Judaism [in the Ḥijāz] (1st-4th cent. CE)

After discussing some of the hypotheses on the origin of the Jews in Northwest Arabia and suggesting pertinent criteria to identify them, this entry briefly presents the most important sources available so far on the people who may be designated as Jews between the first and the fourth centuries CE. An interpretation of the role they played in society in this part of the Arabian Peninsula is also put forward.

See also Judaism [Ḥimyar]

The presence, in Northwest Arabia, of people whose religious identity can be described as Jewish has been known for a long-time, primarily through the Arabo-Islamic sources. The debate on their “origin”, i.e., where they came from or how and why they became Jewish has been ongoing for about a century (Margoliouth 1924, Newby 1988). Since the early 2000s, however, due to the opening of the Kingdom of Saudia Arabia to archaeological and epigraphic projects, the number of documents related to a Jewish presence in this region has increased considerably. It is therefore possible to present some of the available material, as well as a tentative interpretation of the role these people played in the region in the centuries prior to Islam.

Prolegomena

The issue of the “origin”

The question as to when and how the Jews arrived in the Ḥijāz has been discussed by several scholars, such as C.J. Gadd, M. Gil and G. Newby. The stories surrounding their origin vary from legends to unfounded historical hypotheses. Some of them are only found in Muslim traditions. The Kitāb al-Aġānī of Abū ʾl-Faraj al-Isfahānī (897–967), for instance, relates that the Jews settled in the vicinity of Yathrib after the death of Moses and annihilated the people who were there before them, the Amalekites (reference in Newby 1988: 15). The same source contains another founding legend, related this time to the diaspora after the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 CE (ibidem: 16). It states that the Jews of Syria fled to the Ḥijāz, i.e., migrated to Arabia. They were chased by the Romans who were unable to bring them back because of the desert between Syria and the Ḥijāz, where they suffered severely from thirst.

C.J. Gadd (1958: 86) suggested that the Jews may have settled in Taymāʾ under the impetus of Nabonidus in the mid-sixth century BCE. According to him, the military forces accompanying Nabonidus in Arabia came from the western parts of the Babylonian empire and Jews were well represented among them. However, no mention is made of Jews in the sources and the hypothesis that they came with Nabonidus remains very uncertain. The other argument used by the same author (ibidem: 87) is the so-called “Nabonidus’ prayer”, an Aramaic fragment from Qumrān which states that while he was in Arabia (553–543 BCE), Nabonidus had recourse to a Jewish diviner. However, this text was written at a much later date and it has also been argued that the diviner resided in Babylonia because he wrote to the king. This text can therefore not be used as an argument for the presence of Jews in Arabia at that time.

Scholars of biblical studies suggested that the Book of Job and parts of the Book of Isaiah may have been composed by Jews installed in North Arabia in the 7th–6th centuries BCE, because of the numerous references to Arabia in these texts and the use of Arabisms in the language in which they were written. The Book of Job may have been written in a context of contact with traders involved in international trade. As for Isaiah (Lemaire 2003: 286–287), the hypothesis is based on allusions to a desert connection in Isa. 40–55, but nothing in the text clearly refers to North Arabia and/or to Nabonidus, and this remains speculative.

Another suggestion is that a significant number of Jews settled in the region after the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 CE, but there is no direct evidence of a movement towards Arabia. Finally, concerning a possible pre-70 CE Jewish presence in Arabia, it is important to recall that a contingent of five hundred Jews, selected from Herod’s bodyguards, was sent as an auxiliary force to join Aelius Gallus’ expedition to South Arabia in 26–25 BCE. Note however that the latter are only specifically said to be “Jews” by Strabo (Geog. XVI.4.22–24), who is an outside source and may not have known exactly who these men were, whereas Josephus (Jewish Antiquities, 15.317) speaks of “five hundred picked men from his bodyguards”.

A final line of reasoning links the presence of Jews in Arabia to the Bar Kokhba revolt in 132–135 CE, after which a large number of Jews were sold as slaves while others fled to other regions. Rabbi Akiba (110–135 CE), who was the main Pharisaic leader during the revolt and who was a supporter of it, is said to have made several trips to “Arabia” but nothing is recorded of his journey there, of the places he visited or its political nature (which was probably to gather support for the Bar Kokhba cause). Besides, as already noted by al-Najem and Macdonald (2009: n. 31 p. 213), the “Arabia” referred to here is likely to be the Roman province of Arabia, i.e., an area stretching from southern Syria to the Ḥijāz, and was not necessarily the Ḥijāz or southern Arabia. Similarly, the “Arabia” where Saint Paul spent three years after his conversion may refer to any place in the Nabataean Kingdom, not necessarily the Ḥijāz (Galatians, 1.17). Thus, neither the wanderings of Rabbi Akiba nor those of Saint Paul can indicate the presence of Jews in Arabia in the first and second centuries CE.

Considering the above, it is probably more fitting to abandon the quest for an “origin” and concentrate rather on the available material to attempt to interpret the role of the Jews.

How does one identify a “Jewish” text?

In the absence of clear indications such as a date based on the destruction of the temple of Jerusalem, the mention of the sabbath, the widespread use of typical Jewish symbols such as the menorah, etc., the criteria which can be used are the following: the author of a text says that he is Jewish; the text is written in “Jewish square script”, i.e., the script used from the Achaemenid period onwards by the Jews to write both Hebrew and Aramaic; it contains an allegedly Jewish expression; it contains a name that can be considered as Jewish. This last criterion is the one used for the identification of the largest number of so-called Jewish inscriptions in Northwest Arabia.

The epigraphic sources

A number of inscriptions have been interpreted, for various reasons, as having a Jewish character. The most representative are presented below in more or less chronological order:

1/ Dadān: JSLih 12 and JSLih 107, Dadanitic. JSLih 12 reads l ʾẖʾb bn s¹mk hmṯbr and was considered as having a Jewish character because of the name ʾẖʾb, equated with Hebrew ʾḥʾb. If this equivalence was true, however, the name should have been written with a ḥ, not a ẖ. Besides, the etymology of ʾḥʾb, “the brother of the father” is a perfectly good Arabian one. Since the name ʾḥʾb is the only argument for interpreting this text as Jewish, it should probably be discarded. As for JSLih 107, if the reading is correct, it may contain the name ʿzryh, to be compared with that of a king of Judah ʿAzaryiah, where -yh is probably the abbreviation of the Tetragrammaton.

2/ Hegra: JSNab 4, Nabataean. This text is carved on the façade of a Nabataean rock-cut tomb, IGN 12, located in the Jabal al-Maḥjar in the northern part of ancient Hegra. The tomb is most probably dated to the first century CE, but there is no certainty on its exact date. It belonged to a man who is said to be yhwdyʾ, which means either “Jew” or “inhabitant of Judaea”. The fact that he was buried in Hegra and that the tomb was made for him, his wife and his children shows that he probably lived there and was a Jew despite the fact that he and his father bore Arabian names.

3/ Al-Theeb 2018, no. 11. This text is carved among a group of four texts at the site of al-Khuwayra, halfway between Taymāʾ and al-ʿUlā. It reads tqys br ywsp yhwdyʾ and is the second text from northern Arabia in which the author identifies himself as a Jew.

4/ JSNab 172bis, Nabataean. A sandstone sundial now kept in the Museum of Istanbul, discovered in the early 20th century in the southern part of the so-called Residential Area of ancient Hegra, i.e., the ancient city (Fig. 1). The inscription is carved in relief on the front face of the pedestal supporting the sundial. It reads mnšʾ br ntn, “Manaseh son of Nathan”, both father and son bearing names interpretable as Jewish. The object is not dated but the characters of the text would be at home in first- or second-century Hegra.

5/ Taymāʾ, TM.N.004 (Al-Najem & Macdonald 2009; Macdonald forthcoming), Nabataean with some developed letters, 203 CE (Fig. 2). This text was discovered in 2009 in the city centre of Taymāʾ. It reads ¹ dʾ npš ʾšʿyh ² bylṭʾ [or: nblṭʾ] br ywsp ³ rʾš tymy dy ʾqym ⁴ ʿlhwy ʿmrm w ʿšmw ⁵ ʾḥwhy byrḥ ʾyr ⁶ šnt 20+20+20+20+10+5+1+1+1 lhprkyʾ, “This is the nefesh of ʾšʿyh, the councillor [or: Nblṭʾ], son of Ywsp, chief citizen of Taymāʾ, which ʿmrm and ʿšmw his brothers erected for him in the month of Iyār of the year 98 of the Province”. All the personal names except ʿšmw are Jewish, including the one borne by the “chief citizen” Ywsp, Joseph.

6/ Umm Jadhāyidh (northwest of Hegra), on the Darb al-Bakra: UJadhNab 538 (Nehmé 2018), Nabataeo-Arabic, 302–303 CE (Fig. 3). This text was discovered in 2017 by a team of Saudi Arabian amateur explorers called Farīq aṣ-Ṣahrāʾ, and was photographed by the author in 2021. It reads:

¹ bly dkyr šly br ʾwšw ² bṭb w šlm mn qdm ³ mry ʿlmʾ w ktbʾ dnh ⁴ ktb ywm ḥg ⁵ ʾl-pṭyr šnt mʾt ⁶ w tšʿyn w šbʿ

“1 Yea! May Šullay son of ʾAwšū 2 be remembered in well-being and may he be safe in the presence of 3 the Lord of the world, and this writing 4 he wrote the day of the feast of the unleavened bread, year one hundred 6 and ninety-seven”.

Both names are Arabian, but the text is dated to the day of the feast of unleavened bread, i.e., Passover. In the very early fourth century, it is likely that Šullay was a Jew, not a Christian. Finally, the author asks to be remembered in the presence of a god named mry ʿlmʾ, “the Lord of the world”, an expression which is also used in JSNab 17 from Hegra, dated 267 CE, written in Nabataean characters but mixing Aramaic and Arabic linguistic features. One may reasonably suggest that mry ʿlmʾ in these two texts refers to the one God of the Jews.

7/ Al-Badʿ: An Aramaic funerary inscription written in Jewish square script, 326 CE, is the first of its kind ever discovered in archaeological context in the Arabian Peninsula. It is written on a rectangular stele, inside a recessed panel. It was discovered during the 2019 excavation season of the al-Badʿ Archaeological Project (Nehmé et al., forthcoming).

8/ In the region of al-ʿUlā: an Aramaic funerary inscription written in Jewish square script, 355 CE. It was wrongly published as Dadanitic in an exhibition catalogue (Saudi Commission for Tourism & Antiquities 2013: 57, to be republished in Nehmé et al., forthcoming).

9/ Stiehl 1970 (re-read in al-Najem & Macdonald 2009), found in Jedda but said to come from Hegra, 356 CE. The text reads

¹ dnh ----{š}----{br}tʾ dy ---- ² ʿdy---- br ḥny br šmwʾl ry{š} ³ ḥgrʾ ʿl mwyh ʾtth brt ⁴ ʿmr{w} br ʿdywn br šmwʾl ⁵ ryš tymʾ dy mytt byrḥ ⁶ ʾb šnt mʾtyn w ḥmšyn ⁷ w ʾḥdy brt šnyn tltyn ⁸ w tmny

“This is ---- which ---- ʿdy[wn] son of Ḥny son of Šmwʾl chief citizen of Ḥegrā for Mwyh his wife, daughter of ʿmrw son of ʿdywn son of Šmwʾl chief citizen of Taymāʾ, who died in the month of Ab in the year two hundred and fifty-one at the age of thirty-eight”. All the personal names in this text are Arabian except Šmwʾl, Samuel, which at this period is likely to be a Jewish name.

10/ Less than ten texts written in Jewish square script from the region of al-ʿUlā and from Jubba, northwest of Ḥāʾil, all undated. From al-ʿUlā are JSHeb 1–8 (with the exception of no. 7, recognised as Imperial Aramaic), to which should be added JSNab 223, ARNAHeb 2, as well as a text found more recently on the way up to the sanctuary of Umm Daraj (Gorea 2015: 326 and Robin 2015: fig. 1). As for the text from Jubba, it is conveniently reproduced and read in Hoyland 2011: 101 nos. 22–23 (which correspond to Euting 1885: 6 and Huber 1891: 56). The language of these texts is not always clear and the debate on whether they are pre-Islamic or Islamic is still ongoing (for a review of this issue see Robin 2015: 76–79).

Some of the texts presented above were considered as having a Jewish character because of the names they contain. This is also the case for many others, discovered more recently, particularly along the caravan trade route known as the Darb al-Bakra, which connected Hegra to the Nabataean capital, Petra (Nehmé 2018). This is the case, for example, of UJadhNab 467, written by a man named ʿnmw, “Ġānim (an Arabian name) son of yhwdʾ [Judah]”. It is probable that Ġānim was also a Jew, which would show that members of this community bore Arabian names. The same is true of ʿdy{d}w br šmʿwn, “ʿAdīdū son of Simon” in UJadhNab 220. In some cases, both names in the text are Jewish, e.g., ʾlʿzr br ʾṣḥq khnʾ, “Eleazar son of Isaac the priest” in UJadhNab 561, or yʿqwb br šmwʾl, “Jacob son of Samuel” in MS182Nab 2, etc. In UJadhNab 561, written in Nabataeo-Arabic script (fig. 4), Eleazar is said to be a priest, the first ever known in the Ḥijāz (on kohēn, see Robin 2015: 119–120). The texts mentioned in this paragraph are either written in ‘calligraphic’ Nabataean script or in Nabataeao-Arabic characters, i.e., transitional between Nabataean and Arabic and likely to be dated to between the 3rd and the 5th centuries CE. Note that the names of some of the most representative biblical figures, such as Abraham, Moses and David, are not attested in the onomasticon of the Jews of Arabia.

Text no. 5 (TM.N.004) shows that a Jew was the chief citizen of the city of Taymāʾ in 203 CE while the two men of text no. 9 (Stiehl 1970), who are the grandsons of a man bearing a Jewish name, were chiefs citizens of Hegra and Taymāʾ in 356 CE.

A Greek text should finally be mentioned. It is carved in the pass known as Mabrak an-Nāqah, ca. 17 km north of Hegra. It was published by Charles Doughty in 1884 and re-read by P.-L. Gatier (2020: no. 7, p. 117–119, fig. 12). It reads:

Θ(εὸς) β(οήθει) Ἠσακίου υἱοῦ Βενιαμῆν,

“G(od), help Esakios [Isaac] son of Beniamin [Benjamin]”.

The combination of both names, and especially the presence of Benjamin, which is rarely borne by a Christian individual, implies that Isaac was most probably Jewish. The text is not dated but Gatier suggests that it may have been carved by the same person as no. 10 in the collection he published, a text which is undoubtedly Christian as it is preceded by a cross and contains the names Sergius and Ioannes.

Discussion

The material presented above points to the possible presence of Jews in the oasis of Dadān sometime before the first century CE, with the Dadanitic inscription JSLih 107, the interpretation of which remains however doubtful. It then indicates the possible arrival of some Jews at the end of the first century BCE, after the expedition of the Roman prefect of Egypt Aelius Gallus to South Arabia in 25 BCE, which crossed parts of Northwest Arabia and which involved the participation of 500 soldiers taken from Herod’s bodyguards. Some of them may have settled, lived and died in the oases of Northwest Arabia, although there is no direct evidence of that. There is in general no need to assume that the Jewish presence in Northwest Arabia is due to population migrations. One may on the contrary reasonably suppose that during the first centuries CE, some Arabs, in a proportion difficult to estimate, converted to Judaism, and thus bore either Arabian or Jewish names. The Jews from Hegra and al-Khuwayra, who identified themselves as such, may also have been converts.

These individuals progressively started to participate in the municipal life of the oases, as shown by the three chief citizens mentioned in the 203 and 356 inscriptions from Taymāʾ and Hegra respectively. As would be expected, they also travelled along the caravan routes, as shown by the individuals mentioned in the Darb al-Bakra texts in the probably pre-third-century-CE Nabataean script, as well as in those in the Nabataeo-Arabic script, dated to between the third and the fifth centuries CE. We also know from Islamic sources that in the middle of the 6th century, the poet Samawʾal bin ʿĀdiyā, who lived in the castle of al-Ablaq in Taymāʾ, was Jewish. Finally, the presence of Jewish tribes in Yathrib, Khaybar, Taymāʾ, Fadak, etc., prior to and at the time of Muḥammad’s preaching is well-known, documented and commented upon (Lecker 2021). Thus, in Northwest Arabia, the importance of Jews seems to have grown, and they clearly became more visible in the epigraphic landscape from the third century onwards and were probably well integrated in local society.

Evidence of how these Jews lived their Jewishness is still relatively scarce. The texts do not contain quotations from the Bible and are not associated with Jewish symbols. Yet one beautiful menorah is carved in Jibāl Abā Mughayr (Fig. 5) on a rock panel covered with inscriptions, none of which, however, seems to be clearly associated with it. Finally, as it appears from the epigraphic sources quoted above, two men specify that they are Jews using the gentilic yhwdyʾ, one inscription is written by a probably Jewish priest named Eleazar and one Jew mentions Passover in a commemorative text “in the presence of the Lord of the world”, probably referring to his one and only god.

Laïla Nehmé

Sigla

• ARNAHeb: Inscriptions in Jewish square script in J.T. Milik & J. Starcky 1970. Nabataean, Palmyrene, and Hebrew Inscriptions, in Winnett F.V. & Reed W.L. (eds) Ancient Records from North Arabia: 139–163, pl. 26–33. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. 
• JSHeb: Inscriptions in Jewish square script in A. Jaussen and R. Savignac 1909–1922. Mission archéologique en Arabie (Publications de la Société Française des Fouilles Archéologiques, 2). 5 volumes. Paris.
• JSLih: Dadanitic inscriptions in ibidem.
• JSNab: Nabataean inscriptions in ibidem.
• MSNab: Nabataean inscriptions from Madāʾin Ṣāliḥ.
• UJadhNab: Nabataean inscriptions in Nehmé 2018 (see below).

References and suggested reading

• Costa, J. 2015. Les juifs d’Arabie dans la littérature talmudique, in C.J. Robin (ed.) Le judaïsme de l’Arabie antique (Judaïsme ancien et origines du christianisme, 3):* 453–484. Turnhout: Brepols.
• Euting, J. 1885. Nabatäische Inschriften aus Arabian. Berlin: Georg Reimer.
• Gatier, P.-L. 2020. Les graffites grecs de Mabrak an-Nāqah (Arabie Saoudite). Cahiers Glotz 31: 105–134.
• Gil, M. 1984. The Origin of the Jews of Yathrib. Jerusalem Studies in Arabic and Islam 4: 203–224.
• Gorea, M., 2015. Les classes sacerdotales (Mišmarôt) de l’inscription de Bayt Ḥāḍir (Yémen), in C.J. Robin (ed.) Le judaïsme de l’Arabie antique (Judaïsme ancien et origines du christianisme, 3): 297–329. Turnhout, Brepols.
• Hoyland, R.G. 2011. The Jews of the Hijaz in the Qurʾān and in their inscriptions, in G.S. Reynolds (ed.) New Perspectives on the Qurʾān. The Qurʾān in its Historical Context 2 (Routledge Studies in the Qurʾān, 12): 91–116. London, New York, Routledge.
• Huber, Ch. 1891. Journal d’un voyage en Arabie (1883-1884). Paris: Leroux.
• Lecker, M. 1998. Jews and Arabs in Pre- and Early Islamic Arabia (Variorum Collected Studies Series, 639). Hampshire: Ashgate Variorum.
• Lecker, M. 2021. The Jews of Northern Arabia in Early Islam, in P.I. Lieberman (ed.) The Cambridge History of Judaism. Volume V. Jews in the Medieval Islamic World: 255–293. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Lemaire, A. 2003. Nabonidus in Arabia and Judah in the Neo-Babnylonian Period, in O. Lipschits & J. Blenkinsopp (eds) Judah and the Judeans in the Neo-Babylonian Period: 285–298. Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns.
• Margoliouth, D.S. 1924. The Relations between Arabs and Israelites prior to the Rise of Islam. London: British Academy.
• Macdonald, M. & M. al-Najem. Forthcoming. Taymāʾ III. Catalogue of the Inscriptions in the Taymāʾ Museum and other collections.
• Mazuz, H. 2015. Northern Arabia and its Jewry in Early Rabbinic Sources: More than Meets the Eye. Antiguo Oriente 13: 149–168. https://repositorio.uca.edu.ar/handle/123456789/6624
• al-Najem, M. & M.C.A. Macdonald, 2009. A New Nabataean inscription from Taymāʾ. AAE 20: 208–217. DOI: 10.1111/j.1600-0471.2009.00316.x.
• Nehmé, L. (ed.) 2018. The Darb al-Bakrah. A Caravan Route in North-West Arabia Discovered by Ali I. al-Ghabban. Catalogue of the inscriptions (Series of Archaeological Refereed Studies, 50). Riyadh: Saudi Commission for Tourism and National Heritage. https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-02096586v1.
• Nehmé, L., J. Norris & G. Charloux. forthcoming. Nabataean and Aramaic Inscriptions from al-Badʿ. Sem. Clas.
• Newby, G.D. 1988. A History of the Jews of Arabia. From Ancient Times to their Eclipse under Islam. Studies in Comparative Religion. Columbia, SC: The University of South Carolina Press.
• Noja, S. 1979. Testimonianze epigraphiche di giudei nell’Arabia settentrionale. Bibbia e Oriente 122: 283–307.
• Robin, C.J. 2015. Quel judaïsme en Arabie ?, in C.J. Robin (ed.) Le judaïsme de l’Arabie antique (Judaïsme ancien et origines du christianisme, 3): 15–295. Turnhout: Brepols.
• Saudi Commission for Tourism & Antiquities 2013. Discovering Saudi Arabia. Land of Dialogue and Culture. Rome: Gangemi Editore.
• Stiehl, R. 1970. A New Nabatean Inscription, in R. Stiehl & H.E. Stier (eds) Beiträge zur alten Geschichte und deren Nachleben: Festschrift für Franz Altheim zum 6.10.1968. II: 87–90. Berlin: W. de Gruyter.
• al-Theeb, S.A. 2018. Nabataean Inscriptions from South-West of Taymāʾ, Saudi Arabia. AEN 4: 107–132.