HISTORY ABOUT THE FIRST INHABITANTS OF ARABIA

THE FIRST INHABITANTS OF ARABIA 

Throughout history, the Arabian Peninsula has been traditionally called ‘Arabia.’ This was particularly true during the Persian, Greek, Roman, and Byzantine eras. Occasionally Roman historians would refer to Nabataean rulers as “King of the Arabs.” The use of this term has often proven confusing to modern readers whose definition of ‘Arab’ is colored by recent history.

Etymologically speaking the word ‘Arab’ means desert dwellers, without reference to nationality or ethnic descent. This term has been applied to the nomads who dwell mainly in the Arabian Peninsula, the Sinai Peninsula, and the Syro-Arabian desert. In the minds of many today, the Arabs are identified as the people who speak the Arabic language. 

This linguistic approach has several problems. The foremost problem is that today many people in the Middle East speak Arabic because it was forced upon them by the Muslim armies that conquered the Middle East in the late 7th century.

Many peoples of the Middle East have non-Arab ethnic backgrounds, but they speak Arabic as their first or second language because it has been forced upon them by the state. There are still a number of minorities in the Middle East who use Arabic as a trade language but continue to use their ethnic languages in their homes: Chaldaeans, Armenians, Assyrians, Adygey (Circassians), Turkomen, Gypsies, Persians, Kurds, etc. Each of these groups strongly oppose being labeled as ‘Arabs,’ even though they now speak Arabic, often as their first language.

Thus, it is important to consider not only linguistics, but also the historical and ethnic background of the peoples of the Middle East to find the true Arabs–especially those who would have been referred to as Arabs by Greek and Roman historians, and the lands that have been classified as ‘Arabia.’

👉🏾 The inhabitants of this part of Arabia nearly all belong to the race of Himyar. Their complexion is almost as black as the Abyssinians,”-- Baron von Maltzan, 'Geography of Southern Arabia' (1872) 

👉🏾 “ [the Hamida are] small chocolate colored beings, stunted and thin… with mops of bushy hair… straggling beards , vicious eyes, frowning brows … armed with scabbards slung over the shoulder and Janbiyyah daggers…” a people “of the great Hejazi tribe that has kept his blood pure for the last 13 centuries…”-- Sir Richard Burton (1879) 

👉🏾 “The people of Dhufar are of the Qahtan tribe, the sons of Joktan mentioned in Genesis: they are of Hamitic or African rather than Arab types…”--Arnold Wilson, The Geographical Journal (1927) 

👉🏾 “the most prosperous tribe of all the Hamitic group, possessing innumerable camels, herds of cattle and the richest frankincense country. They resemble the Bisharin tribe of the Nubian desert. Men of big bone , they have long faces long narrow jaws, noses of a refined shape long curly hair and brown skin.”--Richmond Palmer (1929) 

👉🏾 “Mahra is the Arab name for the Bedouin tribes who are different in appearance to other Arabs, having almost beardless faces, fuzzy hair and dark pigmentation – such as the Qarra, Mahra and Harasis… Also on “…the Qarra, Mahra and Harasis with parts of other tribes. The language is derived from the language of the Sabaeans, Minaeans and Himyarites. The Mahra with other Southern Arabian peoples seem aligned to the Hamitic race of north-east Africa… The Mahra are believed to be descended from the Habasha, who colonized Ethiopia in the first millennium BC”-- David Phillips, Peoples on the Move (2001) 

👉🏾 “European observers have made much of their physical resemblance to Somalis and Ethiopians, but there is no historical evidence of any connections.”-- E. Peterson, 'Oman’s Diverse Society: Southern Oman' 

👉🏾 “Mr. Baldwin draws a marked distinction between the modern Mahomedan Semitic population of Arabia and their great Cushite, Hamite, or Ethiopian predecessors. The former, he says, ‘are comparatively modern in Arabia,’ they have ‘appropriated the reputation of the old race,’ and have unduly occupied the chief attention of modern scholars.”-- Charles Hardwick (1872) 

👉🏾 “Among ‘these Negroid features which may be counted normal in Arabs are the full,rather everted lips, shortness and width of nose, certain blanks in the bearded areas of the face between the lower lip and chin and on the cheeks; large, luscious,gazelle-like eyes, a dark brown complexion, and a tendency for the hair to grow in ringlets. Often the features of the more Negroid Arabs are derivatives of Dravidian India rather than inheritances of Hamitic Africa. Although the Arab of today is sharply differentiated from the Negro of Africa, yet there must have been a time when both were represented by a single ancestral stock; in no other way can the prevalence of certain Negroid features be accounted for in the natives of Arabia.”-- Henry Field, Anthropology Memoirs Volume 4 (1902) 

👉🏾 “There is a considerable mass of evidence to show that there was a very close resemblance between the proto-Egyptians and the Arabs before either became intermingled with Armenoid racial elements.”-- Elliot Smith, he Ancient Egyptians and the Origins of Civilization (1923) 

👉🏾 “In Arabia the first inhabitants were probably a dark-skinned, shortish population intermediate, between the African Hamites and the Dravidians of India and forming a single African Asiatic belt with these.”-- Handbook of the Territories which form the Theater of Operations of the Iraq Petroleum Company Limited and its Associated Companies