6. the kahin shuffled the arrows ... Divination by arrows is called istqam in Arabic, "rhabdomancy" in English. The rite may have an echo in the Bible when Yahweh, through his soothsayer Gad, speaks to David, saying: "I offer you three things; choose one of them for me to do to you" (2 Samuel 24:12). Similarly, in legend, the fate of the Ubarites is sealed as they choose one of three clouds.
7. Once ... the religion of the 'Ad may have been more meaningful ...As historian Karen Armstrong has noted, "In Arabia the original symbolic significance of the old gods had been lost during the nomadic period and Arab religion had no developed mythology to express this pagan insight" (Armstrong, Muhammad: A Biography of the Prophet [San Francisco: Harper San Francisco, 1992], p. 98).
8. "Were it not for her whose wily charms...," Faris, Antiquities of South Arabia, p. 29.
9. "Roast flesh, the glow of fiery wine...," Lyall, Ancient Arabian Poetry, p. 64.
10. to Eriyot, his royal city. Eriyot may have been Ain Humran. But there is also reason to believe that Eriyot may have been obliterated by the construction of the sultan of Oman's Robat palace in Salalah.
22. City of Good and Evil
1. "A singular thing too...," Bostock and Riley, Natural History of Pliny, vol. 2, p. 91 (italics added). Elsewhere (vol. 3, p. 135) Pliny notes an interesting exception to his "they purchase nothing in return" statement. He tells us that "in Arabia there is a surprising demand for foreign scents, which are imported from abroad; so soon are mortals sated with what they have of their own, and so covetous are they of what belongs to others."
2. Ubar continued to prosper. The coastal incursion by the kingdom of the Hadramaut could actually have been a boon for Ubar, as the 'Adites chose to ship more and more of their incense overland rather than sell it to the Hadramis garrisoned at the port of Sumhuram.
3. a Jewish king sat on the throne ... Yusuf As'ar Yath'ar, lord of Dhu Nuwas, was "King of all Tribes." He ruled over the Himyar, a people who conquered the old city-states of Ma'in, Qataban, and Saba.
4. "which Shaddad ibn 'Ad built...," Thackston, Tales of the Prophets, p. 126.
5. the vocabulary of pre-Islamic Arabians ... The glossary of Father Jamme's Inscriptions at Mahram Bilqis provides an excellent overview of what was on the minds of the southern Arabians from approximately 750 B.C. to 450 A.D.
6. "Brothers are held in higher honor...," Jones, Geography of Strabo, pp. 365–66.
7. "when an Arab had a daughter born...," cited in Sale, Koran, p. 94.
23. Sons and Thrones Are Destroyed
1. the story became part and parcel of Jewish folklore. The historian al-Tabari reports that before the time of Muhammad the Jews of western Arabia threatened their enemies: "We shall kill you as 'Ad and Iram were killed" (Edshan Yar-Shater, ed., The History of al-Tabari, vol. 6 [Albany: State University of New York Press, 1989], pp. 124–25).
2. "We, the dwellers in this palace..." and "I, Shaddad ben 'Ad, ruled...," Louis Ginzberg, The Legends of the Bible (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1913), pp. 590, 571.
3. "Whoever doth read this writing...," Angelo'S. Rappoport, An- cient Israel: Myths and Legends (New York: Bonanza Books, 1987), vol. 3, p. 106.
4. "As old as 'Ad...," Thomas P. Hughes, A Dictionary of Islam (Lahore: Premier Book House, 1986), p. 18; "Roast flesh, the glow of fiery wine..." Lyall, Ancient Arabian Poetry, p. 64; "And ninety concubines ...," Philby, Empty Quarter, p. 157; "O delegation of drunks...," Thackston, Tales of the Prophets, pp. 114, 116; "Wealth, easy lot...," Lyall, Ancient Arabian Poetry, p. 64; "An ignominious punishment...," Dawood, Koran, pp. 128–29; "Sons and thrones are destroyed...," Thackston, Tales of the Prophets, p. 116; "Now all is gone...," Philby, Empty Quarter, p. 157; "Checkmate ... It was a great city ...," Thomas, Arabia Felix, p. 161; "At the end of life...," Edward Rice, Captain Sir Francis Burton (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1990), p. 440.
Epilogue: Hud's Tomb
1. patriarchs and prophets holy to Islam. This tier of mythological landscape includes figures that Islam shares with Judaism and Christianity. In the seaside town of Salalah, the tomb of Nebi Umran, father of the Virgin Mary, is venerated; in the mountains above Salalah, pilgrims leave offerings of incense and flowers at Job's tomb; in the desert beyond, at a spring called Mudhai, the bedouin will show you where Moses hit a rock seven times with his staff, and water magically flowed. It still does.
2. perhaps original tomb ... The medieval traveler Ibn Battuta reported that in Dhofar there was a building containing a grave on which is inscribed "This is the grave of Hud ibn 'Abir. God bless and save him." Here was a choice bit of evidence linking Hud to Ubar ('Abir).
3. a perhaps less authentic ... Hud's tomb... His second tomb, in the Valley of the Hadramaut, came into prominence at the earliest in the 900s, when it was "rediscovered" under questionable circumstances by a pair out of the Arabian Nights, a saintly descendant of Muhammad and a camel-driving scoundrel. For the record, there are even more Hud's tombs: a third is near the well of Zamzam in Mecca; a fourth is outside the town of Salt in Jordan; and a fifth is in the south wall of the great mosque of Damascus.
4. the world's first skyscrapers. Some of Shibam's skyscrapers date to as early as the 900s. Well before then, as revealed by recent archaeology, pre-Islamic buildings in the Hadramaut rose as high as seven stories. (See Jacques Seigne, "Le Chateau Royal de Shabwa: Architecture, Techniques de Construction et Restitutions," Syria 68 [1991].)
5. "You camel men, go..." and "O Khon, no girl in Khon...," cited in R. B. Serjeant, "Hud and Other Pre-Islamic Prophets of Hadramawt," Le Museon 57 (1954), p. 25.
6. "God curse you, infidel woman," Serjeant, "Hud and Other Pre-Islamic Prophets," p. 29; "invoke peace on all the prophets...," Harold Ingrams, Arabia and the Isles (London: John Murray, 1942), p. 215.
7. "As I went in, I saw...," Faris, Antiquities of South Arabia, pp. 79–80. For another version of this, see al-Kisai's tale of the prophet Hud in Chapter 7, page 87.
8. "So sacred that a stick...," Ingrams, Arabia arid the Isles, p. 216.
9. a sulfurous portal to the underworld. The account of one al-Qazwini in 1250 tells us: "The bit of earth most hated by Allah is Wadi Barhut, in which there is a well filled with evil-smelling, black water, wherein go the souls of the unbelievers." He also cites a Hadrami belief that "whenever we notice a foul smell in the neighborhood of Barhut, then, later on, we are informed of the death of one of the most prominent among the unbelievers" (Ferdinand Wustenfeld, ed., 'Adjaib al-Makhluqat, vol. 1 [Gottingen, 1849], p. 198).
* * *
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