This volume reports on excavations at the site of al-Qisha, an Islamic period settlement in the Mahra region of Yemen. In particular it examines the role of the village as a gateway community linked with the Ba'Abbad of Qabr Hud, the community which guarded the tomb of the prophet Hud, a site of pilgrimage.
Islamic societies of the past have often been characterized as urban, with rural and other extra-urban landscapes cast in a lesser or supporting role in the studies of Islamic history and archaeology. Yet throughout history, the countryside was frequently an engine of economic activity, the setting for agricultural and technological innovation, and its inhabitants were frequently agents of social and political change. The Islamic city is increasingly viewed in the context of long and complex processes of urban development. Archaeological evidence calls for an equally nuanced reading of shifting cultural and religious practices in rural areas after the middle of the seventh century. Landscapes of the Islamic World presents new work by twelve authors on the archaeology, history, and ethnography of the Islamic world in the Middle East, the Arabian Peninsula, and Central Asia. The collection looks beyond the city to engage with the predominantly rural and pastoral character of premodern Islamic society. Editors Stephen McPhillips and Paul D. Wordsworth group the essays into four thematic sections: harnessing and living with water; agriculture, pastoralism, and rural subsistence; commerce, production, and the rural economy; and movement and memory in the rural landscape. Each contribution addresses aspects of extra-urban life in challenging new ways, blending archaeological material culture, textual sources, and ethnography to construct holistic studies of landscapes. Modern agrarian practices and population growth have accelerated the widespread destruction of vast tracts of ancient, medieval, and early modern landscapes, highlighting the urgency of scholarship in this field. This book makes an original and important contribution to a growing subject area, and represents a step toward a more inclusive understanding of the historical landscapes of Islam. Contributors: Pernille Bangsgaard, Karin Bartl, Jennie N. Bradbury, Robin M. Brown, Alison L. Gascoigne, Ian W. N. Jones, Phillip G. Macumber, Daniel Mahoney, Stephen McPhillips, Astrid Meier, David C. Thomas, Bethany J. Walker, Alan Walmsley, Tony J. Wilkinson, Paul D. Wordsworth, Lisa Yeomans.
Yemen is a country that is critical to U.S. security and our political interests, yet most Americans know virtually nothing about it. This book unlocks its secrets and explains its complexities in simple yet compelling language. A nation with a rich civilization that has spanned 3,000 years, Yemen is the only democratic republic in the Arabian Peninsula. While events in modern-day Yemen are often in international news, most Americans know nothing about this country—nor are there easy-to-read, up-to-date resources for lay audiences. This book fills the gap in the literature. It describes Yemen's geography, economy, politics and government, history, culture, society and contemporary events, presenting a comprehensive but accessible overview of the country from many different angles—coverage that is long overdue. Editor Steven C. Caton has taken care to create a resource that is readily comprehensible to non-specialists such as high school and college students and general readers as well as highly informative for those with previous knowledge about Yemen. His thorough treatment provides synthetic overviews of key topics, discusses and dismisses certain misconceptions about Yemen, offers surprising perspectives on the relatively unknown country, and underscores Yemen's importance to the region and the wider world—both in ancient times and today.
The archaeological study of the ancient world has become increasingly popular in recent years. A Research Guide to the Ancient World: Print and Electronic Sources, is a partially annotated bibliography. The study of the ancient world is usually, although not exclusively, considered a branch of the humanities, including archaeology, art history, languages, literature, philosophy, and related cultural disciplines which consider the ancient cultures of the Mediterranean world, and adjacent Egypt and southwestern Asia. Chronologically the ancient world would extend from the beginning of the Bronze Age of ancient Greece (ca. 1000 BCE) to the fall of the Western Roman Empire (ca. 500 CE). This book will close the traditional subject gap between the humanities (Classical World; Egyptology) and the social sciences (anthropological archaeology; Near East) in the study of the ancient world. This book is uniquely the only bibliographic resource available for such holistic coverage. The volume consists of 17 chapters and seven appendixes, arranged according to the traditional types of library research materials (bibliographies, dictionaries, atlases, etc.). The appendixes are mostly subject specific, including graduate programs in ancient studies, reports from significant archaeological sites, numismatics, and paleography and writing systems. These extensive author and subject indexes help facilitate ease of use.
Humanities studies on the Arabian Peninsular including anthropology, archaeology, architecture, art, epigraphy, ethnography, history, language, linguistics, literature, numismatics, theology, and more, from the earliest times to the present day or, in the fields of political and social history, to around the end of the Ottoman Empire.
A 21st Century re-examination of the most-read book to emerge from the Western Hemisphere, the Book of Mormon. As Mormonism grows into a world faith, the veracity of its founding scripture has never been more important. The three decades of Arabian exploration reported in Lehi and Sariah in Arabia identifies specific locations for the 8 year journey described in the text, allowing Nephi's account to emerge with new clarity and enhanced plausibility.
Excavation reports from the medieval port of Sharma, discovered in 1996 at the extremity of the Ra's Sharma, 50km east of al-Shihr on the Hadramawt coast of Yemen.
Winner of AIA's 2022 Anna Marguerite McCann Award for Fieldwork Reports The rugged highlands of southern Yemen are one of the less archaeologically explored regions of the Near East. This final report of survey and excavations by the Roots of Agriculture in Southern Arabia (RASA) Project addresses the development of food production and human landscapes, topics of enduring interest as scholarly conceptualizations of the Anthropocene take shape. Along with data from Manayzah, site of the earliest dated remains of clearly domesticated animals in Arabia, the volume also documents some of the earliest water management technologies in Arabia, thereby anchoring regional dates for the beginnings of pastoralism and of potential farming. The authors argue that the initial Holocene inhabitants of Wadi Sana were Arabian hunters who adopted limited pastoral stock in small social groups, then expanded their social collectives through sacrifice and feasts in a sustained pastoral landscape. This volume will be of interest to a wide audience of archaeologists including not only those working in Arabia, but more broadly those interested in the ancient Near East, Africa, South Asia, and in Holocene landscape histories generally.
South Arabia, an area encompassing all of today’s Yemen and neighboring regions in Saudi Arabia and Oman, is one of the least-known parts of the Near East. However, it is primarily due to its remoteness, coupled with the difficulty of access, that South Arabia remains under-researched, for this region was, in fact, very important during pre-Islamic times. By virtue of its location at the crossroads of caravan and maritime routes, pre-Islamic South Arabia linked the Near East with Africa and the Mediterranean with India. The region is also unique in that it has a written history extending as far back as the early first millennium BCE—a far longer history, indeed, than any other part of the Arabian Peninsula. The papers collected in this volume make a number of important contributions to the study of the history and languages of ancient South Arabia, as well as the history of the modern study of South Arabia’s past, which will be of interest to scholars and laypeople alike.
