2020 « Le wādī Ḍuraʾ (Yémen) pendant l’Antiquité : une histoire tourmentée, révélée par les inscriptions » (original) (raw)
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Jerusalem Studies in Arabic and Islam, 2021
According to the Yemeni traditionist al-Ḥasan al-Hamdānī (d. after 970), several scholars of his time were able to read and understand pre-Islamic inscriptions (in South Arabian script and in the Sabaʾic language). He himself takes credit for deciphering several fragments and gives some explanation of the writing, orthography, and language of pre-Islamic inscriptions, which he calls musnads (a term borrowed from Sabaʾic, a language in which ms³nd means “{formal} inscription”, usually on a stone slab or bronze plate). In the musnads, the traditionists were primarily looking for personal names to insert into the genealogies of the two great tribes of Yemen (Ḥimyar and Hamdān) in order to make these genealogies longer than those of the northern Arabs. In the surviving works of al-Hamdānī, it is not uncommon for the existence of a character to be justified by an inscription in which that character’s name is cited. But many of these musnads are forgeries or literary fictions as the use of the Arabic language proves. Only about twenty are certainly or probably copies of ancient inscriptions. In this group, many texts are tiny fragments, most often incomprehensible, without it being known whether the lack of meaning comes from a defective initial copy or from the innumerable errors introduced by the recopying of manuscripts (because the copyists did not understand what they were writing). Four or five texts, fortunately, are a little more substantial. One finds there the names of historical characters, sponsors of known ancient inscriptions, or formulations specific to the language of inscriptions. They make it possible to evaluate exactly the level of qualification that the mediaeval traditionists had reached in South Arabian. However, it appears that this level was very low. The traditionists made gross reading errors and did not understand much of the ancient inscriptions they deciphered. They could, however, identify proper names more or less confidently, sometimes read correctly, but often distorted because they frequently confused certain letters with others of similar shape. There remains the question of the source of the innumerable pre-Islamic anthroponyms (with first name and epithet such as Abīkarib Asʿad) found in Yemeni genealogies; many appear odd, but some are probably authentic. These anthroponyms may have come from family traditions dating back to antiquity; it is also possible that some were read in ancient inscriptions by early generations of traditionists (in the 8th century) who may have had a better knowledge of ancient script and language than al-Hamdānī and his contemporaries.
Le Yémen antique vu de l’intérieur : travaux et recherches archéologiques par les Yéménites
Alors que jusque récemment, les prospections et les fouilles archéologiques étaient surtout réalisées par des missions étrangères (en coopération avec les équipes de la Direction des Antiquités et des universités), le Yémen a vu se développer ces dernières années des programmes menés exclusivement par les institutions yéménites. Parallèlement, une nouvelle génération de chercheurs s’est constituée, non plus seulement formée dans les universités étrangères, mais désormais aussi dans les universités de Sanaa, d’Aden et de Dhamar. De nombreux ouvrages de recherches sur l’archéologie et l’histoire du Yémen préislamique, rédigés en langue arabe, ont vu le jour. Ils font apparaître pour la première fois une approche de l’histoire du Yémen préislamique fondée non pas sur les mythes et les légendes, mais sur les disciplines rigoureuses de l’archéologie et de l’épigraphie. Tout en se heurtant encore à une école plus traditionnelle, bien représentée dans les mentalités collectives, qui défend...
L’Arabie du Sud antique vue de l’intérieur : Recherches archéologiques menées par les Yéménites
Chroniques yéménites, 2007
"Ancient South Arabia as Seen from the Inside: The Archeological Excavations of the Yemeni Researchers Though until recently, prospecting and archeological excavations have been carried out mostly by foreign expeditions (with the collaboration of the research teams from the Antiquities Department), during the past few years there have been programs in Yemen run exclusively by Yemeni institutions. Simultaneously, a new generation of researchers has appeared who graduated not from foreign universities but received their education at the universities of Sanaa, Aden and Dhamar. Numerous archeological and historical studies of the pre-Islamic period of Yemen were published in Arabic. For the first time, such studies adopt a methodology based not on myths and legends but on the strictly scientific data of archeology and epigraphy. Being in conflict with a more traditional school, which still dominates collective mentality and which defends a legendary reading of the history of Yemen before Islam, this new vision of history proposed by Yemeni researchers tends to influence more and more profoundly the Yemeni educated public."