a pre-islamic rite in south arabia

7/29/2019 A Pre-Islamic Rite in South Arabia

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A Pre-Islamic Rite in South ArabiaAuthor(s): Werner DaumReviewed work(s):Source: Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland, No. 1 (1987), pp. 5-14Published by: Cambridge University PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25212064 .

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A PRE-ISLAMIC RITE IN SOUTHARABIABy Werner Daum

The twoYemens are still that part of the Middle East which most vividly retainsthe manners and customs of ancient Arabia. ThrThajestic mountain ridges, the

barrenness of the desert, the torrid shores of the Red Sea, the proud Yemenitribesmen with their traditional janblya, the picturesque palaces and houses pitchedon towering peaks, the lone columns of the temples of Saba' (Sheba) in forgottensands, all this cannot fail to convey the image of timelessness, and, indeed, of

Arabia's yesterworld. It does seem to many that the highlands (the central mountainridge stretching from about 50 miles north of Aden far into Saudi Arabia) are themost stubbornly traditional part of Yemen. Still, from an anthropological as wellas from an ethnological point of view, many of the more ancient features can betraced only in the western part (the flat Tihama coastal strip along the Red Sea),in the eastern desert and in South Yemen, especially in Hadramut. I would suggestthat this is not only because of the puritan Zaydls who eradicated the worship ofsaints and other popular "superstitions", but that itmay possibly go back to theimmigration of North Arabian stock into this part of Yemen.In the central Tihama, some 70 km. north-east (by road) of (North-) Yemen's

principal sea-port al-Hudayda, lies the town of Bajil on the road to San'a'. Comingfrom San'a', Bajil is the first large settlement in theTihama plain, just after leavingthe mountains. About 4 km. south-west of Bajil lies a famous saint's tomb (a "wair),near the hamlet Dayr al-Khadama. The saint's name is "al-ShamsI", the Sun, or,

more correctly, "the sunny-one". He is considered the saint of Bajil, and of thelarge al-Qahra tribal confederation. The annual pilgrimage (ziydra) to this tomb

was the great event of the year and is still considered so by many.The rites connected with this ziydra, are very strange. Under a thin formal layer

of Islam they clearly point to the ancient religion superseded by the Prophet'steaching. This is of course not the only phenomenon of this kind inYemen; HaroldIngrams, R.B. Serjeant and others have recorded such customs. What makes theal-Shams! ziydra truly unique is the story connected with it. This legend is indeedso detailed and precise that it affords us an exceptional insight into the materialstructure of the pre-lslamic religion of South Arabia. This is all the more welcomeas there are no myths recorded of the ancient Sabaeans, the thousands of inscriptionsbeing for the most part formal dedications mentioning the gods of the Pantheonwithout really elucidating the connections between them.Before going into the rites and the legend of al-ShamsI, I am happy to acknowledgemy double gratitude to Francine Stone's discussion of the wall and the ziydra in heradmirable Studies on theTihamah (1985). First, itwas through the relevant chapter

in her book that I became aware of the treasure to be searched for in Dayr alKhadama; second, it was the data she assembled which enabled me to put the


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6 A PRE-ISLAMICRITE INSOUTHARABIA"right" questions to the local people who, out of religious fear, were so extremelyreluctant to convey their beliefs to a stranger. Had I not come to the place withthe information collected by Francine Stone inmy mind I would not have beenable to gather the full story as it will now be presented.

The saint's tomb lies in the centre of an extensive graveyard. The whole stretchof land is covered with large river stones; the lesser graves are assembled fromthese stones, and the walls of al-ShamsT's wall are built from them. The acacia treesand shrubs growing in this area are the ones so typical of the dried-up wddl-bedsin South Arabia. The sanctity of the place and the local people's awe probablyprotected this vegetation. My inquiries if this had been an ancient watercourse werefirst answered in the negative, but later it was said that this was indeed true, thatthere had been "many centuries ago" a large wddl, (the bed is approx. 200m wide)which now runs several kms west and which came from the mountains south-eastof Bajil, i.e. in the prolongation of a line from Dayr al-Khadama to Bajil and intothe mountains. Finally, the name of the watercourse was also brought forward:Shi'ba Jurayniya. Literally, shVb means mountain-cleft and is used for a very similarphenomenon at the (pre-Islamic) tomb of the Prophet Hud in Hadramut. When Iwas at the al-ShamsI site in lateMay 1986, which is the period of the rainy seasonin theTihama, a side bed at the very edge of the former watercourse was wet fromthe rain water which had apparently flowed there a few days previously.The first and surprising fact therefore is that the wall was erected in the middle

of a large watercourse, and not in or near the hamlet Dayr al-Khadama which liesapproximately 100metres outside the wddl, about 200 metres west of the wall. Asanctuary in the centre of a very strong and in former times obviously torrential

wddl bed is a very strange thing, and it must have been placed in this location onpurpose.

The construction is quadrangular, not the corners, but the walls being orientedto the four cardinal points. The wall consists of an outer wall surmounted withcrenellations. Inside, in the centre, is a four-sided structure with a small cella in it.This structure which I will call now for convenience Ka'ba, also has crenellationsand a central "tower". The outer wall of the wall has two entrances, one on thesouth, and one on the west side. On the inner side of the northern wall is a qibla,and, opposite the qibla, a small door-like opening leads into the Ka4ba.The roominside the Ka'ba is very narrow indeed. A niche in the south wall, all covered with

wax, is said to bear candles during the ziydra.The ceremony of the ziydra was said to be as follows. Pilgrims enter from the

south, circumambulate the Ka'ba counterclockwise (as they do in Mecca), take ahandful of dust from inside the Ka'ba (this dust is thrown back, or sometimes kept)and leave the place through the western entrance.

The two small domes outside the wall on its northern side are said to be thetombs of two of the saint's sons.

The small hamlet of Dayr al-Khadama is the home of the "keeper" of the shrine


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A PRE-ISLAMICRITE INSOUTHARABIA 7and of his extended family. The name of the place, Dayr al-Khadama (place ofservice), expresses this connection. The keeper is called Qayyim. Itmay be mentioned that in the western part of South Yemen the word is quyyum, elsewhere inthe Tihama, it ismansub and in Hadramut mansab. The word mansab was knownto the actual Qayyim. His name is 'Uthman Ibrahim Qayyim, his father's name

was Ibrahim Muhammad Sirayn, and in former generations, Sirayn used always tobe the family name, so he said. We shall try to explain the word at the end of thispaper.

The most interesting part of the ziydra rites takes place in the hamlet, and notat the wall itself. The following description is based on the account of the Qayyim'sfamily. He himself only confirmed from time to time, and very much against hisliking, what his family said and that too was brought forward in bits and pieces,and very reluctantly. Had it not been for the sacred Arab hospitality, the Qayyimwould certainly have had me thrown out. His family confided to me that he wasin fear of the vengeance of the wall, should its secrets be disclosed to a stranger. Icannot but warn and implore that foreigners living inYemen should not investigatethere out of curiosity. This would certainly destroy this precious and rare flower

which, as I sensed and heard, is viewed with much distrust by secular and religiousauthorities.

The central ceremony consists in the erection of two wooden poles, one longer,and one somewhat shorter (Francine Stone says 8 and 7 metres high). The preparation of the poles starts in the evening, after sunset. The poles are first washed with

water, and then henna is applied. Each pole is called siru, (and the above mentionedfamily name is clearly a dual, the two siru). The longer represents al-ShamsI, thesaint, as was said without hesitation when I asked, and the shorter is "female". Iinsisted on asking if this was al-Shamsfs wife, but the answer was that he never

married. The two poles are decorated with a bundle of cloth. It was expressly saidthat this represented the clothes of al-ShamsI and that it also represented clothesin the case of the second pole. When the two poles are erected, boys climb upthem, usually suspended from a rope fixed on top of the pole. They then slither

down, go up again, and so on. I did not expect an answer when I asked what thesignificance of this "play" might be, but I was told that it was meant to ensureabundance of children. If the children played zealously, many boys would be bornin the following year.

In former times, now rather seldom, the Qayyim offered meat, dhabaih, to thepilgrims; the pilgrims themselves brought bulls, sheep and goats. The animals wereslaughtered "for the poor and for God". This communal banquet, wallma, wasobviously an important part of the ritual.

I will now recount the story of al-ShamsI. There are two versions, which differslightly, one as told by the Qayyim and his family, and the other by the Shaykhal-Masha'ikh of the Qahra-tribe of Bajil and the notables of Bajil whom Imet inhis company.


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8 A PRE-ISLAMICRITE INSOUTHARABIABoth versions were informally worded, and indeed their Arabic was rather down

to earth, in remarkable contrast with my Mdrchen aus dem Jemen. I shall thereforelimit myself to the contents of the story.

Both versions stated that the name of the hero was not al-ShamsT Ahdal (as itis related by Francine Stone) but simply al-ShamsI.The legend as itwas told by the Qayyim runs as follows. Al-ShamsI came fromfar away, from the west, from the other side of the Red Sea, from Ethiopia. Hehad only one eye, in the middle of his forehead, but this one eye was more powerfulthan your eye or my eye, more powerful than any human eye. He could see withit all over the mountains, right into Hadramut and farther. Nothing could remainhidden from him. At that time a mighty demon lived in the mountains over there(pointing in the direction of Bajil and the mountains overlooking it, i.e. the directionof the watercourse), far away, six hours away by car, in the middle of the mountains.The Qayyim used for demon the words jinnl, mdrid, shaytdn.When I asked if thename of the demon might have been 'afrit, (I knew this word from my Mdrchen),the Qayyim denied this so furiously that itwas perfectly clear what the real nameof the demon was. Every year, the Afrit demanded from the people in Dayral-Khadama village a virgin as a bride. Knowing from my Mdrchen that this wasdone in order to ensure water (the flood) in the wddl, I asked about the reason ofthis offering, whether it was because otherwise the demon would have held thewaters back. But it was said that this was not so. He asked for the girl because hewas evil. The virgin was dressed as a bride, put in a camel-litter (a mahmal, it wassaid) and after sunset, the camel was sent to the mountain. The demon came fromhis abode to meet her, and killed the girl.

But in that particular year when al-ShamsT saw the distress of the people andthe horrible deed of the demon, he went behind the girl; slightly outside the village(where the wall now stands), al-ShamsT met with the demon, cut off his head with

his sword and thus liberated the village from this affliction. The corpse of the demonlay there and was thrown away. Al-ShamsT, for the rest of his life, lived in the villageas an honoured guest, jar. In a reply to a question of mine, it was reiterated thathe did not marry the liberated girl; he did not marry at all. He had three children.(How this happened without marrying was not explained.) The two small walls,

outside the north wall of the tomb are his two elder sons; the third, the youngest,is the ancestor of the Qayyim at the present day. The tomb and the festival cameinto existence in the following way: A certain time after his death, al-ShamsTappeared in a dream to a member of the learned Sayyid family of al-Ahdal andrequested him to build the wall, and to establish the ziydra. The Islamic layer ofthis explanation is all too obvious.

I will now come to what may be called the more profane version, told by thenotables of the Shaykh's entourage, and by himself.

The saint came originally from al-Marawika, a small town about 20 km south-westof Bajil; this is the seat of the al-Ahdal Sayyids; his name was Abdurrahman b.


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A PRE-ISLAMIC ITE INSOUTHARABIA 9Abl Bakr, his surname, laqab, was al-ShamsI, and his other surname was uTheone-eyed", a'war. He went to Dayr al-Khadama where he settled as ajar, (protectedstranger). The village, in those olden days, was a town, called al-Jitha. Every year,

ff ras al-sana, (in spite of the apparent identity with Hebrew rosh ha-shana, thismeans "at the end of the year") the people of al-Jitha prepared a bride for a demon

(mdrid\ the word 'afrit, was only known as a general term for Qur'anic jinnt). Thisdemon lived in the well of the village which was outside the walls of the village,not very far away. The girl was dressed as a bride, muldbisa al-'urs, brought aftersunset to the well and put on the edge of the well. In the night, the demon got outof the water, seized the girl and drew her down. In the first year when al-ShamsIsaw this, he enquired about it. In the following year, he hid himself beside the well.

When the demon emerged from the water and came out of the well, al-ShamsIreceived him and killed him with his spear, harba.He had several sons, but he never married.The eldest was Hasan b. Abdurrahman

with the surname muftial-diydr al-yamaniya.The tribe of Awlad Hasan (al-Hasanlya)are his descendants (in the village of al-Qananlya). The two qubbas, behind thewall, are his two younger sons.

In memory of this remarkable deed, a yearly feast is celebrated on the day onwhich this happened and on the spot where it happened. On the occasion of thisziydra, the people of the village slaughter bulls for the guests, and the guests eatthe meat, yadhbuhu ahl al-qarya athwdr fa-ad-duyuf yakulu minhum.

At this stage, it seems useful to summarise the two stories and the ritual. It maybe permissible to include some observations from my Marchen.

The Afrit is a mighty water-demon. He lives in the mountains, in the directionfrom which the wadi comes, where the clouds of the monsoon unload themselves.

Their water was the basis of the existence of the ancient civilizations of Yemenwhich lay in the eastern desert, outside the mountains, irrigating the fields with

the H^df-waters streaming down from the uplands. In the Shaykh's version, theAfrit is the "God" of the well, situated in the middle of the wadi. In my Marchen,the Afrit is even more expressly qualified as a supernatural Lord of the dark clouds,

the rain-storm and the wddis: He is "more towering than a towering heaven", hewill "come over the people like a black cloud"; the sun set and "a black cloud,black like smoke" appeared (= the Afrit); he "is a giant, he comes like the all-covering black clouds, then he changes his appearance into human shape, as tall asten men"; when he sleeps, "he emits a fart, so strong that the whole castle beginsto shake and that it rocks the trees of the forest".

A bride is offered to this demon, once a year. Several of my Marchen say expresslywhat also underlies the al-ShamsT story, that this is done in order to ensure thearrival of the water of the wadi. If the girl was not offered, the Afrit would holdback the water.

The killing of the dark old demon by the young luminous stranger secures thewater (this is again said expressly in several of my Marchen). The young stranger


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10 A PRE-ISLAMICRITE INSOUTHARABIAthen marries the girl (who happens to be the daughter of the ruler of the village),thus establishes himself in the village, and, after the death of the Sultan, becomesthe new ruler and the ancestor of the ruling dynasty.

This explains the ritual of al-ShamsI more fully than the words used by theQayyim: after having killed the monster, al-ShamsI marries in the village (this isenacted with the al-ShamsT pole and the "female" pole). The treatment of the twopoles corresponds exactly to the marriage-rites of Yemen: bathing with water andapplying henna. Also, the important banquet (wallma, always mentioned also intheMdrchen) is not missing. This banquet is offered in the al-ShamsT ritual by the

Qayyim and his family, inmy Mdrchen it is the wedding-banquet offered by theruler of the village on the occasion of the marriage of his liberated daughter. The

purpose of the ritual is of course the fertility of the land (through the liberatedwaters) and of the family (the children climbing up the poles).Before going on, I have now to explain the date fl ras al-sana. As the meaningof this formula was not clear tome, I discussed it at length with the Shaykh and

his retainers. It was first made clear that it signified indeed "the end of the year",but that it really meant the time immediately after the end of the year, "when theyear was completed and the end was over". It was not admitted in so many wordsthat this was the beginning of the new year, but that is what it is, translated intoour way of thinking. I was then told that this was not the Muslim year, but the"agricultural year". The "end" was after the mawsim al-kharlf, (the end of the mainharvest with a subsequent rest-time). This was then exemplified as follows: themain rainy season is sayf, the two months season we were just halfway through (itwas the end of May). The end of the year would be in approximately three to threeand a half months. If I translate this in our calendar, it means "early to mid-September". Itwas then said that the killing of the demon had happened in the nightof the full moon, and that the yearly festival of remembrance was therefore preferably celebrated on that night, i.e. the first one following the end of the year. "This

was the rule andeverybody

knew it". But the actualziydra

could be fixedaccordingto any practical consideration, at any time during the idle and climatically pleasant

winter time, but necessarily on a Thursday or Friday because this was a holiday; ifpossible at the full moon, but also at the quarter or three-quarter-moon.This dating is another interesting point of the al-ShamsT ritual. It confirms whathas been generally assumed, i.e. that the Sabaean (or Himyaritic) calendar wassolar and not lunar. Iwould not wish here to go into the problems of theHimyariticcalendar. Serjeant, to whom I am grateful for a comment on this point, wouldconcur that the Himyaritic year commenced in October, while Beeston (ArabianStudies I, 1974, 1) says May, and Robin says April. I have quite a few notes onpopular calendar-lore, and Iwould think that there were two New Years, in differentregions of Yemen, but this cannot be elaborated here.

The strangest thing about this dating is at the same time the most importantfrom a comparative point of view. We have seen that the wording "end of the year"


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A PRE-ISLAMIC ITE INSOUTHARABIA 11really means "beginning of the year", but that the real New Year's date is not thefirst day of themonth, but the day of the fullmoon, i.e. the fifteenth. This is exactlywhat the Bible says, when it speaks of Tabernacles: "At the end of the year"(Exodus 23, 16), "on the fifteenth day of the seventh month" (Leviticus 23, 34 and23, 39), "after the harvest" (Deuteronomy 16, 13), and "at the change of the year"(Exodus 34, 22). Libraries have been filled by the attempts of Biblical scholars toreconcile the two dates ("the change of the year", i.e. the first day of the month,and the fifteenth day of that month ? the "seventh" month being easily explainedas the first month of the second semester or with a shift in the New Year fromautumn to spring). From the identical phenomenon here inSouth Arabia itbecomesclear that there is no contradiction if we understand those formulae not with our

mathematical approach but through the idea they are meant to convey.It is now time to go back toYemen and to mention briefly two other ethnologicalobservations concerning the al-ShamsT ritual.

Serjeant has shown in his pioneering paper on the "Pre-Islamic prophets ofHadramawt" that the great annual pilgrimage of the Hadramut, dedicated to theProphet Hud, is pre-Islamic in origin and that it consists in offering a bride to theProphet. "To offer Hud a bride and a marriage ceremony... is reminiscent of ancientSemitic religion, and probably points to ceremonies discontinued, the memory of

which is enshrined in this strange verse", says Serjeant.The other parallel was described by Myers in 1947, and he clearly sensed thatthere was more behind his observations. He describes the female demon "al

Ma'agiz", the most important jinnlya of the Little Aden region. A fishermanenshrined her in a tree. She had a husband, called "Mushaibah" (in the addenda,

Myers mentions that it could also be am-Shaibah), also enshrined in a tree. Onthe occasion of the yearly ziydra, two poles were erected in their memory, theclothing was said to be their turban and futa. The ziydra was on a full moon dayin winter.

It should be noted that the definite article (Arabic "al") is am, in most parts ofwestern South Yemen. Am is the common form in $ubaylil country, to which LittleAden belongs. The am is often fully assimilated to the following noun. The twodemons are therefore nothing but am-4Ajiz and am-Shaiba, "the old woman" andher husband "the old man".The Little Aden ceremony is therefore basically identicalwith the al-ShamsI ritual.

I cannot, in the limited space of this paper, deal with the various arguments,brought forward inmy Ursemitische Religion, for equating the three main figuresof the "ethnological" ritual with the three central Gods of the ancient Sabaeanpantheon, i.e.Almaqah (who should now definitely be transliterated TImuqahh(w)the God II who abundantly waters'), Athtar and the female Shams (the sun). IIwould be the old demon in the mountains, Athtar is the young hero, the Shams

is the bride. We know the names of these divinities; we can now connect them witha myth. I was able to show that the original form of the myth ran as follows: II


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12 A PRE-ISLAMICRITE INSOUTHARABIAholds the waters back, unless a bride is offered to him. Athtar comes from afar(from the east), kills the II and marries Shams in a matrilocal way in her village.This happened on the night of the full moon in spring. At a later stage, the whole

myth is shifted to the autumn equinox full moon, the emphasis is more uponsecuring rain, the young hero (who now comes from the west) takes up the characteristics of the girl (he becomes the sun), while she becomes much more of a real

warlike partner, and indeed a female Athtar. The matrilocal marriage remains thesame. It is this second (autumn) stage which we can still witness at the al-ShamsIfestival.

One of the astonishing features of the al-ShamsI festival is the matrilocal marriagesystem. This is of course not Arabic, but can still be traced, through careful ethnological observations, in Mahra country, in Hadramut, in the North Yemeni Jawf, inour al-ShamsI story, and, it may be mentioned, in one of the central formulae ofthe ancient Sabaean religion. This formula, dhat Himyam 'Athtar yajur, (e.g. in Ja618;, the root is jar, the term which we saw applied to al-Shamsl!) exists also in

Qatabanic, where the verb is yaghul. The Sabaic as well as the Qatabanic formulacould either mean "The hot-one (= the Sun) into which Athtar enters" or "theSun whom Athtar attacks". The difficulty for the translation came from the unfortunate fact that we did not know what the mythological relationship of the twodeities was. Maria Hofner had originally preferred the interpretation "attacks"(page 284) but now feels that it should be "enters". "To enter" (dakhala, Hebrew:bo'a) is a general Semitic expression for marrying. The formula therefore means"The sun whom Athtar marries in a matrilocal way". It may finally be noted thatBeeston has very recently demonstrated that the uxorilocal marriage was at leastfairly frequent, if not the usual structure, in Sabaean society. We can therefore saythat matrilocal marriage was the custom among the ancient Sabaeans, that theyimagined the marriage of their gods in that way, that they re-enacted it through a

yearly matrilocal sacred marriage, and that we can still see this festival beingperformed in Dayr al-Khadama.The meaning of our ceremony in the Yemeni Tihama is now clear: It is the yearlyrepresentation of the great event which had happened in illo tempore, securing thefertility of the land and of the dynasty. The two poles are al-Shamsl and his bride(contrary to the words used by the Qayyim); the bride had been offered for water(wadi water or well water); the washing and anointing of the poles corresponds tothe marriage ceremony as it is still current in our day yawm al-ghasl, the day of

washing, and yawm al-hinna, the day of henna, the meal is the great banquet,wallma, of a marriage. But how is the killing of the God II represented?: in theword siru! Sabaean sirw means "campaigning force", Arabic sard, "to travel bynight", "to detach a force against the enemy by night". The young hero in one of

my Marchen, following the bride who is being brought to the old demon, is addressedas yd sari al-layl.

If we were to translate this ritual into temple architecture, we should expect to


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A PRE-ISLAMIC RITE IN SOUTH ARABIA 13

find, in Sabaean temples, a water basin and two columns. If we read carefully thepreliminary survey made by J. Schmidt in the Marib region, we find that this isindeed the case (p. 75, p. 137, p. 154). This reminds us of course of the "sea of

bronze" and the bronze pillars Yakin and Boaz (I Kings 7, 15-26) in Solomon'stemple, whose significance has presented many a riddle to exegetes.When I first heard about al-ShamsT, I felt sad that I had not known this beforeand been able to include it inmy book Ursemitische Religion, the first part of whichpretends to be "the ancient Sabaean religion rediscovered". On the other hand, itseems not disappointing to unearth such a full proof of a thesis hitherto based ona combination of several conclusions. Finally itmay be mentioned that the Sabaeanfestival sheds new light on the two pre-Islamic feasts atMecca, (the 'Umra inMeccaitself and the Hajj inArafa). Scholars have long been wondering why the Ka'bawas built in the middle of Mecca's wadl, in the "batn Makka". The story of the

Ka'ba is a story of devastating floods. We now know why. It is also clear that weare now able to understand the word 'Umra, which really means, in Mecca itself,

what the dictionaries give as the general meaning of the word, namely "a matrilocalmarriage" (in contrast to the patrilocal 'urs).

'Umra and Hajj are identical in so many aspects, including the date, and eventhe name, with the two ancient Hebrew feasts of Pesah and the Feast of Tabernacles(Hag). It seems fascinating that an answer to the age-old question of the explanation(not the origin, however, which rests in the North!) of the two central feasts of the

Bible should be found in South Arabia, as well as the explanation of the feast ofMecca.

BIBLIOGRAPHYBeeston, A.F.L., "Women in Saba", Arabian and Islamic Studies, Festschrift R.B. Serjeant,London 1983, 7-13Daum, Werner, Marchen aus dem Jemen, Koln, 1983Daum, Werner, Ursemitische Religion. Stuttgart, 1985.Henninger, Joseph, Les fetes de printemps chez les Semites et la Paque Israelite, Paris, 1975Hofner, Maria, "Die vorislamischen Religionen Arabiens", in Hartmut Gese, Maria Hofner,Rudolph Kurt (edd.), Die Religionen Altsyriens, Altarabiens und der Mandder, Stuttgart, 1970.Myers, Oliver Humphrys, "Little Aden Folklore", Bulletin de ITnstitut francais d' archeologieorientale. Le Caire, XLIV(1947). 177-233Robin, Christian, "Le calendrier himyarite: Nouvelles suggestions". Proceedings of the Seminarfor Arabian Studies. 11 (1981), 43-51Schmidt, Jiirgen (ed), Archdologische Berichte aus dem Yemen. Band I, Mainz 1982Serjeant, R.B., "Hud and other pre-islamic Prophets of Hadramawt", Le Museon LXVII (1954).121-179; Reprinted in: Serjeant, R.B., Studies inArabian History and Civilisation, London, 1981Serjeant. R.B., "Heiligenverehrung in Stidwestarabien", Bustan (Wien) 1964, II, 16-23Stone, Francine (ed.), Studies on the Tihamah, London, 1985Wensinck, A.J., "Arabic New-Year and the Feast of Tabernacles", Verhandelingen der KoninklijkeAkademie van Wetenschappen teAmsterdam, Afdeeling Letterkunde, Nieuwe Reeks, Deel XXVNo. 2 (1925), 1-41

Postscript:I am grateful to Professor Serjeant for drawing my attention to a very important parallel whichal-Azraql records for the Church of San'a', built by the Abyssinian ruler Abraha. The text can


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14 A PRE-ISLAMIC RITE IN SOUTH ARABIAbe conveniently consulted in Serjeant/Lewcock, San'a', London, 1983, page 46: "Abrahah's churchhad two beams, one called Ku'ayb and the other Ku'ayb's wife, "from which they used to seekgood fortune (yatabarrakuna bi-hima) in the Jahiliyyah". They were 60 dhira" long (understoodas "high"?). When these were pulled down people were in great fear. This looks very much likethe situation in Dayr al-Khadamah, of al-ShamsT."Indeed it does! This text should prove definitely that the rite is pre-Islamic in origin, and thatbeing performed in the high place in the capital, itmust have been one of the central rituals ofthe ancient religion. Should it also be a coincidence that the word Ku'ayb recalls the idea offertility ("little breast"), the name of the sanctuary inMecca, and finally the name of the wad!shi'b al-Ka'ab on Jabal al-Laudh which has been the great sanctuary of the mukarribs and kingsof Saba' where they performed (in my opinion) their yearly hieros gamos, the word mukarribbeing derived from hakraba = to marry a woman in a matrilocal way)?

Serjeant also suggests another etymology for the word siru which seems to me at least asconvincing as the one brought forward in this paper. He says: "The word siru ? the u may bethe final u in theTihamah-dialect as in, e.g. am-baytu, the house. It may only be coincidental,but sarlyah (sawari) is a column and can also mean a mast (Lane)".There is another parallel to which Professor Serjeant has drawn my attention. Ibn al-Kalbl,in his Kitdb al-asnam, mentions twice the two stone-idols Isaf and Na'ila which were beside theKa'ba. Isaf and Na'ila, it is said, were two young people of the tribe of Jurhum; they lived inYemen. On the occasion of a pilgrimage to the Ka'ba, they had intercourse in the temple. Theywere instantly petrified. This happened during the night. The two stones were then erectedoutside by the people, and Khuza'a, Quraysh and the Arabs worshipped them. Ibn al-Kalbl alsosays that they were erected as a warning to the people. Animal sacrifices were immolated forthem. If we leave the clearly posterior moralizing explanation aside, the facts fit perfectly intowhat has been said in this paper. The Ka'ba is one of the sanctuaries of the ancient Arabianwater and fertility religion. The main act was a hieros gamos performed in the temple, at night.Glaser was, by the way, the first

toexplain Ptolemy's strange

name for Mecca ("Makoraba") bySabaic makrab or mikrab, temple. I would even go one step further and say that a makrab mustbe the place where a mukarrib performed his great yearly deed, i.e. the sacred marriage. Itseems then no longer surprising that the cultic representation of it should have endured inMecca,as it endured in the church of San'a' and at Dayr al-Khadama.

a pre-islamic rite in south arabia

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