The Ḥimà Paleo-Arabic inscriptions are a group of twenty-five inscriptions discovered at Hima, 90 km north of Najran, in southern Saudi Arabia, written in the Paleo-Arabic script. These are among the broader group of inscriptions discovered in this region[1] and were discovered during the Saudi-French epigraphic mission named the Mission archéologique franco-saoudienne de Najran. They were the first Paleo-Arabic inscriptions discovered in Saudi Arabia, before which examples had only been known from Syria. The inscriptions have substantially expanded the understanding of the evolution of the Arabic script.[2][3]
Date
While the majority of the Hima inscriptions do not carry an absolute date, some of them date either to 470 or 513 AD, which makes the former (Ḥimà- Sud Pal Ar 1) the earliest precisely dated Paleo-Arabic inscription.[4]
Interpretation and significance
Several of the Hima inscriptions are explicitly Christian, and the inscriptions appear to be the product of the activities of a Christian community, especially given their Christian decorative symbols like large and ornate crosses.[5][6] The calendar used by which dates are referred to was the Bostran era, which begins at the equivalent of 106 AD in the Gregorian calendar in accordance with the date of the establishment of the Roman province of Arabia Petraea. The use this calendar can also be seen in another Paleo-Arabic inscription, the Jebel Usays inscription.[5] The choice of use of the Paleo-Arabic script may have been a conscious choice to align those individuals in the Najran area more closely with their co-religionists in the north, in opposition to the script in use in the Himyarite Kingdom.[7] In addition, the use of the same script for the first time in both southern Arabia, northern Arabia, and Arabic-speaking regions of southern Syria alongside the declining use of Aramaic attests to a significant trend of cultural unification across the Arabs in the fifth and sixth centuries. This may have gone hand-in-hand with a progressive separation from the Roman Empire.[8] Several of the names in the Hima inscriptions are clearly Himyarite, and others are clearly derived from names of figures in the Old Testament, such as Isaac and Moses.[7]
These twenty-five Paleo-Arabic inscriptions, alongside fourteen Sabaic inscriptions, were all published in 2014. The Paleo-Arabic inscriptions were itemized as Ḥimà-Sud PalAr 1–12, Ḥimà-Idhbāḥ PalAr 1–7, and Ḥimà-al-Musammāt PalAr 1–6. The Sabaic inscriptions were itemized as Bi᾿r Ḥimà Sab 1–5, Ḥimà-Sud Sab 1–4, and Ḥimà-al-Musammāt Sab 1–5. The prepositions Ḥimà-Sud, Ḥimà-Idhbāḥ, and Ḥimà-al-Musammāt specify the subregion in Hima that the inscriptions were found.[1]
Text
The only published edition of all the Hima Paleo-Arabic inscriptions only contains a translation into French.[1]
^ abcRobin, Christian; al-Ghabbān, ʿAlī Ibrāhīm; al-Saʿīd, Saʿīd Fāyiz (2014). "Inscriptions antiques de la région de Najran (Arabie Séoudite meridionale): nouveaux jalons pour l'histoire de l'écriture, de la langue et du calendrier Arabes". Comptes rendus de l’Académie des Inscriptions & Belles-Lettres. pp. 1033–1128.
^Fisher, Greg (2020). Rome, Persia, and Arabia: shaping the Middle East from Pompey to Muhammad. London New York: Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group. p. 13. ISBN978-0-415-72880-5.
^Robin, Christian (2020). "Allāh avant Muḥammad". Jerusalem Studies in Arabic and Islam. 49: 1–146.
^ abFisher, Greg (2022). The Roman world from Romulus to Muhammad: a new history. London New York: Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group. p. 634. ISBN978-0-415-84286-0.
^Grasso, Valentina A. (2023). Pre-islamic Arabia: societies, politics, cults and identities during late antiquity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. pp. 94–95. ISBN978-1-009-25296-6.
^ abFisher, Greg (2020). Rome, Persia, and Arabia: shaping the Middle East from Pompey to Muhammad. London New York: Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group. pp. 186–187. ISBN978-0-415-72880-5.
^Fisher, Greg (2020). Rome, Persia, and Arabia: shaping the Middle East from Pompey to Muhammad. London New York: Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group. pp. 175–176. ISBN978-0-415-72880-5.
^Lindstedt, Ilkka (2023). Muhammad and his followers in context: the religious map of late antique Arabia. Islamic history and civilization. Leiden Boston: Brill. pp. 97–98. ISBN978-90-04-68712-7.
