Haram (site)

Ancient city-state located in modern Yemen, in the central part of the Jawf valley. Despite the absence of archaeological excavations, the remains of a city wall and an extra muros temple have been identified. A corpus of more than 70 inscriptions from the site provides information on its social, political, and religious background.

Location

The site is located on the left bank of wādī Madhāb, in the middle valley of the Jawf, 1.5 km southwest of al-Ḥazm, 6 km west of Maʿīn and 100 km northwest of Maʾrib.

Discovery and exploration

The site was discovered by Joseph Halévy in 1870. He described a mound where almost all the remains had disappeared, except for the outcropping pillars of an extra muros temple (Halévy 1872). On that occasion, he copied 27 inscriptions.

The site was subsequently visited and surveyed by the Egyptians M. Tawfiq, in 1944, and A. Fakhry, in 1947 (Fakhry 1952: 143–46), and by the French archaeological mission in the Yemen Arab Republic in 1978 and 1980. The pillars of the extra muros temple were drawn and new inscriptions were recorded (Robin 1981: 151). Today, a total of more than 70 South Arabian inscriptions are known from the site of Haram.

Place name in ancient sources

Although the site is currently named Kharibat Hamdān or Kharibat Āl ʿAlī, it still retained its ancient toponym when Halévy and Fakhry visited the place, when it was known as Madīnat Haram. In antiquity, the name Haram (Hrm/Hrm^m) not only designated the city (hgrn Hrm^m), but also the residing tribe and the kingdom centred on that city (see Haram (kingdom)).

The Carmæi tribe, mentioned by Pliny the Elder (NH VI.32) in relation to the tribe of Maʿīn (Minæi), probably corresponds to Haram. The transcription of the South Arabian h by a Latin c is a practice observed on several occasions (Robin 1992: 12).

Archaeological remains

The site is ca. 300 x 400 m. It is divided into two areas: an oval tell about 10 m high called al-Firʿ, and an extra muros temple called Banāt ʿĀd. The thickness of the tell points to a long occupation sequence.

The tell is now occupied by modern dwellings, which mask the ancient occupations. Only the ancient rampart emerges in places and its western gate is still visible.

Many deities are recorded in epigraphic documentation on the site. During the domination of the tribe of Haram (8th-3rd cent. BCE), the cults of Matabnaṭiyān (Mtbnṭyn), ʿAthtar Baʾsān (ʿṯtr Bʾs¹n) and Yadaʿismuhū (Ydʿs¹mh) were prevalent. After that, Amīrites settled in the area in a recent phase (2nd cent. BCE-1st cent. CE), and introduced new cults: dhu-Samāwī (ḏ-S¹mwy), Ḥalfān (Ḥlfn), ʿAthtar dhu-Dhibān (ʿṯtr ḏ-Ḏbn), and ʿAthtar Shariqān (ʿṯtr S²rqn).

The inscriptions attest to the presence of at least five temples dedicated to these deities:

• The extra muros temple, known today as the temple of the Banat ʿĀd, is the only one visible on the ground (fig. 1). It was built in the 8th century BCE for the cult of Matabnaṭiyān. The temple was successively named Hadanān (Hdnn - Haram 3+4) and then Arathat (ʾrṯt) in the 7th-6th cent. BCE (Tairan 2006). Later, in the 2nd century BCE, the cult changed, with Ḥalfān replacing Matabnaṭiyān. The temple was visited up to the end of the 1st century CE.
• The temple Thabarān (Ṯbrn), also dedicated to the cult of Matabnaṭiyān, is only attested in one inscription (Haram 2).
• The temple Bayyin (Byn), consecrated to dhu-Samāwī by Amīrites (e.g., Haram 30).
• The temple Mawqaṭān (Mwqṭn) also consecrated to dhu-Samāwī, at the same period (Haram 52).
• The temple of ʿAthtar dhu-Dhibān (ʿṯtr ḏ-Ḏbn) (Haram 38), built at the same period.

As the city of Haram was the political and institutional seat of an autonomous city-state ruled by a king (mlk), we would expect to perceive the remains of a monumental civil construction on the site.

No plan of the surrounding areas has been mapped out, but the accumulation of alluvial sediments and epigraphic findings revealed the existence of an irrigated area around the site since the earliest phase of occupation.

History

The lack of excavations greatly hinders the chronological and architectural study of the site. However, both tell thickness and epigraphic data point to an occupation going back to the first half of the 1st millennium BCE, at a time when the site was the core of an independent political city-state (8th-7th cent. BCE). The kingdom of Haram was an ally of Sabaʾ, and the fortified city of Haram was an important stronghold for the Sabaean military campaigns led by the mukarrib Karibʾīl Watār, son of Dhamarʿalī (ca. 685 BCE), against neighbouring city-states in the Jawf valley.

From the 2nd century BCE onwards, the arrival of a new population group in the city —the tribe of Amīr— impacted the political, linguistic, social and religious landscape. The most obvious signs of this are the use of a Sabaic language mingled with Arabic influences, changes in onomastics and in the pantheon.

The latest inscriptions from the site (e.g., Haram 28, MṢM 7249) are dated to the 1st-2nd cent. CE. There is no evidence of a later pre-Islamic occupation.

Haram is not mentioned as one of the cities of the Jawf region in the accounts of Ælius Gallus’ expedition (26-25 BCE), which suggests that it was in decline or had even been abandoned by then (Schiettecatte 2011: 69).

In the tenth century, Haram is mentioned by the Yemeni encyclopaedist Abū al-Ḥasan al-Hamdānī as a city (madīnat Haram — al-Hamdānī/Fāris, Iklīl 104). Nashwān al-Ḥimyarī (12th cent.) reports that in Haram there is ‘an extraordinary building, built by the kings of Ḥimyar’ (al-Ḥimyarī/Aḥmad, Shams al-ʿUlūm 109).

Jérémie Schiettecatte

See also Haram (kingdom)

References and suggested reading

Sources

• Hamdānī/Fāris, Iklīl: Fāris, N.A. 1940. al-Iklīl (al-guzʾ aṯ-ṯāmin), by al-Ḥasan ibn Aḥmad al-Hamdānī, edited with linguistic, geographic and historic notes by Nabīh Amīn Fāris (Princeton Oriental Texts, vol. VII). Princeton.
• al-Ḥimyarī/Aḥmad, Shams al-ʿUlūm: Aḥmad, A. 1916. Die auf Südarabien bezüglichen Angaben Našwān’s im šams al-ʿulūm, gesammelt, alphabetisch geordnet und herausgegeben von ʿAẓīmuddīn Aḥmad (E. J. W. Gibb Memorial series, XXIV). Leyden, London: E.J. Brill, Luzac.

Studies

• Arbach, M. & I. Rossi 2020. Haram, cité antique du Jawf (Yémen). Quelques bribes de dix siècles d’histoire et nouveaux textes amīrites. Sem. Clas. 13: 19–47. DOI: 10.1484/J.SEC.5.122979.
• Fakhry, A. 1952. An archaeological Journey to Yemen. Cairo: Government Press.
• Garbini, G. 1973. Haram: una citta minea alleata di Saba. Semitica XXIII: 125–133.
• Halévy, J. 1872. Rapport sur une mission archéologique dans le Yémen. JA, 6e série XIX, Jan.-Jun. 1872: 5–98, 129–266, 489–547.
• Robin, Ch. 1981. Les études sudarabiques en langue française. Raydān 4: 149–158.
• Robin, Ch. 1992. Inabbaʾ, Haram, al-Kāfir, Kamna et al-Ḥarāshif (Inventaire des inscriptions sudarabiques, 1). Paris, Rome: AIBL, IsMEO.
• Schiettecatte, J. 2011. D’Aden à Zafar. Villes de l’Arabie du Sud préislamique (Orient et Méditerranée, Archéologie, 6). Paris: De Boccard.

_{Alternate spellings: Haramum, Hrm, Hrmm, Kharibat Hamdān, Kharibat Hamdân, Kharibat Hamdan, Kharibat âl ‘Alî, Kharibat al Ali, al-Fir’}