When Arabia was Eastern Ethiopia (Part 4) - by - Dana MarnicheThe Afro-Arabian Origins of the Ad, Amalek and Aram, Uz, Saba and Himyar: Ethnohistory of theMahra/Shahara/Somali populations“Paradise and Hell were shown to me…Hell was shown to me, and was brought so close that Istepped back for fear that it would touch me. I saw a Humayr woman who was tall and black, beingpunished on account of a cat that she owned: she had tied it up, not giving it anything to eat or drink,or allowing it to eat of the vermin of the earth…” Account of a woman of the tribe of Himyar or Humayr.Sahee Al Jami 2/298, 2394 a Hadith, al-Jannah wa an-Naar. In The Light of the Qur’aan and Sunnah.Compiled by Al Bukhari 9th century from Bukhara Uzbekistan.Cheikh Anta Diop had commented that the Joktanides (Qahtan) came down from the Northconquering original tribes of Adites basing his belief on modern interpretations of Biblical and Arabianhistory. Arabian tradition however affirms that the tribes of Ham, Shem and Japhet were actuallyclosely related tribes of African affiliation and origination who were originally settled in southwesternand extending to the region Mecca and Medina.The modern Mahra extend from Hadramaut to Oman and are found in Somalia. They had clansnamed Samudayt (Thamud or Samud) and Mashek (Mashek is also called Mash in the Bible) andRiyam or Rigam anciently known from their king Rekem or Arkam, Mahli (Mahli the Korahite?) and Idi.The 13th century traveler Ibn Mudjawir speaks of the Mahra (also called Maheyra, Mahri) living inthose days in Oman as “tall and handsome” which can also be said of the Mahra of Somalia.The 1986 new edition of Encyclopedia of Islam says they were “of brown complexion with black, oftencurly hair” . The Rigam or Riyam clan of Mahra is suggested to have come from the peoples known asthe Rhagmanitae or Raymanitae of Pliny 1st century and other Greek writers who are mentioned asliving in Yemen and the Persian Gulf.. (the Rhagmat or Ra’amah of Biblical tradition). See p. 226 ofCharles Forster’s the Historical Geography of Arabia, 1844. According to tradition the leader Rekem orRigam (also written in literature Arqam, Rukayim, or Rukaym) was the son of Aram or otherwise, sonof Abir (Heber), Aram’s brother and a son of Ad who led the Mahra south to the Hadramaut and Oman.Sir Richard Burton recounted the tradition that, “the last king of the Amalek, Arkam bin Arkam wasslain by an army of the children of Israel sent by Moses to purge Madinah and Mecca of their infidelinhabitants. “Also, Ibn Mudjawir asserted that the Mahra were the remnant of Ad whom “when God destroyed thegreater part of them” went to live in the mountains of Zufar and Sokotra and al Masirah in the Yemenand Oman, a tradition elaborated on by Ibn Khaldun and others. Modern Mahra claim descent fromKuda’a son of Himyar, son of Saba of Yemen. See the Encylopaedia of Islam (Der Islam im Spiegelzeitgen
ö
ssischer Literatur der islamischen Welt) p. 82 claimed Ibn Ishaq gave the genealogy of Quda’a
bin Malik bin Himyar bin Saba bin Yashjub bin Ya’rub (Arab) bin Qahtan(Joktan). (Retso 19 ) TheHimyarites and Sabaeans were considered “Adites”.The Samudayt clan of the Mahra, from which came the Tsamud or Thamud, according to traditionwere the 2nd Ad or remnant of the Adites whose power once extended from Sana’a in Yemen to Syriaand Egypt, he is variously called the son of Abir (Eber) or Jathiar (otherwise known as Jetur, Jazar orGezer) or . His land was called Adan or Aden. The Thamud were said to have fought against theIsraelite leader Joshua son of Nun near Mecca. These Adites holding the area of Mecca and Medinawere also known as Amalik or the Amalekites of Rephidim. It was they who according to both Arabianand Biblical stories met the “Yisra’el” or followers of Moses at a place called Meriba (Exodus 17:7)which was the Sabaean capital of Marib in Yemen).According to Muslim commentators this king of the Amalekites, dwelt in the lower part of Mekka… El-Harith, son of the Himyarite ruler Modad (Almod’ad), king of the Djurham or Darim tribe (Hadoram sonof Shem of Genesis) disputed his control of the sanctuary there. The Hadoram (Adramitae orDreematae) are mentioned in Greek texts as “Sabaeans”.Masudi in the 10th century wrote of this king saying, “The king of Syria, es-Someida, son of Hubar,(who is Tsamud or Thamud son of Abir son of Malik marched against Joshua, son of Nun, and aftermany fights, was killed by the last one, who conquered his kingdom… The circumstances of this arementioned in the following verses by Awf, son of Saad, the Djorhamite: Haven’t you seen at Elath(Elah) the skin of the Amalekite (Someida), son of Hubar (Abir or Abar), put into shreds when he wasattacked by an army of eighty thousand Jews, protected or not by shields? These Amalekite cohorts,who trained meticulously jumped behind him. One hasn’t met them ever since among the mountains ofMekka, and nobody has seen again es-Someida.” See Les Prairies d’Or translation The Prairies ofGold, Chapter 39, Paris 1861.In Assyrian texts they are the historical Tamudi (circa 8th c B.C. )and in Roman times they are theSaracens called Thamudenioi Equites (equestrian Thamud) who occupied Dumah (modern Duma’at alJandal in Jordan where they had also came to be called Idumaeans ( Dumah, child of Ishmael).Thamud’s original home however was far to the south as with the rest of the Ismaelites or NorthArabian bedouin. These “second Adites” according to some were also those that were ruled byLokman, son of Ad and who also left Saba at one of the burstings of the Marib dam of Iram or Aram(modern Yarim).When this dam burst not only did they disperse in Arabia, but they went into Africa. Josephus claimedthe people along the Nile as at Meroe were Sabaeans, descendants of Keturah through Jokshan.Jokshan’s descendants include Judadas, Ashurim, and Leummim, He mentions the Yudadas, (Dedan)in Western Ethiopia and the Ashurim (or Surim )of “Libya” (known to the Romans as Asuriani,Astacures, Astrikes and Saturiani a branch of the camel owning Levathes Maures or Tuareg) as thetribe who had harassed, conquered and named Assyria under the leadership of Nimrod were also inAfrica. (Asshuran or Chronus as he was called in Greece was a name for the venerated deity alsocalled Saturn. )Exodus: Movement of Jah Peoples (The Tribes of Aram move from Saba)
For those who find it difficult to imagine how so many of the Biblical peoples ended up in Africa undertheir ancient names it would be good to look at Kamal Salibi’s The Bible Came from Arabia firstpublished in the 1970s. Salibi was actually able to locate hundreds of names of the towns of ancientCanaan, Israel and Judah cited in the Bible in Arabia explaining why only a handful of Biblical placenames have been found in the modern region of Israel-Palestine and why many modern Biblicalarcheologists have even begun to suspect that King Solomon and David themselves never evenexisted in the modern Israel.The book seems to provide more than abundant evidence that the home of the original Jerusalem andfollowers Moses, the Canaanites and Phoenicians and Judaeans was much further south in Arabiathen the early Greek interpreters of Hebraic tradition implied they originated. Even such names asKush, Kuth and Misra have been by Salibi and others discovered to correlate with the names ofancient tribes and towns in southern and northern Arabia as much as with Africa and Syria, as will beshown. At the time of the flooding of the South Arabian dam of Marib (Meriba of the Bible Exodus 17:7)many of the people dispersed to the north and into Africa. Among them were the followers of a mannamed Muzaikiyya also called Amr or Amru bin Amir, who was the Biblical Moses. The descendants ofthese people were the Khazras and Aus or Awza (Biblical Gezer and Uz, children of Aram) who settledin Hejaz in the area of a brook or stream called Kushan or Kishon not long after the time of their leaderAmru bin Amir. Their descendants were called the Kushan or Kassan or Kusim in Syrian dialects. Theywere the Biblical Jokshan who was said to be brother of Midian, whom in Habbakuk are calledKushan.According to David Goldenberg in, The Curse of Ham, “the prophet Habbakuk parallels Kushan withMidian: The Tents of Kushan…the dwellings of Midian and because scholars have concluded there issome connection between Kushan and Midian: The Kushan are historically known in the works ofPtolemy . The same tribe named by Agatharchides as Cassandreis and by Diodorus the Gasandi.They were located southeast of Mecca and are also called Ghassan. (See Part II for the Midianites orIshmaelites to come)The modern Somali (Sama’al), Afar, Danakil and other Cushitic speakers are examples of the peoplesknown to historians as Ad or A’ad, Amalek, Qahtan, Saba and Himyar kingdoms. Names of their clansRahawein, Mahra, Darood, Yahar and Hubir give credence to the documents that state the Sabaeansmigrated to Africa, many of these Baribari also ended up in North Africa. The comments of earlyRoman and Greek writers such as Josephus and Strabo become more understandable. They claimedthe Ethiopians of Meroe were actually Arabians or Sabaeans and that everything east of the Nile wasin fact “Arabia”.These are the names and people of the ancient tribes of the Sabaeans children of Joktan. Accordingto the book The Yemen in Early Islam, published in 1988 the clans Rahawein (Ru’ayn, Rahawiyyin,Rahawi in early Arabia - Reu) belonged to the Madhhij or Madhhaj. Others clans of the Maddhij werethe Murad or Amurath also called Qaran, Rualla or Ruwalla bin Anaeza , Ans or Anaeza bin Wa’il,Nakh’l or An-Nakha, Badi’ah, Ghutayf bin Haritha related to the Ghatafan, Nashirah, Sa’ad al Ashirah,Za’afar, Zubayd or Zabeida, al Amluk or Amalek was a clan of the Rahawiyin, as was the tribe ofQataban (Banu Kita’a), and Yafi’ (Ephah).
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