"Barefoot and naked": What did the bedouin of the Arab conquests look like?

Muqarnas

Volumn 25, Issue , 2008, Pages 1-10

  Crone, Patricia ^a  

^a INSTITUTE FOR ADVANCED STUDY   (United States)

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[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 66049128965     PISSN: 07322992     EISSN: 09210326     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1163/22118993-90000124     Document Type: Article

References (46)

1. Bar Penkaye in A. Mingana (ed. and tr.), Sources syriaques, Leipzig, n.d. [1907?], 141
2. trans. in S. P. Brock, "North Mesopotamia in the Late Seventh Century," Jerusalem Studies in Arabic and Islam 9 (1987): 58
3. D. Sourdel, "Un pamphlet musulman anonyme d'époque 'abbāside contre les chrétiens," Revue des études islamiques 34 (1966) 33 (text), 26 (trans.)
4. For a reconstruction of the text from which the fragment comes see J.-M. Gaudeul, "The Correspondence between Leo and 'Umar," Islamochristiana 10 (1984), 109-57, with the passage in question on 155. The transmitter is Isma'il b. 'Ayyash
5. Ammianus Marcellinus, xiv, 4, 3
6. quoted in J. B. Segal, "Arabs in Syriac Literature before the Rise of Islam," Jerusalem Studies in Arabic and Islam 4 (1984): 102
7. also discussed in J. Matthews, The Roman Empire of Ammianus (London, 1989), 344, 347-48
8. Jibrā'īl Sulaymān Jabbūr, The Bedouins and the Desert: Aspects of Nomadic Life in the Arab East, trans. L. I. Conrad (Albany, 1995 [Arabic original 1988]), In, with vivid illustrations on 2-3
9. Matthews, Roman Empire of Ammianus, 348
10. with reference to Ammianus, xxxi, 16, 6
11. cf. I. Shahid, Byzantium and the Arabs in the Fourth Century (Washington, DC, 1984), 284ff.
12. G. Jacob, Altarabisches Beduinenleben (Berlin, 1897), 44 (with reference to 'Antara's Mu'allaqa)
13. See O. M. Dalton, East Christian Art: A Survey of the Monuments (Oxford, 1925), 172, 205ff.
14. idem, Byzantine Art and Archaeology (New York, 1961, orig. publ. 1911), 203ff
15. Cf. Dalton, Byzantine Art and Archaeology, 206
16. Berlin, Staatliche Museen, inv. no. 566
17. W. F. Volbach, Elfenbeinarbeiten der Spätantike und des frühen Mittelalter (Mainz, 1952), 80-81; pl. 54, no. 172
18. M. Piccirillo and E. Alliata, Mount Nebo: New Archaeological Excavations 1967-1997 (Jerusalem, 1998), 333 (Church of the Deacon Thomas, whole floor); 337 (Stephanos spearing a lion, wearing "a sleeveless orbiculated tunic...tied to the right shoulder" that seems to be identical with that of the brother on the left); 338-39 (donkey driver, soldier defending himself against a bear), 343 (date); 345, 347 (Church of Saints Lot and Procopius, whole floor)
19. M. Piccirillo, Madaba, le chiese e i mosaici, 207-8
20. Piccirillo and Alliata, Mount Nebo, 356-58, with a better photo (fig. 224)
21. Jacob, Altarabisches Beduinenleben, 44
22. A. Kakovkine, "Le tissu copte des VIIe-VIIIe siècle du musée metropolitain," Göttinger Miszellen 129 (1992): 53-59. It was formerly classified as showing the flight into Egypt
23. St. J. Simpson, ed., Queen of Sheba: Treasures from Ancient Yemen (London, 2002), 97-98 no. 110
24. also in W. Seipel (ed.), Jemen: Kunst und Archāologie im Land der Königin von Saba' (Vienna, 1998), 86 and 88 no. 20, both without comments on the absence of clothes
25. Répertoire d'épigraphie sémitique, 8 vols. (Paris, 1900-1968), 7: no. 4690
26. Simpson, Queen of Sheba, 97-98 no. 110
27. Y. Calvet and C. Robin, Arabie heureuse, Arabie déserte: Les antiquités arabiques du Musée du Louvre (Paris, 1997), 109-10 no. 20, where both the image and the text are reproduced along with a transliteration, translation, discussion, and bibliography
28. Reproduced in Simpson, Queen of Sheba, 99 no. 113
29. A. Perkins, The Art of Dura-Europos (Oxford, 1973), fig. 40
30. Louvre, AO 1029: see Calvet and Robin, Arabie heureuse, 107-8 no. 18 (image, text, transliteration, translation, discussion, and bibliography)
31. For the meaning of the gesture with the spear see M. C. A. Macdonald, "Camel Hunting or Camel Raiding?" Arabian Archaeology and Epigraphy 1, 1 (1990): 24-28, with a reproduction of the stela on 26
32. This seems at least as likely as that the deceased should be shown as engaged in camel-raiding, perhaps as a desire to claim links with a real or nomadic past, as suggested by Macdonald, "Camel Hunting or Camel Raiding?" 25-26
33. idem, "Hunting, Fighting, and Raiding: The Horse in Pre-Islamic Arabia," in Furusiyya, 2 vols., ed. D. Alexander (Riyad, 1996), 1:76
34. Either is compatible with the conjecture that he was a caravaneer (Calvet and Robin, Arabie heureuse, 108)
35. A. R. al-Ansary, Qaryat al-Fau: A Portrait of a Pre-Islamic Civilisation in Saudi Arabia (London, 1982), 109 no. 3
36. Ansary, Qaryat al-Fau, 130-33 (where the rider called Salim b. Ka'b seems to be hunting rather than raiding, given that the camel appears to have been speared or shot with an arrow)
37. G. M. H. King, The Basalt Desert Rescue Survey: Safaitic Inscriptions (forthcoming; my thanks to Dr. King for allowing me to reproduce the image)
38. Cf. Macdonald, "Hunting, Fighting, and Raiding," 76, 77 fig. 5b, where the upper tier of the headdress looks like giant feathers
39. M. A. Nayeem, The Rock Art of Arabia (Hyderabad, 2000), 337
40. For some striking examples of naked people see Macdonald, "Hunting, Fighting, and Raiding," 72 nos. 3, 1d, 1g, 1h. Unfortunately, these drawings are known only from hand copies, and there is no way of telling how accurately they represent the originals
41. M. C. A. Macdonald, "Reflections on the Linguistic Map of Pre-Islamic Arabia," Arabian Archaeology and Epigraphy 11 (2000): 45
42. Cf. Macdonald, "Hunting, Fighting, and Raiding," 74, 76ff., with the complete composition on 224-25
43. Cf. A. Musil, The Manners and Customs of the Rwala Bedouins (New York, 1928)
44. Shahid, Byzantium and the Arabs in the Fourth Century, 431
45. Rome, Bibliotheca Vaticana, gr. 1613
46. The ninth-century miniature of Joseph's brothers selling Joseph to a Saracen is uninformative, since no attempt seems to have been made to distinguish the Saracen from the other figures: all are wearing the same long cloaks and all are bareheaded (cf. A. Grabar, Les miniatures du Grégoire de Nazianze [Paris, 1943], pl. LXI)