Capyri,cht J' Munksganrd 1994

Arabian archaeology and epigraphy

ISSN 0905-7196

On the chronology of the South Arabian martyrdoms

IRFAN SHAHfD Georgetown University, Washington DC, USA

In a persuasive article (AAE 1: 1990: 110-128), F. de Blois has argued for A.D. 523 as the year of the South Arabian martyrdoms. There are a few errors in this otherwise sober and balanced article, which I have pointed out in this short communication in the hope that they will be eliminated in future discussions of this problem.

An article by F. de Blois entitled "The Date of the Martyrs of Nagran" appeared recently in this journal (I). The author examines the two principal dates that have been assigned for the martyrdoms of the Arabs of Najrin during the reign of the Himyarite king, YUsuf, namely, A.D. 518 and 523, and argues per- suasively for the second as the correct date of the martyrdoms. Since it was I who started the controversy anew in 1971 with the publi- cation of The M r f y r s afNajr4n (2), I have the following comments on this article:

1 . 1 had, and still have, no axe to grind on this question. In fact, I had accepted the traditional date, A D . 523, in one of my publications ( 3 ) which appeared in 1964 and continued to have doubts about A.D. 518 after the dis- covery of Simeon's second Letter (4). But as the editor and translator of the newly dis- covered Le f f e r of Simeon of Beth Arsham, it was my duty to marshal every bit of evidence in order to support the new date in the expticit of this Letfer, which suggested that the martyr- doms took place in A.D. 518. Many dis- tinguished scholars had and have argued for this date and the inception of the Himyaritic

Era as 115 B.C. I leave this problem in the hands of South Arabian scholars who have more interest in it than I, but I shall continue to draw attention to new data when they are relevant to A.D. 523 as well as A.D. 518, in the hope that they will help these scholars to solve this problem.

2. The author has carefully analyzed the evi- dence from the Greek M r f y r i u r n Arethae. However, it should be remembered in this connection that A h r f y r i u m is not a primary source but a derivative one, written some thir- ty years after the events, and that it is depend- ent in its chronology on Syriac sources, es- pecially the first Letfer of Simeon of Beth Ars- him, which points to the date of the martyrdoms as A.D. 523. Hence the crucial sources that have to be taken into account in this controversy are reduced to the two Syriac Letters of Simeon of Beth Arshim, Nos. I and 11, because they are contemporary, primary documents. The many questions on the two dates may also be reduced to one, namely, which of the two Letters gives the correct date? Is it the beginning of the first Letter which points to A.D. 523, or is it the "end',

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the explicit of the second, which points to A.D. 518? Arguments can be adduced for either date and of those who have argued for A.D. 523, de Blois's article is the most persuasive.

In the course of this most recent article on the chronology of these events in South Arabia, the author has occasion to refer to my book The M r t y r s of Najran and this calls for a few comments:

1. In that book I said that the explicit is the "more important part of the Letter" (5). What I meant is that the explicit formally dates the Letter since it refers to an event in the life of the author, namely, his visit to the Ghassanid king, Jabala, and not to the martyrdoms in a distant land, about which he had only heard. Thus the author could not have made a mis- take about the year of his own visit, and the copyist presumably would have been careful to copy the important fact since it dates the manuscript. I t is sometimes forgotten in these discussions that the two letters of Simeon con- tain two sets of dates: those pertaining to the martyrdoms, and those pertaining to Simeon's itineraries. The dates of the martyrdom are inferable from these dates on Simeon's itiner- aries, one written at Hira, the other at Jabiya, although the second Letter does contain in the body of the text a date for the martyrdom, on which I have a cautionary note in M r t y r s (6). It is only in this sense that I wrote that the explicit of Letter I1 is more important and I am not unaware of the vulnerability of incipifs and explicits in manuscripts.

2. The author draws attention to an important aspect of codicology, "that the beginnings and ends of documents tend to be, if not the most important, certainly the most vulnerable parts of the texts, those most likely to be torn off and then replaced by a later copyist, as well as those most likely to suffer wilful alteration, while the middle sections of a book tend to be more protected against such voluntary or

involuntary mutilation" (pp. 113-1 14). True as this may be, it is in this case an argument from the general to the particular. A close examination of the two Letters of Simeon actu- ally argues against de Blois.

a. The explicit (7) of Letter I1 is not the end of the Letter or its manuscript. It occurs long before the end of the Leftel: An almost entire column (8) in the Syriac version inter- venes between the explicit and the end of the letter. This is the explicit that points to the year A.D. 518 and so it is the one that is, in de Blois's own words, "more protected against such voluntary or involuntary muti- lation". b. Letter I contains the date that points to the year A.D. 523, but this does occur in the incipit, the beginning of the Letter. Ac- cording to de Blois's principle, it is the part liable to be tampered with by later copyists. Not so is the dating of Letter I1 which does not come at the end of the Letter, and points to A.D. 518. c. Finally, the state of preservation of Letter I1 also contradicts de Blois. There is an en- tire leaf missing from the Letter and this does not occur at the beginning or the end of the Letter B, but in the middle (9). Thus, appeal to the principles of codicology in this case actually argues against de Blois's choice of A.D. 523, not A.D. 518, as the date of the martyrdoms.

3. The author has difficulty with "Abraham" as the name of the Christian King of Himyar, set up after the Ethiopian expedition and conquest of that region. His difficulty derives from the fact that a Himyaritic inscription has the name Sumayfa' 'Ashwa', while the literary sources have Abraham, (pp. 119-120). I have elucidated this in Martyrs, by drawing atten- tion to the fact that while Sumayfa' 'Ashwa' was his pagan Himyaritic name, Abraham was his Christian Biblical name after his conversion and enthronement as King of Himyar (10).

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I. SHAH~D

An exact parallel is that of his overlord, the Ethiopian Negus, Ella Asbeha, whose name in the inscriptions is Ella Asbeha, while his Christian Biblical name in the literary sources is the Biblical Caleb. "Abraham" is of course to be distinguished from "Abraha", the Ethiopian rebel who later toppled Sumayfa/Abraham; its root is a purely Ethiopic one. Furthermore, Procopius, who is a safe guide in matters where his irn et sfudiurn are not involved, knows of only one Himyarite ruler between the death of Yiisuf and the rise of Abraha, namely Esimaphaeus/Sumayfa'. This makes certain that there was one Himyarite king in this period and his name was Sumayfa'/Ab- raham, the Esimaphaeus of Procopius.

4. A props of Procopius, de Blois attributes to him the synchronization of the enthronement of Esimaphaeus and the Byzantine-Sasanid war of A.D. 531. In his own words, "the inthronization of Esimaphaios took place at about the time of the Byzanto-Sasanian con- flict of 531". But Procopius does not specifi- cally involve the year 531 in the synchroniza- tion, the year of the battle of Callinicum, which he had described, before he digressed on Arabia and Esimaphaeus. Procopius in- volves not one battle but the entire Persian War, as is clear from the quotation that de Blois cites in no. 65: 6x0 ~06s xpoVOO< TOO noh~pou ~ 0 0 6 ~ . This war began in A.D. 527 and was concluded in A.D. 532. Thus the en- thronement of Esimaphaeus could go back to A.D. 527 and not to 531. It could be with- drawn even further back, since the Greek preposition 6x0 that begins the quotation is a loose preposition which means "about" or "near", and consequently might refer to a year or two before A.D. 527, and would thus easily bring the enthronement of Esimaphaeus to A.D. 525, a date that presents difficulties to de Blois's thesis.

5. Finally, the author raises in a footnote (no. 20) the important problem of the authenticity

of Letter IZ and its attribution to Simeon. He shows his good sense by not even discussing the problem, which he rightly dismisses with- out further ado. The authenticity and the attri- bution speak for themselves and do not need a reply, but since the question was raised and found sponsors, it was necessary to refute them and this has been done in M. Ghul's Festschrift (1 1). Apparently de BIois is unaware of this reply or the reply had not appeared when he prepared his article for AAE (12).

These observations should not detract in the least from the merits of de Blois's article. He has given the best defense of A.D. 523 as the year of the persecutions and martyrdoms in South Arabia, in spite of the fact that he him- self assigns to his conclusion not certainty but a high degree of probability, and thus leaves the problem sub iudice. Perhaps he will find these few observations helpful to his quest for the correct date of the martyrdoms and of the inception of the Himyarite Era. Until this frustrating but fascinating problem is solved, I shall continue to refer to the date of these martyrdoms as circa A.D. 520.

References 1. See A A E 1: 1990: 110-128. 2. See 1. Shahid. The Marfyrs of Najrin. Bruxelles: Subsi-

dia Hagiographica, 49: 1971; henceforth referred to as Martyrs.

3. See Byzanfino-arabica: The conference of Ramla, A.D. 524. ]NES 23: 1964.

4. See Martyrs: 235-242. 5. Martyrs: 236. 6. See Martyrs: 30. 7. In so calling it, I have followed G. Graf, who so

8. See Martyrs: Plate IX. 9. Martyrs: between Plate IV and Plate V

described it in Oriens Christianw (1913).

10. MArfyrs: 228-230. 11. See the present writer in Further Reflections on the

Sources for the Martyrs of Najran. In M. M. Ibrahim ed. Arabian and sfudies in honour of Mahmoud Ghul, Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz, 1989: 166-171.

12. And so is Y. Shitomi. Most of the points he raises on the Martyrs of Najran had already been answered

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in my long article in M. Ghul's Festschrift and in a short communication in Le Musion 103: 1990: Irfan Shahid 151-153, which apparently he had not seen. For Shitomi's latest article, see J. Ryckmans' Fesfschrift (Louvain-la-Neuve, 1991), pp. 207-224. Washington

Address:

Arabic Department 1.C.C Georgetown University

D.C. 20057-1067 USA

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