Antiquities of South Arabia

Discovery of volume 6 fragments

In 2020, a new manuscript was published and presented as preserving fragments of the lost sixth volume of Al-Iklil,^[2] thought to cover the period from late Himyarite history, from the time of the king Dhu Nuwas until the rise of Islam. However, one historian, Mounir Arbach, has suggested caution in receiving this news and analysis of the new manuscript suggests that its attribution to Al-Hamdani is overall uncertain. Only five folios are identified as possible Book 6 material, while the rest of the manuscript contains extracts from other works, including known material from the Book 10 and Al-Hamdani's other work, Sifat Jazirat al-Arab. The fragment discusses Dhu Nuwas, the People of the Trench, and Sayf b. Dhi Yazan, topics that fit the expected subject of Book 6 but were also widely discussed by other Islamic authors. The document also lacks several of Al-Hamdani's usual sources.^[9]

Genelaogy

The genealogy of Al-Iklil has been interpreted as political, produced in a time where Yemen was in conflict with external religious and political movements, including Zaydi and Isma'ili groups from the north. The surviving genealogical volumes of the work present the tribes of Yemen as part of the Qahtanite, or South Arabian, lineage and respond to earlier north genealogical traditions that Al-Hamdani believed minimized the antiquity and importance of the southern tribes.^[10]

Al-Hamdani places into prominence his own tribal confederation, Banu Hamdan, while also relating material about other tribes such as Himyar, Khawlan, Quda'a, and Madhhij. The presentation of the Madhhij tribe is selective. It is placed into a South Arabian genealogy, but its descendants receive less detail compared to other groups and other narratives depict the Madhhij as being in conflict with more well-established South Arabian lineages. Some historians have read this depiction as the product of a milieu where descent, historical memory, and contemporary debates about legitimacy all came together.^[10]

Inscriptions

Christian J. Robin argues that al-Hamdani used ancient South Arabian inscriptions in Al-Iklil to support and expand Yemeni genealogies, especially those of Himyar and Hamdan. Some of the inscriptions cited appear to be real, though often misunderstood due to Al-Hamdani's difficulties in reading ancient Sabaic grammar. Other inscriptions cited are literary inventions or not genuinely pre-Islamic. Al-Hamdani cited inscriptions to counter the views of earlier northern genealogists had he accused of falsely shortening the lineages of South Arabian tribes to diminish Yemen's antiquity and prestige. In response, Al-Hamdani drew on family traditions, poetry, place names, ruins, and names found in inscriptions to reconstruct a deeper South Arabian past. Al-Hamdani was often able to identify names in inscriptions but frequently misread letters, misunderstood Sabaic grammar, and inserted damaged or misread names into genealogical narratives. Accordingly, Al-Iklil is not a straightforward record of the past but it does succeed in demonstrating how tenth-century Yemeni scholars used fragments of antiquity to construct a prestigious South Arabian historical memory.^[11]

Tribes

Technology

Passages in Al-Iklil describes mechanical devices with hydraulic and pneumatic functions used in association with Ghumdan Palace in the city of Sanaa. These include hollow copper lions that Al-Hamdani says would roar when wind passed through them and a "clepsydra", or a water clock. These devices may be compared to traditions of devices known from Greek and later Islamic sources, although connections with finds from Yemeni archaeology are still speculative.^[15]