The Jews of Hijaz and their Inscriptions (Prof. Hoyland)

Article

Is there any evidence external to the Muslim tradition that we can use? The only classical reference we have, in Josephus’s Jewish Antiquities (15:9:3), mentions that Herod dispatched 500 chosen men from his personal bodyguard to go with Aelius Gallus on his march through western Arabia to conquer the Yemen in 26–24 BCE, but we know nothing of their fate or even if they were necessarily Jews (Herod had non-Jews among his bodyguard). The Palestinian and Babylonian Talmud make occasional allusions to Arabia. For example, there are a number of occasions when rabbis note that “in Arabia they call x y”, that is, instead of the usual Hebrew word they use a different term. As has reasonably been argued, this is best explained by supposing “the settlement of a colony of Jews in Arabia” (A. Cohen, “Arabisms in Rabbinic literature,” Jewish Quarterly Review 1912/13, 224. See further S. Krauss, “Talmudische Nachrichten über Arabien,” ZDMG 70, 1916, 321–53, and J. Retsö, The Arabs in Antiquity , London: Routledge, 2003, 526–32).

There are also some scraps of pre-Islamic Arabic poetry composed by northwest Arabian Jews in the sixth and early seventh century. The most famous of these Jewish poets was Samuel b. diy , a resident of the oasis of Tayma, to whom a whole corpus of poems is attributed and who helped the heroic Imru al-Qays (d. c. 550 CE), a prince of the ruling clan of Kinda, on his journey to Constantinople in pursuit of justice for his murdered father. But these, like those of more minor Jewish poets such as al-Rab b. Ab l- uqayq, Shuray b. Imr n, Shu ba b. Ghar , Ab Qays b. Rif a, Dirham b. Zayd and Ab l-Dhayy l, are comparable in sentiment and style to pre-Islamic Arabic poetry in general, and lack any speci c historical detail or concrete religious expression (H.Gh. Mustafa, Religious Trends in Pre-Islamic Arabic Poetry , Bombay: Aligarh Muslim University, 1968, 119–24; Jaw d. Al , Al-Mufa al f ta r kh al- arab qabl al-isl m , Beirut: Dar al- Ilm, 1976–78, 9:768–91; Newby, History , 55–57). Lastly there is the epigraphic record. This has produced quite rich and informative results for the land of South Arabia during the fourth to sixth centuries, as has been ably demonstrated by Christian Robin (see his “Le judaïsme de imyar,” Arabia. Revue de Sabéologie 1, 2003, 97–172, and his “ imyar et Israël,” Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres, Comptes rendus 2004, 831–906). The inscriptions from this region have not received much attention. Only two are mentioned by Gordon Newby in his History of the Jews of Arabia (Newby, History , 40), and only three are cited in J-B. Frey’s Corpus Inscriptionum Iudaicarum (nos. 1421–23 = nos. 1–3 below).

Only no. 1 is by a self-confessed Jew; the rest rely on indicators that are regarded to be typical of Jewish identity: Jewish names, Jewish expressions and the Hebrew script; these are valuable indicators, but it goes without saying that they are not infallible (M.C.A. Macdonald, “Some re ections on epigraphy and ethnicity in the Roman Near East,” Mediterranean Archaeology 11, 1998, 177–90).

1. Texts by self-confessed Jews
2. No. 1:

1. Possessors of two plausibly Jewish names
2. No. 2:

No. 3:

No. 4:

No. 5:

1. Possessors of one plausibly Jewish name
2. It would seem plausible to take the Samuel mentioned here to be a Jew, and even more so the Isaiah son of Joseph in no. 5. It is perhaps more reasonable to equate the term ryš here to ethnarch, meaning the head of a particular ethnic group under Roman authority, or simply to headman ( primus ), as appears in a recently discovered Latin inscription from Hegra. This latter suggestion would mean that the of ce did not necessarily relate to a specific ethnic group, but that Samuel was the headman and just happened to be a Jew. No. 6:

No. 7:

No. 8:

No. 9:

No. 10:

No. 11:

No. 12:

No. 13:

No. 14:

No. 15:

No. 16:

No. 17:

No. 18:

1. Texts in Hebrew script
2. No. 19:

No. 20:

No. 21:

Nos 22 and 23:

No. 24:

Nos 25 and 26:

No. 27:

No. 28:

No. 29:

1. Texts containing allegedly Jewish expressions
2. It is striking that we have only two northwest Arabian texts in this category and in both cases the reading is extremely tenuous. This is in marked contrast to the epigraphic record of south Arabia, where we have a number of texts that use such overtly Jewish expressions as “lord of the Jews,” “tribe of Israel” and even a full prayer: “may bless and be blessed the name of Ra m n who is in heaven, Israel and their god, the lord of the Jews, who has helped his servant” (See C. Robin, “ imyar et Israël” for the texts). One could possibly put forward a couple more contenders in this category, but not with any degree of certainty; e.g. Winnet and Reed ARNA , 145 (no. 17, a Nabataean Aramaic text from the region of al-Jawf, apparently dated to year 120 [of the era of Arabia = 225/6 CE]), calls for one “Šulaym son of Aw d the priest” to be remembered, and one might wonder whether “priest” ( khn ) here could refer to a Levite, but the word is commonly used in pagan texts of this region to signify some sort of diviner (see Hoyland, Arabia , 159, for examples).
3. No. 30:

No. 31:

All inscriptions

1. Reviewing these texts, there are a number of things that strike one straight away:
   • 1. They span quite a large period of time, at the very least the rst century BCE to the fourth century CE.
   • 2. They are relatively few in number (only around thirty even if we accepted all of them as Jewish).
   • 3. They are written in different languages and scripts, though there is a predominance of Nabataean Aramaic.
   • 4. They are mostly very brief and of very limited content; there is just one (possibly two) commemorative text (no. 2, on the sundial, and no. 31?), only six or seven tomb inscriptions (nos. 1, 3, 5–6, 11, 18 and 30; 31?); the rest are simple graf ti.
   • 5. They are not geographically very widespread, principally hailing only from al-Ula and Mada in Salih