ARABIA, HISTORY OF

history of the region from prehistoric times to the present. Some time after the rise of Islam in the first quarter of the 7th century AD and the emergence of the Arabian Muslims as the founders of one of the great empires of history, the name 'Arab came to be used by these Muslims themselves and by the nations with whom they came in contact to indicate all people of Arabian origin. The very name Arabia, or its Arabic name Jazirat Al-'Arab, has come to be used for the whole peninsula. But the definition of the area, even in Islamic sources, is not agreed upon unanimously. In its narrowest application it indicates much less than the whole peninsula, while in ancient Greek and Latin sourcesand often in subsequent sourcesthe term Arabia includes the Syrian and Jordanian deserts and the Iraqi desert west of the lower Euphrates. Similarly, Arabs connoted, at least in pre-Islamic times, mainly the tribal populations of central and northern Arabia. Arabia has been inhabited by innumerable tribal units, forever splitting or confederating; its history is a kaleidoscope of shifting allegiances, although certain broad patterns may be distinguished. A native system has evolved of moving from tribal anarchy to centralized government and relapsing again into anarchy. The tribes have dominated the peninsula, even in intermittent periods when the personal prestige of a leader has led briefly to some measure of tribal cohesion. Arabian culture is a branch of Semitic civilization; because of this and because of the influences of sister Semitic cultures to which it has been subjected at certain epochs, it is sometimes difficult to determine what is specifically Arabian. Because a great trade route passed along its flanks, Arabia had contact along its borders with Egyptian, Greco-Roman, and Indo-Persian civilizations. The Turkish overlords of the Arabic-speaking countries affected Arabia relatively little, however, and the dominant culture of western Europe arrived late in the colonial era. Arabia was the cradle of Islam, and through this faith it influenced every Muslim people. Islam, essentially Arabian in nature, whatever superficial external influences may have affected it, is Arabia's outstanding contribution to world civilization. Mahmud Ali Ghul Alfred Felix L. Beeston Additional reading Archaeology and early history are described in Richard Le Baron Bowen, Jr., and Frank P. Albright, Archaeological Discoveries in South Arabia (1958); G. Lankester Harding, Archaeology in the Aden Protectorates (1964); F.V. Winnett and W.L. Reed, Ancient Records from North Arabia (1970); and Brian Doe, Southern Arabia (1971). General historical studies include J. Wellhausen, The Arab Kingdom and Its Fall (1927, reprinted 1973; originally published in German, 1902), covering the Islamic empire AD 622750, still useful though some views are now disputed; and Hermann V. Wissmann, Zur Geschichte und Landeskunde von Alt-Sdarabien (1964). The study of more recent history should begin with the brilliant but controversial analysis of Khaldoun Hasan al-Naqeeb, Society and State in the Gulf and Arab Peninsula: A Different Perspective (1990; originally published in Arabic, 1987). Useful surveys also include R.B. Serjeant, Studies in Arabian History and Civilisation (1981); and Ian Richard Netton (ed.), Arabia and the Gulf: From Traditional Society to Modern States (1986). More specialized works are Nigel Groom, Frankincense and Myrrh: A Study of the Arabian Incense Trade (1981); M.J. Kister, Studies in Jahiliyya and Early Islam (1980); R.B. Serjeant, The Portuguese off the South Arabian Coast: Hadrami Chronicles, with Yemeni and European Accounts of Dutch Pirates off Mocha in the Seventeenth Century (1963, reprinted 1974); Zamil Muhammad al-Rashid, Su'udi Relations with Eastern Arabia and 'Uman, 18001870 (1981); William Ochsenwald, Religion, Society, and the State in Arabia: The Hijaz Under Ottoman Control, 18401908 (1984); and John C. Wilkinson, Arabia's Frontiers: The Story of Britain's Boundary Drawing in the Desert (1991). The economy Oil refinery on the island of Halu in the Persian Gulf, Qatar. The mineral resource of greatest value is oil. The Arabian Peninsula has the largest oil reserves in the world. With the exception of deposits in Yemen, the Arabian oil fields lie in the same great sedimentary basin as the fields of Iran and Iraq. Although oil was discovered in Iran in 1908, the first field on the Arabian side of the basin, in Bahrain, was not found until 1932. This inspired an intensive search in eastern Arabia that in time reached far into the interior. Oil was discovered in Saudi Arabia in 1938, in Kuwait and Qatar in 1940, on the mainland of the Saudi Arabia/Kuwait Neutral Zone in 1953, on the mainland of Abu Dhabi in 1960, in Oman in 1964, in South Yemen in 1983, and in North Yemen in 1984. In 1951 oil was discovered in the Persian Gulf off Saudi Arabia, in 1958 in Abu Dhabi offshore, and in 1960 in the Saudi Arabia/Kuwait Neutral Zone offshore. In association with the oil are enormous amounts of natural gas. Making use of this gas commercially requires extremely large investments. Some gas is liquefied for local consumption or for export, and some is reinjected into the oil-bearing strata for storage and to help maintain pressure for oil production. The Arabian countries are attempting economic diversification, though the abundance of oil is a disincentive. Ancient mining sites bear witness to once-flourishing production of minerals: gold at the old mine of Mahd adh-Dhahab in the Hejaz; silver at a mine in the mountains west of Ma'rib; and very large copper production in Oman (until deforestation exhausted the supplies of wood for on-site smelting). Deposits of iron have been found in the northern Hejaz and Najd. Other resources, some of which are being exploited, are barite, gypsum, salt, lime for cement, clay for bricks and pottery, shale, quartz sand for glass, marble, and building stone. For many centuries the oyster beds of the Persian Gulf produced some of the world's finest pearls, and pearling was once a thriving and profitable occupation. Bahrain was the chief centre, and the Trucial States (now the United Arab Emirates), Qatar, and Saudi Arabia also participated. Since about 1931 the trade has declined continuously as a result of the world economic depression, the competition of Japanese cultured pearls, and the siphoning off of labour into other less onerous and more lucrative fields. Even in the southwest, where rainfall is heaviest, the water supply is not constant enough for the generation of power. The scarcity of water and the poor quality of the soil have hampered the development of an export trade in agricultural produce. Progress has been made by individual states in improving irrigation systems and expanding cultivated areas. George S. Rentz Basheer K. Nijim The land Arabia may be described as a vast plateau, edged with deeply dissected escarpments on three sides and sloping gently northeastward from the Red Sea to the eastern lowlands adjoining the Persian Gulf. The peninsula's highest peak, An-Nabi Shu'ayb, at 12,008 feet (3,660 metres), is located approximately 20 miles northwest of San'a' in Yemen. Geology The bulk of Arabia consists of two main geomorphological areas: the Arabian shield in the west; and sedimentary areas dipping away from the shield to the northeast, east, and southeast into the great basin consisting of lower Iraq, the Persian Gulf, and the eastern part of the Rub' al-Khali (the Empty Quarter) desert. The eastern edge of the shield curves eastward from the head of the Gulf of Aqaba, a northern extension of the Red Sea, to a point midway across the peninsula and then trends southwestward and southward to the Yemeni highlands. Extinct volcanoes overlie the shield; their eruptions, which ceased seven centuries ago, produced the broad black lava beds (harrahs) that are characteristic of the western Arabian landscape. The sedimentary areas, younger in age than the shield, represent the deposits of ancient seas. The surface sedimentary strata have been extensively eroded. The harder members, more resistant to erosion, now stand as westward-facing escarpments following the curve of the shield. The sedimentary province consists primarily of limestone, together with much sandstone and shale. The first deposits are early Paleozoic (395 to 570 million years old), which in eastern Arabia dip to almost six miles below the surface. In the Jurassic and Cretaceous limestone (65 to 190 million years old) oil and gas occur at depths of two miles or less. Some of the limestone strata take in rainfall at outcrops in the western highlands and carry it underground to the Persian Gulf coastal areas. The Yemeni highlands are physiographically very different from those of the shield; they are not mountains but the deeply dissected edge of the Arabian plateau. From the west the formations rise abruptly from the narrow coastal plain in Yemen; they reach heights of about 10,000 to 12,000 feet above sea level, and eastward they decrease gradually in elevation. The highlands along the southern coast are basically sedimentary in origin. The Omani highlands are geologically more closely related to the Zagros Mountains of western Iran than to other mountains in Arabia. (The sea is only about 50 miles wide at the Strait of Hormuz.) The people Ethnic groups In ethnographic terms, Arabs belong to the Mediterranean local race, a subgroup of the Caucasoid geographic race. According to tradition, Arabs are descended from a southern Arabian ancestor, Qahtan, forebear of the pure or genuine Arabs (known as al-'Arab al-'Aribah), and a northern Arabian ancestor, 'Adnan, forebear of the Arabicized Arabs (al-'Arab al-Musta'ribah). A tradition, seemingly derived from the Bible, makes 'Adnan, and perhaps Qahtan also, descend from Isma'il (Ishmael), son of Abraham. The rivalry between the two groups spread, with the Muslim conquests, beyond Arabia; it even recurred in northern Yemen in the 1950s when the Zaydi imams, descendants of the Prophet Muhammad, a northern Arab, were called 'Adnani. A Veddoid, non-Mediterranean strain occurs in southern Arabia, where also are found the low-status groups called Akhdam and Sibyan. In the north are the Sulubah, known to the ancient Arabians as qayn, a low-status group regarded as being of non-Arab descent. In Oman the Zutt, a Gypsy folk, seem to be descendants of Indian emigrants to the gulf in the early 9th century, but the Balochi, whose ancestors immigrated more recently, have formed a sort of warrior tribe there. In the border regions of Oman and Yemen are the Mahra, Harasis, Qara, and others, speaking languages of the South Arabic group, and on the Musandam Peninsula are the Shihuh. From ancient times African slaves were imported to Arabia; Saudi Arabia and the Yemens abolished slavery only in 1962. Some districts such as the oasis of Khaybar in the Hejaz and parts of the Tihamah are largely populated by black cultivators. The ports always had a large element of Africans, Asians, and others. The oil era brought many Lebanese, Egyptians, Jordanians, and Iraqis with the education and skills the Arabians lacked, and great numbers of Yemenis moved into the oil-producing states as unskilled labourers. Palestinians make up between one-fifth and one-fourth of Kuwait's population, refugees from Yemen occupy entire streets in Abu Dhabi, and so many Pakistanis, Indians, Sri Lankans, Koreans, and Filipinos have flocked to the Persian Gulf states that often they considerably outnumber the native inhabitants. By contrast, almost no Jews, long settled in western Arabia, now remain. Tribal relations Throughout Arabian history, even during phases of foreign rule, it was the free, arms-bearing tribesmen who dominated other classes of society, be the tribes nomadic or oasis dwellers, settled farmers in the highlands, or sailors, traders, and pirates gaining their livelihood at sea. The sultans, emirs, and sheikhs were drawn from the tribes, whom they had to cosset to obtain backing. There are, however, descendants of the Prophet Muhammad, sayyids and sharifs, regarded as superior in the social scale to all others, who have at times exercised a theocratic type of rule as spiritual leaders. An age-old antagonism exists between the settled peoples, al-hadar, and the nomadic or pastoral tribes, known as Bedouin (al-badiyah), but many settled tribes also have nomadic branches. In Yemen, the fertile southwestern corner of Arabia containing more than one-third of its total population, the same antagonistic feelings exist between city dwellers and qabilis, arms-bearing tribes mostly settled in villages. Until after World War I the Bedouin of the northern deserts were able to keep the settled people in constant apprehension of their raiding; the tribes would even attack and plunder the pilgrim hajj caravans to the Holy Cities unless they were bought off or restrained by force. But modern weapons and airplanes, which can be used to search out tribesmen in their desert or mountain fastnesses, have altered the situation. Each tribe used to be at war or in a state of armed truce with others, and protection was required to enter another tribe's territory. Shortly before World War I Ibn Sa'ud, the founder of modern Saudi Arabia, began to establish the Bedouin in military and agricultural colonies called hijrah, encouraging them to abandon pastoral life, and programs aimed at the sedentarization of the Bedouin have been adopted by states like Jordan and Kuwait. Contrary to commonly held belief, the tribes are not egalitarian, and some have the quality of sharaf or nobility in greater degree than others; some, such as the Hutaym and Shararat of the north, are despised by the noble tribes. A father will not accept a suitor who belongs to an inferior tribe for his daughter's hand, far less a hadari suitor. This is the key to social standing in Arabia. The nomadic tribes of Arabia are herders of camels, sheep, and goats. They move from pasture to pasture, but they visit tribal markets to purchase dates and grain and to sell their animals, wool, and clarified butter (ghee). The mountain peoples depend more on donkeys than camels, and they raise cattle, which they use to power agricultural and irrigation work, as well as sheep and goats. Oil's vast revenues, poured into Arabia, have transformed and are fast destroying ancient patterns of living. The population of the Arabian Peninsula as a whole is now incomparably better off in terms of nutrition, welfare, amenities, and education, but the rapidity of the cultural change is unsettling, as are the shifts in the native population. Throughout the peninsula, the new urban centres are drawing in labour from the countryside, and the presence of large numbers of foreigners, many of whom enjoy much higher incomes than the natives, is resented. Robert Bertram Serjeant