadhā hūwa qabr هذا هو قبر, a stand­ard usage on gravestones in Arabic, or hadhā nafsuhū qabr هذا نفسُهُ قبر. To summarize, an initial modern Arabic reading of the opening phrase of Umm al-Jimāl inscription could be either dnh naqshū qabr Faruʾ bir Sāllī هذا نقشُ قبر فرُء بن سالّي, or dnh nafshū qabr Faruʾ bir Sāllī هذا هو قبر فرُء بن سالّي. 

However, I should now bring attention to a curious fact: my reading of the opening phrase in Umm al-Jimāl as nafsū qabrū or nafsū qabr is intriguingly identical to the usual opening phrase in the Arabic Musnad script found on eastern Arabian tombsʾ inscriptions: nafs.w.qabr نفس و قبر.  King Judhaymah, whose name appears in the Umm al-Jimāl in­scription, was linked to the eastern Arabian area where the Tannūkh king­dom was supposedly situated before moving to al-Ḥīrah, as I indicated in my review section above. Most scholars read that phrase as nafs wa-qabr and translated it as “funerary monu­ment and grave of”, by as­suming that the middle wāw was “and”. Based on this and other readings of Nabataean, He­brew, and Palmyra inscrip­tions, most scholars assumed that the word n.p.š (also n.f.š or nafs) was used in­dividually in the sense of “funerary monu­ment” or “memorial stele” (we shall discuss that in detail later.) Analyzing the Musnad script is outside the scope of this chapter, however, the very likely meaning of this phase should beروح و قبر  soul and grave of.” Al­ternatively, with the striking similarity between the Musnad letters fāʾ and ʿayn, both in the Musnad Liḥyanī and Sabaʾī styles, the word nafs could also be naʿsh نعش which is the clas­sic Arabic word for coffin or deathbed. It is highly un­likely that the word nafs was commonly used among the Ar­abs in the meaning of “memo­rial stele,” but would suddenly disap­pear from usage, without a trace, only a cou­ple of centuries later! Most important, even if the word was indeed nafs (not nafsū) in these few Musnad inscriptions, it is extremely crucial to observe that it was consistently used together with qabr as an opening phrase or prologue. None of the available burial Musnad inscriptions used the word nafs alone as a main intro­ductory phrase preceding a name. [5][31] As mentioned earlier, based on the Umm al-Jimāl evidence, the phrase nafs.w.qabr could have been used to mean hadhā huwa qabr هذا هو قبر “this is the grave of,” consistent with all other Arabic usage throughout history.

In Arabic, the three letters word nafs is rather com­plex; consequently, I have some explaning to do. The root of the word is nafas, meaning “breath” from which two main types of usage were derived. The first includes “soul”, “life”, “person”, or “being”; the second “self” as in “same”, “identi­cal”, “itself”, “himself”, and “herself”. [13] This first primary usage could even be traced to the Babylonian Epic of Gilga­mesh where the god-man name Ut.napištu.m (the Sumerian mythological prototype which inspired the story of Biblical Noah who survived the flood) can literally be translated as “eternal great soul-being”. Just like Arabic, Hebrew used napšā and Aramaic Syriac used napištu. The Nabataean tomb inscriptions used l.napš.h extensively in the meaning of “for himself”; but the words napšā and napštā had also appeared in few other cases. [11]  Palmyrenes used to portray the dead either in relief or in statues placed on tombs. [24] They usually referred to a statue as ṣalam (as in Arabic ṣanam). But they might have had also referred to it —  although rarely — as napšā, or napeš  to mean “the same” or “the identical”, which 1) it conforms to the second main usage of the word in Ara­bic just mentioned, and 2) it fits well when naming a per­sonal statue. The Nabataeans, instead, used an architectonic form (a cone topped by inflorescence) placed on a cylindrical or square base that they might have, arguably, referred to as napšā, or napeš, too. These memorial stones can be carved or engraved into rock faces with an identifying inscription that occasionally accompany them and is normally located in the base. [24] [29] 

Although unlikely, it is possible that the Nabataeans had explicitly used the word nafash for their architectonic-shaped personal memorial monuments, instead of their fre­quently used word naṣb (as in Arabic نصب,) and for monu­ments they erected for their idols. It is my firm opinion that schol­ars who read Umm al-Jimāl, which was discovered after al-Namārah, rushed to replicate, verbatim, Dussaud and other scholarsʾ readings of the word napš to mean“memorial Mon­ument” or “funerary Monument”. Some even stretched its meaning to shahidat qabr, which can be translated to “tomb­stone” or “burial monument”. To emphasize the usage of the word napš, Healey referenced Le Nabatéen, by Gantineau who defined the word as such, offering only two Nabataean inscriptions as evidence: Umm al-Jimāl which Gantineau called the Fahrū inscription, and al-Namārah!

In his indispensible book about Madāʾin Ṣāliḥ tombs inscriptions, Healey further opined that this “Pyramidal stele carved in the rock” could explain the “mysterious” absence of inscriptions from the numerous tombs found in the city of Petra, which he believes had banned tombs inscriptions. [10] Surprisingly though, the Umm al-Jimāl stone and its inscrip­tion do not even conform to the physical and inscriptional characteristics of a typical so-called Nabataean napš, which rarely included any type of inscription except for an occa­sional name. Furthermore, the majority of the hundreds of Nabataean tombs’ inscriptions found so far had consistently used the introductory phrase dnh kaprʾ or dnh qabrʾ. My reading of the two inscriptions listed by Healey, in which he read the word napšʾ  in the meaning of “burial monument” and the other word, napštʾ, as “two burial monuments,” [10] led me to a different conclusion.

My initial analysis of the two inscriptions, the Madeba and Strasbourg inscriptions revealed that the word napš was actually used in its usual Arabic language meanings of “iden­tical”, “same”, “similar”, or “itself”. The opening phrase of Strasbourg inscription as of his tracing dʾ napšʾ dy ʾabr br mqymw dy bnh lh was possibly ذا هو نفس الذي لأبار بن مقيمو الذي بناه له, or “This is the same [tomb] that belong to ʾabār son of mqymw which his father built for him”. The word dy is similar to the Arabic word usage of dhī and dhū in the meaning of “which belongs to”. [13] Also notice that (or), which is spelled exactly as the classic Arabic masculine demonstrative dhā, is unlikely a Nabataean feminine demon­strative as believed by some scholars today. Clearly, it was used in the Nabataeean Raqqūsh inscription (the fourth word we indicated as #4) after a masculine noun, qabrū, not a feminine! In fact, was not used in this and several other Nabatatean inscriptions listed by Healey as a simple demon­strative pronoun, but as a neutral gender identity or emphasis pronoun. Very likely, its usage is related to that of classic Ar­abic as in: dhā, huwa dhā or dhā huwa as in dhātih (ذاته) ذا هو، هو ذا for masculine, and in hiya dhā or dhā hiyah as in dhātihā(ذاتها)   ذا هي، هي ذا for feminine.

As for Madeba inscription, the opening phrase dnh mqbrtʾ wtrty napštʾ dy ʿlʾ mnh dy ʿbd was likelyادناه (هذه) هي المقبرة والثلاثة المشابهة لها التي اعلى منها التي, or “This is the tomb, and the three identical ones that are above it, which  ...” Or saying it in other words “Below is the tomb, and the other three that look just like it that sit above it that …” The letter tāʾ in napštʾ is likely referring to feminine noun mqbrtʾ. The number word was possibly tlty, from the Nabataean word for “three” tlt, not trty, which Healey linked to tryn, supposedly a Nabataean number word meaning “two.” Sup­porting this argument, the inscription listed three, not two, owners after the opening phrase.  I do believe though that the number word tryn, for two, is actually tnyn, because all other Nabataean number words are identical to Arabic and the Nabataean letters nūn and raʾ can easily be mixed up. This can be verified in Raqqūsh, where the first word of the sixth line is clearly wtnyn, not wtryn.  Still, even if the number was actually “two,” the Madeba opening sentence would beادناه (هذه) هي المقبرة والاثنين المشابهة لها (عينُها) التي اعلى منها التي.. or “Here below is (or this is) the tomb and the two identical to it (that sit) above it, which…”

As a conclussion, I am convinced that the best way to analyze the language used in any Nabataean inscription is to rely on classic Arabic first. I see no solid evidence to presume that the word nafsh or nafs, in an opening phrase of an Ara­bic or Nabataean burial inscription, would necessarily mean “funerary monument” or “memorial monument”. Further­more, it is vital to observe that the word qabr was consist­ently used whenever a burial place was involved, whether in Musnad, Nabataean, or Palmyrene inscriptions. It is not im­possible that the phrase nasfu qabr could have been used to mean shāhidat qabr or “grave marker” (stele), which may lead us to believe that the word nafs alone could have been used to mean “marker” or shāhidah. However, in such case, it is of paramount importance to observe that there is no solid evidence in any Musnad or Nabataen inscription where the word nafs alone was used to mean stele, let alone memo­rial monument. It is very unlikely, therefore, that the ʾUmm al-Jimāl inscription was part of a monument that was erected without an actual grave in a cemetery, which in turn, is the only possible case that can justify using the word nafs, by it­self, in the meaning of “memorial monument” in an opening phrase.

Before analyzing the final line of the Umm al-Jimāl in­scription, it is worth mentioning that although this inscrip­tion was not a bilingual inscription, it was discovered next to a sep­arate stone with a Greek inscription, which appears to be an exact translation of the Nabataean text (see Figure 3.2.) De­spite my belief that the Nabataean inscription should be the main reference to use in our ongoing analysis (pro­nouncing Arabic names can be deceiving in the Greek trans­lation), I will analyze the first four or five words of the Greek inscription which, by all accounts, seems to support our new reading of the Nabataean text. Although there were no spaces in the Greek inscription, as evident in Figure 3.2, the first five words seem are Η CΤΗΛΗ ΑΥΤΗ ΦΕΡΟΥ CΟΛΛΕΟΥ. Ac­cording to my reading of the Greek text, the first line can be translated in English as “This is the stele (grave marker) of Feroo Salleoo”. Clearly, the first name was ΦΕΡΟΥ or Feroo, not Fehroo — there is no indication of the guttural sound of the Arabic letter hāʾ anywhere in the word, unless the reader was invoking past Phoenician letter he origin of the Greek Ε! My belief, the in­scription used the Greek sound OY (sounds like oo as in wood) at the end of the first name ΦΕΡΟΥ to substitute for either Alif-Hamzah or Dhammah-Hamzah. You may recall, according to my reading of the Nabataean inscription, the word was either Faraʾ or Faruʾ. The sound OY was repeated at the end of the last name CΟΛΛΕΟΥ (Salleoo) too — in spite of the existence of the letter Yāʾ at the end of that word in the Nabataean text. The repeated use of the sound OY further indicates that the first name was not necessarily ending with a wāw as experts (evidently depending mainly on the Greek text) mistakenly assumed. I will discuss again this Aramaic and Northern Ara­bic usage of the sound wāw  after names, later.  In addition, using the word CΤΗΛΗ (Stele) would not necessarily mean that this word was an exact translation of nafs, because translating a text is not linear; that is, it is not a word-for-word process. At best, this type of usage could mean that some Nabataean Arabs used nafsu qabr combined to mean stele.

 

Figure (3.3) Transcription of the he Greek Umm al-Jimāl inscription.

 
Description: greek-inscription-of-fihr-bin-shullai

 

 

More observations on the Umm al-Jimāl inscription reading include the following:

1.      Word #4 was read malk for Arabic king. However, after careful tracing of the Nabataean text, we can clearly see a second letter mim; therefore, the correct reading should be mmlk, for classic Arabic mumallik مُمَلّك, which literally means, “the one who crowned or gave kingship to”; meaning in current context: “the founder of the dynasty of”. Moreover, reading word #4 in this way would accu­rately fit the meaning conveyed by word #5 Tannūkh, king Judhaymahʾs tribe, which, as you will see below, was inac­curately read as Dannūkh.

2.      Word #5 (Tannūkh): The first letter of this word is clearly a Nabataean letter tāʾ, not a dāl. As stated earlier in our history review section, King Judhaymah al-Abrash, Umruʾū al-Qaysʾ uncle, was the founder of the Tannūkh kingdom, or, using the inscription words, he was the one who crowned them. This assertion can be substantiated by the fact that Arab history never recorded the existence of a tribe or kingdom in Arabia under the name Dannukh.

3.      The final phrase would then be mumallik Tannūkh, or “the one who started the Tannukh dynasty”.

 

To summarize, a leter-by-letter transcription of Umm al-Jimāl is as follows: “dnh nfsu qbr fra bir sali rabu jdhimat mmlik tannukh.” Line-by-line, the Arabic text is:  دنه نفسو قبر فرء - بر سلي ربو جذيمت - مملك تنوخ.  In modern Arabic it says: أدناه (هذا) هو قبر فرُء بن سالّي مُربّي جُذيمة مؤسس مملكة تَنّوخ, or  أدناه روح وقبر فرُء بن سالّي مُربّي جُذيمة مؤسس مملكة تَنّوخ. Trans­lated to English, it says: “Below is (itself) the tomb of Faruʾ bin Sālī, custodian of Judhaymah, crowner of Tannūkh,” or “This is the soul and tomb of Faruʾ bin Sālī, custodian of Judhaymah, crowner of Tannūkh.”

Before proceeding to the next section, I need to elabo­rate on the important usage of the letter wāw at the end of nouns.  For example, notice the words qabrū for qabr, Kaʿbū for Kaʿb, and Ḥijrū, for Ḥijr in Raqqūsh. This practice is con­sistent with that of most pre-Islamic northern Arabic inscrip­tions that are available today, whether written in Nabataean or Arabic Jazm scripts. As we shall see later, al-Namārah added wāw after all names too. The Arabic inscriptions of al-Jazzāz (410 AD), Sakkākah (late 4th Century), Zabad (512 AD), and Ḥarrān (568 AD) had all added wāw after the names. This is a known Aramaic and Northern Arabic usage which was likely incorporated into theses languages due to Greek or Roman in­fluence. [1][21] In fact, the use of wāw is by itself a solid proof that most, if not all, Arab tribes which mi­grated north — centuries before the Tannūkh kingdom era, especially the an­cestors of the Nabataeans — had heavily adapted the neigh­boring Aramaic culture. On the other hand, classic Arabic teaches us that the wāw of ʿAmrū is added to distinguish the Arabic name ʿAmr from ʿUmar. My belief is that wāw origi­nally existed in the name ʿAmrū, and should be pronounced, at least when it is applied to ʿAmrū bin ʿUday, father of Umruʾū al-Qays, who was likely a northern Arab, not a Yemenite.

 

3.4 Arabic Grammar Prelude: Is a Simple Feminine Demonstrative Pronoun?

Before reading al-Namārah, it is important to thor­oughly ex­amine the first word of the inscription. The word is clear and legible and has two letters: تي. Dussaud claimed this word was an Arabic simple feminine demonstrative pronoun, meaning “this is.” Throughout the 20th century, all subse­quent readers of al-Namārah agreed with him without any de­bate!

For example, in his comprehensive reading of 1985, Bellamy allocated only one line to address the word where he referred his readers to consult with two old reference books for further explanation. [7] The first book was an enhanced English translation of an older Arabic grammar textbook that was ini­tially published in 1857 in German; and the second was a British book published in 1930 and had for a subject the his­tory of the Arabs of the western peninsula.

The author of the first book listed among his other ref­erences, Alfiyyat Ibn Mālik, a long Arabic poem compris­ing one thousand verses summarizing the grammar of the Arab language. [32] Written by the great Arabic linguist, ʾIbn Mālik, about eight centuries ago, the Alfiyyah is the most authorita­tive reference for textbooks on modern Arabic grammar. No­tably absent from his references was an im­portant Arabic lan­guage reference book, Lisān al-ʿArab, writ­ten during the same period of Alfiyyah by another great Ara­bic linguist, Ibn Manẓūr.  Both of these references are manu­scripts that became widely available after the emergence of Arabic typography in the 18th century.

Being a collection of poems, Alfiyyat Ibn Mālik is only useful when read by a professional linguist. In fact, many revered scholars, like Ibn ʿAqīl, wrote volumes of manu­scripts to explain it. Unfortunately, these scholars had to rely on a manuscript that could have possibly included unclear words, missing verses, and scribes’ mistakes. Contemporary scholars mainly rely on these older explanations of the manu­script, known as tafsīr. On the other hand, Lisān al-ʿArab, predating Alfiyyat Ibn Mālik, was written with explicit expla­nations by the original author along with generous examples from pre-Is­lamic poetry and the Quran.

To summarize the simple demonstrative pronouns in Arabic grammar, Ibn Mālik wrote a single line (verse) of a poem:

بِذا لِمُفْرَدٍ مُذكَّـرٍ أَشِـــــرْ

 

بِذي وذِهْ ؟؟ تا على الأنثى اقتَصِرْ

 

Translated into English the line says “use dhā to point to a masculine noun, and limit yourself to dhī and dhih ?? for a feminine.”  In the original manuscript, the unclear and dis­puted word between dhih and (marked with two question marks by the author) was either a genuine word, a corrected word, or a crossed out word.  Researching several old tafsīr books, I discovered that scholars had read this unclear word quite differently. [8] However, most scholars of the Islamic Arab civilization era decided to omit this unclear word and simply list the only three known Arabic simple demonstrative pronouns for a feminine noun: dhī, dhih, and . I am listing below in Arabic a few of these verse readings.

بذا لِمفْرَدٍ مُذكّــرٍ أشــرْ

 

بـذي وذِهْ تـا على الأنـثـى  اقـتَـصِـرْ

بِذا لِمُفْرَدٍ مُذكّــرٍ أَشِــرْ

 

بِذي وذِهْ تي تا على الأنـثى اقـتَصِرْ

بذا لِمفْرَدٍ مُذكّــرٍ أشــرْ

 

بذي وذِهْ نسى نا على الأنثى اقتَصِرْ

بذا لِمفْرَدٍ مُذكّــرٍ أشــرْ

 

بذي وذِهْ تي ته على الأنـثى اقـتَصِرْ

 

Apparently, some overzealous and persistent scholars decided to read this unfortunate scribe’s error by replacing it with one or more words. Almost all of these scholars justified their readings in Islamic religious terms. Those who claimed it was , explained how this reading would be consistent with the Islamic teachings allowing four wives for one man [sic]! With the passing of time, more Islamic scholars joined in. Some had even claimed that Arabic has nine simple demonstrative pro­nouns for a feminine noun. Some even claimed that, un­like a man, a woman does not have a specific social status; therefore, she must be pointed to with multiple pronouns. To conclude, unfortunately, the Arabic grammar textbook listed by Bellamy, which most likely was Dussaudʾs main reference too, listed nine simple demonstrative pronouns including , as many Ar­abic grammar textbooks do today. 

It is inconclusive whether the scribe’s error in the man­uscript of Alifiyyat Ibn Mālik was the reason behind these claims. Clearly, Ibn Mālik used the word, Iqtaṣir, which is an imperative verb meaning “limit yourself to.”  My im­pression is that some Muslim scholars during Ibn Mālik’s time were busy making up feminine pronouns to support their religious claims and theories, a trend that evidently prompted Ibn Mālik to write his grammatical poem in that strong manner to correct them. [12] A simple online search today would lead to more of such Muslim scholars who are overly obsessed with the topic of females and Islam. Ironically — I must observe — to sup­port their arguments, some Mus­lim scholars desper­ately tried to explain that the imperative verb iqtaṣir was re­ferring to the masculine in the meaning of “do not use any of these pro­nouns for masculine” rather than what Ibn Mālik intended the meaning to be, which is, “use only these pro­nouns for femi­nine.”

Regrettably, I could not examine the original manu­script of Alfiyyat Ibn Mālik. Fortunately though, the text line being discussed is a poem text line; meaning it can easily be checked against the well-known Arabic poetry rhyming scale Arabic typography background with an eye to dis­tinguish and ميزان الشعر to determine the correct reading. Coming from an understand Arabic letters’ shapes, and using the simple fact that Ibn Mālik had used wāw between dhī and dhih, I concluded that the puzzling word before must be another wāw, since in Arabic, one cannot add another item to an ex­isting item without using wa before. It is my impres­sion that the scribe had simply written a badly executed letter wāw with very small loop and long downward stroke, which can easily be confused with final yāʾ.  Here is what I believe Ibn Mālik poem line said:

بذا لمُفْرَدٍ مُذكّــرٍ أشِــرْ

 

بذي وذِهْ وتا على الأنثى اقتَصرْ

 

To test if my belief holds any truth, I sent an enquiry to Saʿdī Yūsuf (one among the most prominent Arab poets today whom I have the honor to know and befriend). I in­cluded in my email five versions of the Ibn Mālik poem line, including mine, and asked him which one would be the cor­rect one ac­cording to Arabic poem rhyming rules. He replied promptly, stating that the correct one was my version, using waw before tā.  I was not surprised that this would be his an­swer since Ibn Manẓūr, who had studied the most important Arabic grammar books of his time, did not list as a simple femi­nine demon­strative pronoun in his dictionary text­book, Lisān al-ʿArab. [13]

The second reference listed by Bellamy for the word was page 152 of Ancient west Arabian, by Chaim Rabin. [7] Rabin hinted that was used as a simple feminine demon­stra­tive noun by quoting from Bukhārī, who wrote that prophet Muhammad had addressed ʿĀʾisha, his youngest wife, with the phrase kaifa tīkum كيف تيكم. Rabin must have thought that using in the compound demonstrative word tīkum would mean that it was also used as an independent simple feminine demonstrative pronoun. Writing his book three decades after the discovery of al-Namārah, he then listed the of al-Namārah as second reference! [25] Plainly said, this is wrong and misleading. The of tīkum is derived from , the classic simple feminine demonstrative pronoun. Ibn Manẓūr exten­sively discussed this topic in his introduc­tion to the letter tāʾ in Lisān al-ʿArab. He explained that is the simple feminine demonstrative pronoun and that it can be used as a standalone word to point to a single feminine. He further ex­plained: Tayyā is the diminutive demonstrative pronoun of which can possibly be used for a younger fe­male too. Clearly, when pointing to a single feminine noun as a third distant party, can be combined to form a new compound demon­strative pro­noun, as , but one cannot use this part as a standalone word. For example, the words tīka, and tilka are derived from , not . The Arabs used tīka in­stead of tāka, but some had used tālika, instead of tilka, which Ibn Manẓūr called the ugliest us­age in the language. [13]. Other than this occurrence claimed by the readers of al-Namarāh, I could not find a single example for using as a simple feminine demonstrative pronoun, be that in the Quran, Arabic poetry, or anywhere else.  Even if one were to find such an example, it would be of a wrong us­age and surely a post Islamic exam­ple. The three simple femi­nine demonstrative pronouns in Arabic are tā, dhī, and dhih.

 

3.5 Rereading al-Namārah Nabataean Arabic Inscription

Taking into account the numerous Musnad Arabic inscrip­tions available today, al-Namārah or any of the three other known Nabataean Arabic inscriptions cannot be classified as the earli­est Arabic language documents on record. Although the classic Arabic language of al-Namārah is truly remarka­ble, the in­scription quality is not impressive. Moreover, the quality of the stone and the efforts put to prepare it, are much higher than the quality of the inscription and the efforts put by the scribe, and most likely, this scribe was definitely not the same person who prepared the stone. Surely, al-Namārah stone as a whole does not look like a stone worthy of a king’s tomb or monu­ment. Despite visible damages, possibly in­cluding a complete breakup of the stone into two or more pieces, most of the words of al-Namārah inscription are un­complicated to read by a person familiar with the Nabataean and Arabic scripts. Out of the several erosions that afflicted the stone, only one or two areas of erosion had somewhat affected the reading of the in­scription.  Although reading al-Namārah, a fascinating arche­ological and philological task, can be very challenging, it is not very complicated once the first two lines, and particularly the first two words, of the in­scription are read correctly. Numer­ous scholars studied al-Namārah after Dussaud, but Professor Bellamy of the Uni­versity of Michigan should get the highest credit for re-read­ing al-Namārah from scratch and presenting original correc­tions along with fresh new pictures, in the eighties of last century.

The first time I read al-Namārah was in 2008, the year I published my first article about the history of the Arabic Jazm script. My involvement in Arabic typography brought me ear­lier into the field of history of the Arabic script. In my earlier readings, I utilized available pictures and tracings, par­ticularly those provided by Bellamy. With the help of my pa­tient brother who visited the Louvre Museum in 2009, and the aid of the great technology inside his digital camera, I was able to examine the stone in person and obtain numerous detailed pictures of the areas disputed by previous readers in­cluding myself. I have provided, in Figure 4.4, the original Nabataean tracing of al-Namārah by Dussaud, along with his initial Ara­bic reading as referenced today by most textbooks. Thanks to Hassan Jamil, my ex-student and assistant who taught me Photoshop, I was able to provide my new tracing (Figure 3.5) of al-Namārah with eleven new changes —out of the eleven, three are Bellamy’s and six are mine. To assist the readers lo­cating these new tracings and compare them with the old ones, I assigned a number to each affected area on Dussaudʾs origi­nal tracing (Figure 3.4.) Also, in Figure 3.5, I provided my own letter-for-letter Arabic transcription fol­lowed by my translation into Arabic of the inscription, where I added all necessary dots, diacritic vowels, punctuations, and missing letters alif in ac­cordance with my new reading. I also provided a full Arabic explanation for my readings. In addi­tion, for those who want to confirm the tracings of this study, I supplied a clear image of the al-Namārah stone (Figure 3.3.)

Description: figure 3

Figure (3.4) A photo of al-Namārah stone hanging on a wall at the Louvre Museum, Paris. © Marie-Lan Nguyen / Wikimedia Commons. [20]

 

Dussaud’s tracing of al-Namārah Nabataean inscription

Description: Nammarah_300dpi_original2

Dussaud’s letter-by-letter Arabic transcription

Description: dusad reading

 

Figure (3.5) Dussaud tracing of al-Namārah inscription with his revised letter-for-letter Arabic transcription and translation. [11]

 

 

Figure (3.6) New tracing by the author of the Nabataean text of al-Namārah inscription with an equivalent letter-by-letter Arabic transcrip­tion and a modern classic Arabic translation.

 

Line 1

Demonstrating that Dussaudʾs reading of the first word was inaccurate, would most certainly open the way to question all current readings of the inscription. After all, if the writer of al-Namārah inscription had wanted to use a demonstrative pro­noun for a tombstone, he would have cer­tainly used dnh, the one utilized in Umm al-Jimāl, Raqqush, and all other Naba­taean tombstone inscriptions. Still, in or­der to fully ac­complish the difficult task of chal­lenging Dussaud’s reading, we are faced by an even more difficult task — how to read this unu­sual and difficult word? To begin, I started in Ara­maic where is thought to be a simple demonstrative pro­noun for a singular masculine noun. The name of the Syrian village Tīshūr, Ṭarṭūs provi­dence, is believed to be de­rived from an Ar­amaic com­pound name made of (this) and shūr (wall), a masculine noun in both Aramaic and Arabic. [3][9]

However, the second word, nafs, of al-Namārah is a feminine noun — as I have pointed out when re-reading the Umm al-Jimāl in­scription. The extremely rare instance where nafs can be treated as a masculine noun in Arabic is not applicable here. Considering that al-Namārah  lan­guage is rela­tively classic Arabic, it is seriously unlikely that it would start with an Aramaic word, let alone the wrong Aramaic word.

Regardless of the nature of the word nafs, feminine or mas­culine, one needs to first reinvestigate its meaning and us­age in al-Namārah. As stated, since this word rarely ap­peared within the opening phrase of the Nabataean inscrip­tions but commonly within the Musnad inscriptions of east­ern Arabian tombstones (always combined with the word qabr), scholars believe this word means “funerary monu­ment”. However, no other existing evidence can attest to such common usage among Muslim Arabs. As I illustrated through my reading of the Umm al-Jimāl, Madeba, and Stratsbourg inscriptions above, this word was likely misread or even mistraced in these inscriptions. Among the long list of its usage in Arabic (com­piled by major Muslim scholars who lived a couple centuries after al-Namārah), “tombstone” or “funerary mon­ument” were both clearly absent. Two Ara­bic Nabataean in­scriptions, dated few decades before al-Namārah and found in the same geo­graphic area, and nu­merous other Musnad and Nabataean in­scriptions, had con­sistently used the word qabr in relation to a burial place. Why would al-Namārah then use nafs alone?

Even if the word nafs was actually used individually in few inscriptions to mean tombstone, this should certainly not limit it to that usage or exclude others, especially since the ab­solute majority of the other inscriptions had consistently used it otherwise. The fact that Umm al-Jimāl had used nafsū with final wāw, while al-Namārah used nafs without wāw, is by it­self a significant piece of information that needs to be exam­ined closely. Furthermore, al-Namārah stone does not even re­semble a typical Nabataean or non-Nabataean nafesh. I am of the opinion that in the context of al-Namārah, the word nafs should be read as “soul” — its common usage —, or “blood” — a less common but a very valid usage, given the events sur­rounding Umruʾū al-Qays defeat. As it will be em­phasized throughout my re‑reading, the overall text con­tents, para­graphs, sentences, and information on the events cited in the inscription — whether read with classic Arabic or having Nab­ataean Arabic in mind — do not match the cur­rent reading of this word as “funerary monument.” 

My reading of nafs in the meaning of “soul” would leave only a couple of possibilities for the reading of the pre­vious word, .—it was either used to swear by or call upon the soul or blood of Umruʾū al-Qays, a very common Arab prac­tice even today; or to bring the attention to or call upon his glory. It was customary that the Arabs, even before Islam, use introductory sentences before starting with their main topic as Muslims routinely do today by starting with an at­tention-grab­bing swear sentence such as, Bism Allāh al-Raḥmān al-Raḥīm. Accordingly, I believe there could be four possible readings for . 

The first and most likely reading of it is tayā تَيا, a com­bined word composed of two parts, ta and . The first part is the swearing letter tāʾ, known as tāʾ al-qasam تاء القسم, as in ta-Allāh تَالله. Contrary to common belief today, start­ing with the swear letter tāʾ was not limited to Allāh. For ex­am­ple, the Arabs used ta-Ḥayātika تحياتك when swearing by someone’s life. They also used ta-rabbi al-kaʿbati تربّ الكعبة when swear­ing by the god of kaʾbah in Meccaeven before Islam. [4][13] Based on this reading, they may have used tayā rabbi al-Kaʿbatati تيا ربّ الكعبة. The second part, the let­ter/word is ḥarf tanbīh حرف تنبيه commonly used to call, or call upon, the attention of someone or something as in yā Allāh, or yā fulān, or yā ʿIrāq. [13] Therefore, I read the first two words of al-Namārah as ta-yā nafs تيا نفس, as in qasaman yā nafs قسما يا نفس, or bikī yā nafs بِكِ يا نفس, which would mean, “swear by thee Oʾsoul of”, or “in thee, Oʾsoul of.”

The second possible reading is that could also be tayā تَيا, but this time the two parts are used together as ḥarf tanbīh. Ibn Manẓūr listed several examples where yā, com­bined with additional letters before it were used as one word in the meaning of . The additional letters before were possibly used to add more emphasis, admiration, or to ex­press feelings for revenge and sorrow. The few examples listed in his Lisān al-ʿArab included āyā آيا, ʾayāأيا , and hayā هيا, but not tayāتيا . [13] My thinking, based on Ibn Manẓūr examples, is that tayā and several other combinations of had existed in classic Ar­abic. 

The third possibility is that it could actually be تي, but was used either as a feminine pronoun hadhihī هذه in the meaning of ḥarf tanbīh, solely to swear and give attention and admiration, or as a swearing letter tāʾ with final let­ter yāʾ to replace the kasrah diacritic. In the latter case, it would be read tī nafs as in bi-nafs بنفس or wa-nafs ونفس, commonly used to swear by someone’s soul.  Swearing tāʾ is normally attached to a word and used with a fathah diacritic, but it is possible that it was given kasrah when used with a femi­nine noun like nafs. This is consistent with the typical Arabic association of kasrah with feminine. Since pronouncing ta with kasra when attached to nafs is awkward, a final yāʾ was proba­bly used to represent kasrah, as practiced in pre-diacritic Arabic poetry writings.[13]

The forth, an extremely unlikely possibility, is that could also be tayā, but in the meaning of ṭawbá طوبى or ta تحيا (long live.) The inscription may have started with the phrase tayā nafs تحيا نفس but the ḥaʾ after tāʾ was possibly omitted by design or by mistake. This possibility is highly unlikely since I have not found any evidence linking or tayā with such us­age. Also, ta is usually used with a living person, not the soul of the dead.

Reading the first two words of al-Namārah is crucial to the reading of the rest of the inscription. In the case of the first three reading possibilities here above re­ported, swearing by or calling upon Umruʾū al-Qaysʾ soul, the phrase should then be followed by a single major action or event an­nouncement, not a group of events. As for the fourth possi­bility, the non-swearing readings above, a list of accomplish­ments is certainly possible. Regardless of which reading is used, the inscription has become much less likely a burial epitaph than a memorial monument. The first three swearing readings open up other possibilities for reading the rest of the inscription, since they indicate that this inscription is not about Umruʾū al-Qays.

The next questionable word of the first line was klh Dussaud traced the word as klh accurately, but read it wrongly as kulluh. It should be kulluhā (meaning, “all of them”) refer­ring to the previous word al-ʿArab (the Arabs, or the Arab tribes); both are feminine nouns. However, the next challeng­ing words of the inscription are dhū and the two words fol­lowing it. As I explained earlier, in Arabic dhū is usually used in the meaning of ṣāḥib or wa-lahu (“owner of” or “he who owns”), normally for laqab or kunyah (last name), or in the meaning of “who or which belongs to”, or “of”. In both cases, it should be followed by a noun. How­ever, in classic Arabic, dhū was also used in the meaning of alladhī (he who), fol­lowed by a verb. In al-Namārah, the next word was either asad (lion) or asara (took someone as pris­oner). I believe it was the noun asad, and the previous word was either dhū, normally used for nicknames or other titles, or dhū in the meaning of “who belogs to”, not alladhī.

It follows, I read the last three-word phrase as dhū asadu al-tāj in the meaning of “the one who owned asad al-tāj,” possibly a nickname or title referring to a figure of lion adorning the top of an actual crown. Or in the meaning of “the one who belongs to asadu al-tāj”. This refers to the Asad tribe as the one with the crown or the one whose kings wore a crown, a well-known history fact.

In order to read dhū as alladhī, to fulfill Dussaud’s and all current readings of the inscription, one must read the word after dhū as a verb. Scholars, who read the word after dhū as a verb, possibly asara, assara, or even asada, claimed that the word which followed and which can easily be traced as the noun al-tāj (crown,) was actually referring to the well-known historical city Thāj or Thaʾj near the modern-day city al-Ḍahrān.

Even so, if this were true, one would not refer to it as al-Thāj using al. In fact, Arabic poetry had never used al with city names like Thāj or Najrān. Additionally, in Arabic the object of the verb asar or assara must be people, not a city. One does take people, particularly soldiers, as prisoners and not a city! Tweaking the reading of al-tāj, some scholars claimed it was actually al-Tājiyyīn, possibly a tribe name, or al-Thājiyyīn, the people of the city of Thāj. However, I was not able to trace the two or three additional letters needed for al-tāj to become al-Tājiyyīn or al-Thājiyyīn. Since those who read the word as the verb assara had also read each subse­quent word mlk as the verb malaka, one may ask as why al-Namārah would use assar only for al-Taj or al-Tājiyyīn. A more perti­nent question would be, why not use malaka? It would cer­tainly fit the meaning better.

Those who opposed reading al-tāj as “the crown” ex­plained that Arab kings had never wore crowns. This is erro­neous. History teaches us that some of the northern Arab kings of Ḥīrah and even Najd, home of the Bani Asad tribes, wore crowns. Even if this were not true, we do know that Umruʾū al-Qays had carried many attacks in Persia whose kings did wear crowns. Since Persia historically used a lion as a national symbol, we cannot exclude the possibility that Umruʾū al-Qays had managed to seize a crown with a lion ef­figy — this earned him the appellation: dhū asad al-tāj (the one with the lion of the crown), a valid Arabic phrase in terms of grammar and semantics. According to Muslim scholars, King Umruʾū al-Qays was known for his many ap­pellations. Doing so, that is to have multiple nicknames, is an estab­lished Arab tradition since time immemorial, through the Abbasid times, and even today. One would be surprised, if al-Namārah would mention king Umruʾū al-Qays without fol­lowing it with one of his many titles or appellations. It is unfortunate that the appellation listed in al-Namārah was not among those that Muslim historians accorded to him. [14][30]

Struggling to read the word following dhū as a verb to prove Dussaudʾs general classification of al-Namārah, some scholars hypothesized that assar was an equivalent to the verb nāla (won). They read the second word as “is”; that is, as al‑tāj (crown), and read the three-word phrase as alladhi nāla al-tāj (he who won the crown). Yet, I found no evidence that assara or asara was used in such manner.

Bellamy read the last four-word phrase as wa-laqabahu dhū Asad wa-Midhḥij (and his appellation as “the one who owned Asad and Midhḥij tribes”.) I do agree with his tracing of the loop following Asad as possible letter wāw, but disa­gree with his tracing of the word that followed as Midhḥij. Doubly important, why would al-Namārah lists Umruʾū al-Qaysʾ as king of Asad and vanquisher of Midhḥij in Line 2 (according to Bellamy’s reading) when his appellation already included them on Line 1? However, I believe Bellamy’s trac­ing of alif as possible wāw would change dhū asad al-tāj ذو اسد التاج to dhū asadūl-tāj ذو اسدولتاج which would conform to the way with which al-Namārah pronounced the name Umruʾū al-Qays as Umruʾul-Qaysمرء لقيس  and, as I shall discuss later, the way it pronounced fursān al-Rūm as fursanūl-rūm فرسانولروم. On the other hand, even if all Bel­lamyʾs tracing and reading of the last phrase of Line 1 were correct, this would still agree with my reading of dhū as the common dhū and not alladhī, and with my reading of the phrase as one of the king’s titles or ap­pellations.

Line 2

Reading the first two and the last three words of the first line was, without a doubt, the most demanding task in reading the Arabic language of al-Namārah. In comparison, reading the rest of the inscription is straightforward. If dhū was al­ladhī, one would expect a series of action (i.e. verbs) after­wards, all connected by wa (and). If it was simply the typical word dhū for appellations, one should then expect either ad­ditional titles connected by wa, or an announcement for an extraordinary event or a decree. Only in the second case could one start a new sentence with the letter wāw (not in the meaning “and”), which would normally be followed by a non-verb, as in wa-qad, or wa-akīran. The fact that Umruʾū al-Qays was the king of Asad and Nazār, is neither new nor an extraordinary an­nouncement. The Quran stated many sentences with wāw, but it consistently used non-verb after­wards, as in the example of Quran (53:1) wa-al-najmi idhā hawá والنّجمِ إِذَا هَوَى, where the word al-najm (the star) is a noun.

In my opinion, reading the word mlk, which appears twice in the second line, as the verb malaka is a major mis­take since the first one was preceded by the letter wāw. I read both as the noun malik (king of), as this same word was read by all scholars in Line 1 in the phrase malik al-‘Arab. Muslim schol­ars wrote that banī Asad of Najd and banī Nazār of Ḥijāz, are ʿArabun mustaʿribah (Arabized Arabs), not ʿArabun ʿāribah (pure Arabs.) They are the descendants of ʿAdnān, not Qaḥṭān (presumably a “pure” Arab.) Accordingly, ʿAdnān, a descend­ent of Isma‘īl, is the father (some wrote grandfather) of Nazār of Ḥijāz and Maʿad of Yemen, and great grandfather of Muḍar. Depending on what time period, these mixed Arab groups were custom­arily referred to as Maʿad, Nazār, or Muḍar in­stead of ʿAdnān. [2][28] It is evident, therefore, that af­ter stating that Umruʾ al-Qays was the king of all Arabs — the single largest group of people in the area — the writer of al-Namārah needed to state that Umruʾū al-Qays was also the king of both Asad and Nazār, two of the largest three mixed tribes in Ara­bia. The third group is Maʿad of Yemen. Yet, it is also possible that the term “all Arabs” was referring to all nomadic Arab tribes as distinguished from tribes that had settled down in cit­ies and specific geographic areas and es­tablished kingdoms.

Based on my readings of the word malik above as noun, I had suspected right from the begining, that the letter wāw after the next word, mulūkahum, should actually be a part of that word. This would make reading Arabic smoother, espe­cially since the next word, h.r.b is a definite verb, as we shall see that later. This, of course, was not required for my reading of al-Namārah up to the word mulūkahum. As ex­plained above, a sentence announcing an extraordinary event, like de­feating the powerful Midhḥij, can start with wāw in the meaning of wa-akīran (at last or finally), or hā-qad. How­ever, tracing and inspecting the Nabataean text, I can un­mistakably see that the wāw after mulūkahum is actually connected to it. The downward stroke of this wāw is not ver­tical. It is pointing to the right. The final letter mīm of mulūkahum has a promi­nent lower-connecting stroke fading just before it reaches the downward stroke of wāw. I read this word as mulūkahumū not mulūkahum. This final wāw is re­ferring to the people of Asad and Nazār. In Arabic grammar, it is called wāw al-Ishbaʿ (satu­ration wāw) or wāw al-ṣilah (relating wāw) and is usually used after mīm al-Jamʿ (plural mīm) to emphasize its dhammah dia­critic. The word mulūkahumū is the last word of the opening sentence of al-Namārah. It does not only conclude the opening sentence in anticipation of the main subject of the inscription, but it surely makes the reading of the first word of al-Namārah, tī, as “this”, impossible.

The Arabic root of the word after mulūkahumū could either be haraba هرب (run away) or hadhdhaba هذّب (disci­plined), a verb in both cases. Tracing this word as hrb is ac­cepted by all scholars. Since the word that comes after was Midhḥij, the name of the prominent Yemenite tribe, this verb must be in past tense and when read in Arabic must have a shaddah on the letter rāʾ to become harraba هرّب (forced the object to run away) in order to refer to the subject commit­ting the action of the verb. If Midhḥij is the object, as I read it, the subject can then be a name ap­pearing before or after the verb. The only other possibility is to treat Midhḥij, a feminine noun, as the subject, not the ob­ject of the verb; in such case, one must say harabat Midhḥij, adding the femi­nine letter tāʾ after bāʾ. Since there was no tāʾ, this word must be harraba (defeated them or made them run away.) Hadhdhaba would not make sense after reading the next line.

Given that harraba was the first word of the new main event announcing a sentence/paragraph that followed an un­related opening sentence, and since it was definitely a verb followed by a name within a three-word sub-sentence, the next word ʿAkdī عَكْدي must be the subject name according to clas­sic Arabic. It cannot be an adjective or adverb since this would leave the three-word sub-sentence incomplete. I agree with Dussaudʾs reading of the phrase as harraba Midhḥij ʿAkdī, but I read it in the meaning of the phrase harraba ʿAkdī Midhḥij, where ʿAkdī is the subject فاعل who defeated the object مفعول به  Midhḥij.  In Arabic, one can use both phrases, but should differentiate between them by using appropriate vocal accents on the object and subject. This vo­cal differentiation was never marked in writing until after Is­lam. The Quran and Arabic poetry have plenty of similar examples. In the Quran (35:28) innamā yakhshá Allāha min ʿibadihi al-ʿulamaʾu  إِنَّمَا يَخْشَى اللَّهَ مِنْ عِبَادِهِ الْعُلَمَاءُ, where the verb yakhshá is the first word fol­lowed immediately by Allāh, the object, and then comes the subject, al-ʿulamaʾu. [18][19]

However, assuming that ʿAkdī was a name in the phrase harraba Midhḥij ʿAkdī, one should also consider the possibility that Midhḥij was a personal name and is the sub­ject. In such case, ʿAkdī, as the object, would be the personal or tribe name of the defeated party. Although this possibility is valid from a grammar and language angle, it would not fit at all with all readings of the last line of the inscription where the victorious (either ʿAkdī, or Umrūʾ al-Qays) was treated as a hero, not a villain. Similarly, the assumption that ʿAkdī was a last name, as in haraba Midhḥij ʿAkdī, would not work with the rest of the inscription.

Luckily, from the viewpoint of research, the word ʿAkdī  appeared twice in the inscription. The last sentence started with the two-word phrase ʿAkdī halak (ʿAkdī died.) This phrase is, by itself, solid proof that ʿAkdī  is a name of a per­son and that this inscription is about him, not Umruʾū al-Qays. The main event of the inscription was his triumph over Midhḥij. Not a very common name, ʿAkdī  sounds like a clas­sic Arabic name. Many of Arabic names are formed by add­ing final yāʾ after a noun or after another name derived from a three-letter Arabic root, as in Ramzī from Ramz, Saʿdī from Saʿd, Ḥusnī from Ḥusn, … etc.  The name of the hero of al-Namarāh was ʿAkdī derived from the classic Arabic word ʿakd عكد. It is that simple! With a simple Arabic Google search for the name ʿAkdī, one can find many using it as a last name in an Arab desert town in Algeria, called Umāsh أوماش ! The fact that the name ʿAkdī was mentioned without the name of his father could mean that he was either an associate of Umruʾū al-Qays, from a slave background like the famous Arab hero ʿAntarah (who many think was originally a slave) or a high ranking Arab soldier of the Roman Army.

According to Lisān al-ʿArab, although the root word ʿakd can be used in a variety of meanings; however, its pri­mary meaning is, “the lower back part of the tongue.”  For that rea­son, it was used in the meaning of aṣl (origin) as Libzbarski suggested. The word is probably related to ʿiqd عِقد (tie). [7][13] Likely, the derived word ʿakdi does not mean “strong” or “powerful”, as most Arabic publications desper­ately claim to­day following Caskel’s reading, but “original” اصلي. Besides, one can not see how anyone could read the same word Akdī  in two ways at the same time: as “the strong” القوي, and “with strength or strongly” قوّتاً!

Bellamy thought this word was ʿakkaḍá عكضى, which he desperately tried to make derive from a two-word phrase ʿan kaḍá عن قضى with the letter nūn assimilated, the letter qāf re­placed, and the letter yāʾ ignored. He thought this word meant “thereafter”. [7] His reading of the word as an adverb would make sense if one would go along with Dussaudʾs reading of the previous text. But even then, his convoluted assumptions to arrive to this unknown word, ʿakkaḍá, raise more questions but give no answers. For example, why can’t an inscription, with relatively good classic Arabic language, use baʿda dhālik, instead? Why is there no reference to ʿan kaḍá, as “thereafter” in any historical Arabic reference? In the first place, why would the writer of the inscription use a non-crucial adverb twice?

Line 3

Bellamy should be given due credit for tracing and reading two higly debated words in the beginning of Line 3. I verified his tracing and I agree with it. He traced the first word as yzjh and read it yazujjuhā. The missing final alif after hāʾ is consistent with the word kulluh for kulluhā in Line 1 and with another word banīh for banīhā, in the end of Line 3. Yazujju has many meanings, but in al-Namārah context, it means, “to engage someone in a fierce battle.” Dussaud traced that word as bzji and read it as bi-zjāy, a non-existing Arabic word! The second traced word by Bellamy was rtj, which he read as rutuji in the meaning of “gates of”. I agree with his tracing of the word, but disagree with his Arabic reading and the meaning he gave to it. The presence of (in) rather than ʿalá (on) before the word indicates that it does not mean gates in this context. The word (in) needs a loca­tion where one can be physically “in” not “near to”. One cannot say in Arabic fī abwāb Najrān (in the gates of Najrān), but ʿalá abwāb Najrān (on/at the gates of Najrān.) I read the word rtj as rutuji, or possibly ritāji, in the meaning of “narrow roads of” or “narrow road of” as given by Lisān al-ʿArab, which indicated that the words rutuj or marātij are the plural forms of the word ritāj for “narrow road”, as in the Quran verse وأرض ذات رتاج. [13]

Categorically therefore, only this reading is grammati­cally correct as it is in agreement with the historical and geo­graphical facts of Najrān and Yemen, which are known for their narrow roads and mountainous valleys. The use of the word harraba in the second line was apparently deliberate. The crushing battle was in and around Najrān, where Midhḥij had escaped to for cover. Further, scholars read the word Shimr as Shammar, probably hinting to the well-known Shammar tribe of northern Najd. Reading the word as a tribe name rather than an individual name is clearly influenced by reading the following word mlk as the verb malaka. This hasty reading is yet another example of how scholars did all they can do to prove that al-Namārah was listing Umruʾū al-Qays accom­plishments.

Two facts attest to the following conclusion: 1) geo­graphically, in the sense of distance and location, the Sham­mar tribe had nothing to do with Najrān or Yemen, and 2) a re­nowned king of Yemen who ruled in the time of al-Namārah carried the first name Shimr. [2][6][14] Moreover, I wonder why al-Namārah, which had added wāw after every single name in the inscription, would skip that practice only with the name Shammar!  I read the word Shmr and the wāw that followed as one word, Shimrū, referring to King Shimr Yarʿish of Yemen, and therefore, I read the next word that followed as mālik (king of), not the verb malaka (owned).

The last two words of the third line are wa-bayyana banīhā, as in wa mayyaza bayna banīhā (distinguished ap­pro­priately between its people). Bellamy read the two words as wa-nabala bi-nabahi (treated its nobles gently). His reading would fit fine with his and my reading of the fourth line, which included two important words, al-shuʿūb followed by wa-wakkalahunna. For a victorious army, discriminating be­tween the defeated (as in treatment of women, children, and elders differently) is contrary to the usual indiscriminate ram­page. In other words, it is a sort of gentle treatment re­served for the vanquished. Tracing the first word by Bellamy as nbl, which he read as nabala, is possible. Conversely, tracing the second word as bnbh, which he read as bi-nabahi is impossible since the third letter is clearly yāʾ, not bāʾ. I read the first word as bayyana, as did Dussaud even though the vertical stem of the final letter nūn was unusually high.

In Arabic bayyana in the meaning of mayyaza (distin­guished between) or in the meaning of wadhdhaḥa (clarified) is the past tense for yubayyin. Among many diverse modes of usage, the Quran (2:118) used the following: قَدْ بيَّنَّا الآيَاتِ لِقَوْمٍ يُوقِنُون. The root word, bayn is among the few Arabic words that can be used to give an opposite meaning. Generally, it is used to express either separation or togetherness. [13] As for the second word, I believe it is banīhā, as in abnāʾihā (its sons or people). The word bnh should be read as banīhā, since we are referring either to the Midhḥij tribe or to Maʿad, both of which are feminine nouns. Dussaud read this word, banyihi, as in quwwatihi (his steadfastness). This would fit well with the rest, but it needs to be followed by lil-shuʿūb, not al-shuʿūb as illus­trated in the next word of Line 4.

Line 4

The fourth line presents no obstacles to read. In the begin­ning, Dussaud read it correctly, but a few decades later, he reversed position. The word wwklhn should be read wa-wak­kalahunna (put them under the protection of), a classic Ara­bic word that is grammatically correct. [13] As it happened, al-Namārah in­cluded the usual letter nūn with shaddah at the end, which is possibly used here for emphasis and confirmation and it is referring specifically to the plural feminine noun al-shuʿūb. This word is the second widely‑utilized taxonomic term used in the Arab tribal and modern systems as synonym for the word “people”. A tribe or qabīlah is di­vided into shuʿūb, plural for shaʿb, which in turn is divided into buṭūn. We read in the Quran (9:36) إِنَّ عِدَّةَ الشُّهُورِ عِندَ اللّهِ اثْنَا عَشَرَ شَهْرًا فِي كِتَابِ اللّهِ يَوْمَ خَلَقَ السَّمَاوَات وَالأرْضَ مِنْهَا أَرْبَعَةٌ حُرُمٌ ذَلِكَ الدِّينُ الْقَيِّمُ فَلا تَظْلِمُواْ فِيهنَّ أنفُسَكُمْ. The word fīhhunna فيهنّ is referring to the plural feminine word shuhūr (months). [18][19] The word shahr (month) is a single masculine noun, but when con­verted to plural form, it be­comes shuhūr, a feminine noun. Similarly, the word shuʿūb, plural of the masculine noun shaʿb, is a plural feminine noun. This may explain, partially, why the word al-ʿArab, a single feminine noun, in the first line was referred to with kulluhā, not kulluhunna or kullahum, and why the feminine noun, Mid­hḥij, for a single tribe, was referred to with the words, yazujjuhā, not yazujuhunna or yazujuhum, and banīhā not banīhunna, or banīhum.

The contested word(s) of the fourth line was frswlrwm. The first three-letter part frs can be faras (horse), fāris (horse­man or equestrian), or Fāris (Persia). Reading the word as “horse” cannot be considered. To read history correctly, it is literally impossible for the word to be read as Persia and that is because the previous word was clearly wa‑wakkalahunna, and the following word was clearly indi­cating the Romans (there has never been an incidence in old Arabia where an area was put under the simultaneous pro­tection of the Romans and the Persians.)  During the time of al-Namārah, found in a Roman-controlled territory, these two powers were engaged in heated battles. Consequently, it was highly improbable to share domination of Arabia as partners. 

At this point, we are left with only one possibility as how to read frsw, which is fursānū (horsemen) plural of fāris. I am inclined to believe there is a medial nūn between the letters sīn and wāw, which I will discuss in detail later. Ac­cordingly, I read the two words as a compound: fursānūl-rūm, فرسانولروم, for fursān al-Rūm, فرسانُ الروم, similar to the read­ing of Umruʾul-qays مرُء لقيس earlier in the inscription for Umruʾ ū al-Qays أمرُؤ القيس. The alif of al-Rūm was omit­ted because it was preceded by a word ending with the letter wāw, namely fursānū. This practice has largely fallen out of use in modern Arabic writing. The name Umrūʾ al-Qays, is pronounced with heavy dhammah accent (as if there was a letter wāw) after hmazah as in Umruʾū-l-qays أمرُءولقيس or Umruʾu-l-qays أمرُءُ لقيس. This is why the beginning letter alif of al-Qays, not same as hamzah, was also omitted. In fact, in modern Arabic, a ma­jority of people write the name with wāw beneath hamzah as in Umruʾū al-Qays أمرُؤ القيس. Some still write it as ʾUmruʾu al-qays أمرُءُ القيس. In comparison, the alif of al is not omitted when the previous word ends with a soft dhammah diacritic, like maliku al-Asadiyyin in the se­cond line. The letter wāw af­ter the nūn in fursānū could be the plural wāw normally seen when a perfect masculine plu­ral noun ending with wāw and nūn, is added to another noun to complete its meaning, as in banū Asad for banūn Asad. This is known as jamʿ al-mudhak­kar al-sālim جمع المذكر السالم . The word fursān is called mudhāf مضاف (qualified) or trans­lated literary from Arabic “the added word,” while al-Rūm is mudhāf ilayhمضاف اليه  (qualifier) or translated liter­ally from Arabic “the word which has been added to.” Other­wise, this wāw could also be wāw al-ṣilah or wāw al-ishbāʿ to empha­size the ḍammah diacritic on the nūn, as explained earlier when discussing the word mulūkahumū in Line 2.

Dussaud, who initially read the word frsw as fārisū (plu­ral for fāris?), appeared not convinced of his reading. This explains why he decided to get rid of that reading later (when he re-read al-Namārah in the 1950s.) A justification does exist to explain this obvious confusion: the area of the stone occu­pied by the letters frsw appears significantly dam­aged. How­ever, all what the word needs to become fursānū is the letter nūn between the letters sīn and wāw.  

Fortunately, we do not need to dream up the letter nūn. Retracing that area extensively by using several photos, I ob­served that the down stroke of the letter wāw was pointing to the right, not perfectly vertical as traced by Dussaud. More important, the downward stroke of the previous letter sīn is clearly making an upward u-turn, probably to form the small missing letter, medial nūn, which was then connected to the letter wāw just at the loop area.  Furthermore, the space be­tween the letters sīn and wāw is suspiciously wide. Neverthe­less, and given that this particular surface is severely dam­aged, we may never know for sure if there was ever a letter nūn in that area of the in­scription.

I believe my reading of frsw as fursānū is more con­vincing than Dussaud’s. It is surely more convincing than Bellamyʾs reading of it as fa-raʾasū فرأسو (to appoint someone as their head or leader.) He read the two-word phrase fa-raʾasū li-Rūmā. I can­not see how he traced hamzah between the tightly spaced let­ters rāʾ and sīn. Hamza, unlike alif, cannot be omitted in this case since al-Namārah used it consistently eve­rywhere else. Bellamy’s reading seems acceptable at first; but it would quickly crumple when combined with the previous word wa-wakkalahunna (placed them under the protection of.) According to Bellamyʾs reading, the defeated Midhḥij, were put under the protection of the defeater (Umruʾ al-Qays), and then accepted the Romans as their ul­timate protectors. Why would an Arab king work so hard for the benefit of the Ro­mans? The Arab kings were never en­thusiastically subservient to either the Romans or the Per­sians. Their relation was pri­marily for mu­tual protection. [6] Bellamyʾs elaboration on the differences be­tween raʾīs and malik is not convincing. Also, his reading of the last word as the city Rūmā روما is confusing. Even though the Arabs called the Byzantine Romans al-Rūm, these Romans were not the Romans of Roma (current Rome of Italy). Why al-Namārah would then speak of Rūmā?

We have no clue as to how and why some readers read the word wwklhn as wa-kullahum in order to read the whole phrase as wa-kullahum fursānan lil-Rūm (and made all of them knights for the Romans). This highly speculative read­ing discards arbitrarily one of the two letters wāw and dreams up a final letter mīm, to replace the letter nūn, in wwklhn.  Addi­tionally, it adds a letter nūn after sīn (as I did) and re­places the wāw by alif tanwīn in frsw.  It also adds, arbitrar­ily, a second letter lām before lrum. This and other peculiar readings are unfortunately the most popular ones in the Arab world today; probably because the current major Western readings of al-Namārah have failed to convince many! [27]

The last phrase of Line 4, fa-lam yablugh malikun mablaghah, which was read that way by all scholars, is clear but tricky. It can mean, “Not even a king could accomplish what he has accomplished” or “no other king has accom­plished what he has accomplished”. There is a subtle differ­ence between these two interpretations. The second could lead the reader to believe that it is referring to the only king mentioned in al-Namārah, king Umruʾū al-Qays. I beg to differ; that is, it refers to the first interpretation of the first phrase — that is, the one referring to the accomplishments of ʿAkdī. It is worth mentioning that it is common in the usages of the Arabic to brag about something by stating, “not even a king has done such or had owned such.” As I have explained already, ac­cording to history textbooks before Dussaudʾs reading of al-Namārah, king Umruʾū al-Qays was not able to control Yemen or Midhḥij.

To summarize, the third and fourth lines of al-Namārah are describing the sole event of the inscription, namely the defeat of Midhḥij, which was introduced in Line 2. Their spe­cific purpose appears to be informing the reader about where the battle took place, how it was conducted, and what was its aftermath. All of the keywords appearing in the two lines, Midhḥij, Najrān, al-shuʿūb, malik, Shimr, and al-Rūm are linked to one geographical location: Yemen, and to a single timeframe: circa 328 CE.

To continue, I read the single event paragraph starting by the word harraba (in Line 2) until the end of the Line 4 as follows: “ʿAkdī defeated Midhḥij, then engaged them in a fierce battle in the narrow road(s) of Najrān, the city of Shimr, the king of Maʿad, and separated its people as it fits before placing them under the protection of the Roman cav­alry, a task that not even a king had accomplished before.” This reading is by no means speculative. I based it on histori­cal and geographical facts— especially on the linguistic as­pects of the inscription itself. 

Line 5

The final line of al-Namārah started with the word ʿAkdī, which we have already discussed (and seen) when we read the second line. Starting with this word in the final line was not a coincidence. The letters of the final word of the previ­ous line, mablaghahu, were exaggerated in size and a gener­ous space was left blank after it. It seems, therefore, that the scriber de­liberately wanted to start the conclusive sentence in a new line. Starting with the name ʿAkdī, he wanted to re­mind the reader, once more, that the inscription was about him. The second word after ʿAkdī was clearly halaka (per­ished) therefore, the first phrase of the sentence was ʿAkdī halaka (ʿAkdī perished)  The subject name here is after the verb, ex­actly as it was in the older Arabic Nabataean inscrip­tion, Raqqūsh, which had used the phrase hiya halakat (she per­ished). [11] In good classic Ara­bic, the verb is usually placed before the subject, but this is not required for correct Arabic grammar.

After stating the year, month, and day of his death, the scriber concluded the inscription (according to Dussaud) with the phrase “bil-saʿd dhū waladahu.” In Arabic language terms, this interpretation is incomprehensible.  That is, we cannot understand it in Arabic. Nor can we understand “yā-la-saʾdi dhū wālawhu” meaning, “Oʾ, happiness for those who followed him” according to Bellamy. Going further, I agree with Dussaudʾs tracing, except for the first letter, which he read as bāʾ, not yāʾ, as Bellamy did. One can easily see that the stroke for the letter bāʾ was a vertical straight line throughout the in­scription, unlike the stroke for the initial yāʾ, which had always included a little dent. I am unable to see the second wāw of wālawhu that Bellamy traced with the intention to replace the letter dāl of wldh.  It is my judgment that Bellamyʾs reading of this word was clearly influenced by the assumption that al-Namārah was King Umruʾū al-Qaysʾ epitaph. We read the last phrase as yā li-saʿdi dhū waladah (Oʾ, the happiness of those who gave birth to him). The first word is the letter known as yāʾ al-tanbīh (exclamation calling upon for either attention or admiration.) This is the same as the of tayā, the first word of al-Namārah. It is used here to draw attention to the word saʿd (happiness). Unlike the earlier dhū in the first line, dhū in this phrase was fol­lowed by a verb waladahu (gave birth to him), and therefore it is used in the meaning of alladhī (those who). The closing phrase should be read in the meaning of “Oh, how happy should his parents be,” a classic and familiar line used even today when bringing the bad news of a fallen young soldier, not a king, to his parents!

 

3.6 Conclusion

For more than a century, it was assumed that al-Namārah stone, which Dussaud discovered in 1901 (it is hanging today on a wall in the Louvre Museum in Paris,) was the tombstone of one of the most important pre-Islamic Arab kings, King Umruʾū al-Qays bin ʿAmrū. My tracing and reading of the in­scription suggests that such an assumption (based on Dussaudʾs initial reading) is inaccurate. In fact, by rereading al-Namārah and the two other known fully Arabic Nabataean inscriptions, according to Western scholars, Raqqūsh and Umm al-Jimāl, I found out that al-Namārah inscription was actually about a previously unknown military or tribal person named ʿAkdī, who, while working with or under the Roman Byzantine army, managed to defeat the powerful Midhḥij tribe of Yemen in the early 4th century. The inscription in­cluded only three parts: an opening introductory sentence swearing by the soul of king Umruʾū al-Qays bin ʿAmrū, a long paragraph detailing the specifics of ʿAkdī’’s accomplish­ments in a single battle, and a closing sentence announcing ʿAkdī’’s death.

Below is my modern Arabic translation and explana­tion of the al-Namārah inscription:

تَيا (قَسماً يا ؛ يا) نَفسُ (روحُ ؛ دَمُ) امرؤ القيس بن عَمْرو، مَلِكُ العَربِ كُلّها، ذو أسَد التاج (كُنية)، ومَلِكُ الأسَديين (نَجْدْ) ونَزارٍ (بنو نَزار، الحجاز) ومُلوكَهُمُ. (لقد) هَرَّبَ مِذْحِج (قبيلة يمانية) عكْدي (اسم قائد)، وجاءَ (اي عكْدي) يزُجُّها (يُقاتلها بضراوة) في رُتِجِ (طُرُقْ ضَيّقة) نَجران، مدينة شِمْر (شِمْر يَرعشْ)، مَلِكُ مَعَدٍ (بنو مَعَدْ)، وبَيّنَ (مَيّزَ بَيْنَ) بَنيها الشعوب (فروع قبيلة مذْحج)، ووكَّلَهُنّ (وضَعَهُنَّ تحت حماية) فُرْسانُ الروم، فَلمْ يبلغْ مَلِكٌ (اي حتّى مَلِكٌ) مَبلَغَه (ما بَلَغَهُ عكدي). عكْدي هَلكَ (مات ؛ قُتلَ) سَنَة 223 (328م)، يَومْ 7 بكسلولْ (كانون الاول)، يالِسَعْدِ (يالسعادةِ) ذو (الذي) وَلَدَه (أنْجَبَهُ).

And the following is my reading of the inscription translated to English:

In thee Oʾ soul of Umruʾū al-Qays bin ʿAmrū, king of all Ar­abs, holder of the crown lion, and king of al-Asadiyyin and Nazār and their kings. ʿAkdī has defeated Midhḥij en­gaging it in a heated battle in the narrow roads of Najrān, city of Shimr, king of Maʿad, and befittingly differentiated between its people and placed them under the protection of the Ro­man cavalry — not even a king could accomplish what he had accomplished. ʿAkdī died on December 7th, 223 AD, O’ the happiness of those who gave birth to him.

 

 

 

Bibliography

1. Abulhab, Saad D. “Roots of the Arabic script: from Musnad to Jazm. Two Parts.” Dahish Voice 13, no. 2: 23-32 (2007) & no. 3: 20-29 (2009.)

2. ʿAlī, Jawād. Tarīkh al-ʿArab qabla al-Islam. Baghdad: al-Mujammaʿ al-ʿIlmī al-ʿIrāqī, 1959.

3. Assyrian Information Management. Aramaic Lexicon and Con­cordance. http://www.atour.com/dictionary/

4. Bazrāwī, Bāsil. “al-Tāʾ fī al-Lughah al-ʿArabiyyah: Khaṣaʾisuhā al-ṣawtiyyah wa-Istikhdāmātihā." http://pulpit.alwatanvoice.com

5. Beeston, A. F. L. “Languages of Pre-Islamic Arabia.” Arabica, June-September: 178-186.

Pre-Islamic Arabia to the 7th Century AD.” Encyclopedia Britannica, Academic Edition. http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/31568/history-of-Arabia/45972/Himyarites#ref484255

7. Bellamy, James A. “A new Reading of al-Namārah Inscrip­tion.” Journal of the American Oriental Society 105 (1985): 31-48.

8. al-Fawzān, ʿAbd Allāh bin Ṣāliḥ. Dalīl al-Sālik ilá Alfiyyat bin Mālik. al-Maktabah al-ʿIlmiyyah. http://Alfuzan.islamlight.net

9. Ḥaṭṭāb, Muḥammad Jamīl. Muʿjam Maʾānī Asmāʾ al-Mudun wa-al-Qurá fī Muḥāfaẓat Ṭarṭūs. al-Lādhiqiyyah: Dār al-Mirsāh lil-Ṭibāʿah wa-al-Nashir wa-al-Tawzīʿ, 2008.

10. Healey, J. F and Dhuyayb, Sulaymān ibn ʿAbd al-Raḥmān. The Nabataean Tomb Inscriptions of Madaʾin Salih. London: Oxford Univer­sity Press, 1993.

11. Healey, J. F. and Smith, G.R. “The Earliest Dated Arabic Docu­ment 267 AD.” Atlal: The Journal of Saudi Arabian Ar­chaeology. 12 (1989): 77-84.

12. Ibn Mālik, Jamāl al-Dīn bin Muḥammad bin ʿAbd Allāh. Alfiyyat Ibn Mālik. al-Maktabah al-Ḥurrah. http://ar.wikisource.org/wiki/

13. Ibn Manẓūr, Abū al-Faḍl Jamāl al-Dīn Muḥammad bin Mukar­ram. Lisān al-ʿArab. http://www.islamweb.net/newlibrary/

14. al-Khawārizmī. Muftāh al-ʿŪlūm. al-Bāb al-Sādis, fī al-ʾAkhbār. al-Maktabah al-Ḥurrah. http://ar.wikisource.org/wiki/

15. Lendering, Jona. Sasanians. Ancient Persia.” http://www.livius.org/sao-sd/sassanids/sassanids.htm

16. Mādūn, Muḥammad ʿAlī. Khaṭṭ al-Jazm ibn al-Khaṭṭ al-Musnad. al-Ṭabʿah al-ʾŪlá. Dimashq: Dār Ṭlās lil-Dirāsāt wa-al-Terjamah wa-al-Nashr, 1989.

17. al-Maghribī, ʿIyāḍ bin Mūsá al-Yaḥṣibī al-Sabtī. al-Sīrah al-Nab­awiyyah: Kitāb al-Shafāʾ bi-Taʿrīf  Ḥuqūq al-Muṣṭafá. Dār al-Fikr, 2002.

18. al-Maḥallī, Jalāl al-Dīn, and Jalal al-Dīn al-Sayyūṭī. Tafsīr al-Jalālayn. Bayrūt: al-Ṭabʿah al-Thālithah. Dār al-Maʿrifah, 1984.

19. Makhlūf, Ḥusayn Muḥammad. Ṣafwat al-Bayān li-Maʾānī al-Qurʾān. al-Kūwayt: Wizārat al-Awqāf wa-al-Shu’ūn al-Islāmiyah, 1987. al-Ṭabʿah al-Thālithah.

20.  al-Maʿrifah: al-Mawsūʾah al-Ḥurrah li-Khalq wa-Jamʿ al-Muḥt- awá al-ʿArabī. Mamlakat Tannūkh. http://www.marefa.org

21. al-Marīkhī, Mishliḥ bin Kamīkh, Ghubān, ʿAlī Ibrāhīm. “Naqsh Wāʾil bin al-Jazzāz al-Tidhkārī al-Muʾarrakh ʿām 410 Mīlādī.” Silsilat Mudāwalāt al-Liqāʾ al-Sanawī lil-Jamʿiyyah 3. Masqaṭ, Jāmiʿat al-Sulṭān Qābūs, 2001. 

22.  al-Munjid al-Abjadī. al-Ṭabʿah al-Ūlá. Bayrūt: Dār al-Mashriq, 1967.

23. OʾConnor, M. “The Arabic Loanwords in Nabataean Aramaic.” Journal of Near Eastern Studies. 45, no. 3 (July 1986): 213-229

24.  Patrich, Joseph. The Formation of Nabataean Art: Prohibition of a Graven Image among the Nabataeans. Jeru­salem: The Magnes press.

25. Rabin, Chaim. Ancient West Arabian. London: Taylorʾs Foreign Press, 1951.

26. al-Ṣanʿānī, Muḥammad bin Ismaʿīl al-Amīr. Subul al-Salām: Sharh Bulūgh al-Marām min Adillat al-Iḥkām. Bayrūt: Dār al-Kutub al-ʿIlmiyyah, 2006.

27.  Shahid, I. Philological Observations on Namara Inscrip­tion. Journal of Semitic Studies. 24 (1979): 33-42.

28. al-Ṭabarī, Abū Jaʿfar Muḥammad bin Jarīr. Taʾrīkh al-Ṭibarī: Taʾrīkh al-Rusul wa-al-Mūlūk. al-Qāhirah: Dār al-Maʿārif, 1977.

29. Wenning, Robert. “The Betyls of Petra.” Bulle­tin of the American Schools of Oriental Research 324 (November 2001): 79-95.

30.  Wikībīdyah: al-Mawsūʿah al-Ḥurrah. “al-Manādhirah.” http://ar.wikipedia.org

31. Winnett, F. V. “A Himyaritic Inscription from the Persian Gulf Region.” Bulletin of the American Schools of Ori­ental Research. 102 (April 1946): 4-6.

32. Wright, W. A Grammar of the Arabic Language. Lon­don: Cambridge University Press, 1955