Did al-Hamadāni really describe, in his book entitled (lit) Description of Arabia, the very same country that was the theater of the Old Testament? This question, which had never before - to my knowledge - been asked by anyone, kept on occurring to me as I repeatedly borrowed the book from the library of Leiden University, in the Netherlands. Is it really possible? Or could I be mistaken? As I flipped through the pages of al-Hamadāni‟s gazetteer - a virtual “Yellow Pages” of the tribes of Arabia - following his footsteps in the highlands of Yemen and stopping in the same places he had stopped in, I found myself, to my astonishment, looking at the same names of tribes, warriors, prophets, valleys and mountains mentioned in the Old Testament, to the letter, and without the slightest manipulation whatsoever! At first, and despite this, there was always some lingering doubt, as I thought to myself: It can‟t be! Something must be wrong! Until one day, while I was on vacation in Iraq, I found myself, as if by a twist of fate, reading an old book written by a well-known Syrian scholar, Dr. Abdulraḥmān al-Shahabandar, entitled Al-Maqalāt (lit: The Articles). My eyes fell on an editorial he penned back in 1936, in which he commented about the memoirs of an old Syrian explorer, Nazeeh Mou‟ayyid Al-„Aẓm, who had visited Yemen in the year 1916, and written a diary entitled (lit) A Journey to Fortunate Arabia. One passage in Shahabandar‟s article nearly caused me to leap from my chair. In his comment on al-„Aẓm‟s book, al-Shahabandar wrote the following: “And the Great Rabbi of the Jews in Ṣan‘ā’, whose name was Yeḥia Isḥāq, told him that the Jews once had a great kingdom in Yemen, somewhere between Ṣan‘ā’ and Najrān. And that this kingdom was established by Sulaymān, son of Dāwūd”. Naturally, I was overtaken with curiosity and eventually decided to look for al-„Aẓm‟s book. After an exhaustive effort, I was finally able to find a copy of it. And herein, I report to you exactly what he wrote (pages 141,142 – Second Issue, London, 1985), about his visit to Yemen in 1916: [In the famous Jewish District of Old Ṣan„ā‟, I met with several of the great Jewish authorities, and asked them many questions about the origins of the Yemeni Jews, their ways, their comings and goings. And there I was told, by the Grand Rabbi named Yeḥia Isḥāq who hosted me in his home, that the Jews of Yemen once had a great kingdom and an extravagant city somewhere around Ṣan„ā‟, which was built by Sulaymān, son of Dāwūd. When I asked him if it is possible that it was in Najrān, he said: “I can‟t be certain if it included Najrān, but I have no doubt that it was near Ṣan„ā‟ ”]. It was then that I started asking myself: “Why did the Jews of Yemen believe - and many still do - that the land of the Bible was indeed in their country? Why had the Jews of Yemen, widely 9 considered the most devout and conservative in their faith, initially declared their reluctance - and in some cases their downright refusal - to emigrate to Palestine, deciding instead to stick to their land and heritage, while the other Jews of the world, especially those of European stock, showed not the slightest hesitation to heed the call of the Zionist movement, and relocate to Palestine?” My interest and curiosity in this matter reached their peak when I came by a copy of Kamāl Ṣaleebi‟s controversial book The Bible Came from Arabia, which was published in 1985. To give credit where credit is due, Ṣaleebi‟s book, it must be said, was a genuinely pioneering endeavor that helped answer some truly puzzling questions about the geography of the Old Testament events, and the fact that they did not seem to fit with Palestine‟s landscape, no matter how much the Biblical scholars of our day and age tried to interpret the events to make them fit. The problem with Ṣaleebi however, is that very often he resorted to phonetic manipulation of some of the names of the geographical locations in the „Aseer and Jeezān provinces of Saudi Arabia, to make them match the Biblical names by force. Although the evidence Ṣaleebi presented as proof that ancient Palestine could not have been the “Promised Land”, and that Western Arabia was indeed the general setting for Biblical Israel was very convincing, his deliberate manipulation of some of the location names tended to tarnish his credibility. I began to have some doubts again, until I remembered a conversation about old Arabian poetry I once had with a good friend of mine, the Lebanese writer and brilliant critic „Imād Al-„Abdullah, whom I met back in 1995, during a short visit to Beirut. „Imād had written a very interesting article which he later published in a prestigious cultural magazine, proving that what we have always called “weeping at the vestiges” was far beyond simply a poetic tradition. It was an honest and heartfelt expression from the poets, which demonstrated an almost psychotic nostalgia for a glorious and prosperous past long gone, and for civilizations now dust. The names mentioned in those sad poems actually belonged to very real places that had left a profound mark in the hearts of the composers. So I found myself returning to the poetry of the so-called “Jahiliyya Era”, while keeping in mind what my friend „Imād had told me. And lo and behold! I found the surprise of my lifetime waiting for me; for there, buried in those old verses, I encountered, once again, the descriptions of the famous mountains and valleys of Yemen, matching, to the letter, their descriptions in the passages of the Old Testament and in al-Hamadāni‟s records! It is truly astonishing - astonishing and tragic at the same time - that for over a thousand years, the Arabs have had, right under their noses and without them being aware of it, accurate and authentic geographical documents in the shape of al-Hamadāni‟s books, notably Description of Arabia and The Wreath (Al-Ikleel), two invaluable sources that described, in detail, the geography of the Arabian tribes; while they have gone on believing the deceptions, illusions, manipulations, and forgeries perpetrated by the Orientalists and Zionists in their interpretation of the Old Testament texts.
Posted on: Thu, 25 Jul 2013 14:41:41 +0000
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