Dhakar/Dhakīr

Ancient Arabian tribe that formed a confederation with the tribes of Amīr and Muhaʾmir around the 2nd cent. BCE.

The tribe of Ḏkr is mentioned in Sabaic and Minaic with or without mimation (Ḏkr / Ḏkr^m). Robin (2021: 159) recognises the people of Ḏkr in the Dacharênoi mentioned by Ptolemy (Geog. 6.7.24) and hypothetically vocalizes the name Dhakar. In Arabic, the anthroponym al-Dhakīr is found in Ibn al-Kalbī’s genealogies and offers an alternative vocalization (Caskel 1966 I: tab. 255; II: 234).

Ḏkr is mentioned in three South Arabian inscriptions. Inscription Robin-Maʿīn 1 (ca. 5th-3rd cent. BCE) is a fragment of the long list of “foreign women” taken as wives by merchants of the South Arabian kingdom of Maʿīn. One of these women is from the territory of Dhakar (Ḏkr) (Robin 2021). In the Sabaic inscription Demirjian 1 (ca. 6th-4th cent. BCE), Dhakar (Ḏkrm) is mentioned in a list of territories of desert Arabia alongside Liḥyān, Abīʾôs and Ḥanak (Robin & De Maigret 2009).

The location of Dhakar is clarified by the Qaryat al-Fāw inscription (al-Saʿīd 2018), dated to ca. the 2nd cent. BCE, where Wahabdhusamāwī Dhubyān, son of Abīyathaʿ, was king of the tribal confederation of Dhakar, Amīr, and Muhaʾmir. The tribes of Amīr and Muhaʾmir controlled a territory stretching between the Najrān region and Qaryat al-Fāw. Dhakar was probably a political entity in Southwestern Arabia.

Mounir Arbach

References and suggested reading

Siglum

• Robin-Maʿīn 1: Robin 2021.

References

• al-Saʿīd, S.F. 2018. The kingdom of Ḏākir, ʾAmīr, and Muhaʾmir in the light of a new inscription from al-Fāw, Saudi Arabia. ZOrA 11: 404–411.
• Caskel, W. 1966. Ǧamharat an-nasab. Das genealogische Werk des Hišām ibn Muḥammad al-Kalbī. 2 vol. Leiden: Brill.
• Robin, C.J. 2021. Nouveaux fragments des listes de “Femmes étrangères” naturalisées dans le royaume sudarabique de Maʿīn, in C. Darles, L. Khalidi & M. Arbach (eds) Contacts between South Arabia and the Horn of Africa from the Bronze Age to Islam: 219–26. Toulouse: Presses Universitaires du Midi.
• Robin, C.J. & A. De Maigret 2009. Le royaume sudarabique de Maʿīn : nouvelles données grâce aux fouilles italiennes de Barāqish (l’antique Yathill). CRAI 153(1): 57–96. DOI: 10.3406/crai.2009.92443.

_{Alternate spellings: Dhakîr, Dhakīr, Dhâkir, Dhākir, Dhakār, Dhakâr, Ḏkrm, Ḏkr}