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CHAPTER 22c
THE ARABS*
lawrence i. conrad
i. introduction: the question of sources
In the present state of our knowledge it is not difficult to describe the physical
setting for pre-Islamic Arabian history, and new archaeological discoveries
in Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Jordan and the Gulf are producing much
valuable and unique evidence. Over the past century a vast body of epigraphical
material – some 50,000 north and south Arabian inscriptions and the
inscribed sticks now emerging by the hundreds in northern Yemen – has provided
a wealth of information on the societies of the peninsula, especially
the bedouins. 1 But all this seldom provides a coherent picture of the course
of events, as opposed to vignettes and bare details, and thus does not replace
a literary historical tradition. There are external epigraphic records of the
Arabs and Arabia, and historical sources – especially in Greek and Syriac –
are often helpful. 2 But this information too is profoundly discontinuous, and
in any case represents the perspective of outsiders who regarded the Arabs
as barbarian marauders and most of Arabia as a menacing wasteland. 3
There is voluminous material on the subject in the Arabic sources, but
herein lies the problem. 4 The relevant accounts, including a vast bulk of
poetry, are frequently attributed to the pre-Islamic period or otherwise presented
as describing events and conditions of that time, but apart from the
Qur�ān the sources containing these accounts are at least two centuries
later. In times past it seemed reasonable simply to compare the various
accounts to determine which seemed most likely to be true. More recently,
however, it has become clear that the Arabic sources on the Arabs in pre-
Islamic Arabia – and indeed, on the first century of Islamic history as a
whole – represent a fluid corpus that adopted a range of argumentative
views on issues important at the time the accounts were being transmitted
and the sources compiled; the result was the colouring and reshaping of
* I would like to thank Fidelity and William Lancaster and Michael Macdonald for their valuable
comments and suggestions.
1 See, e.g., Robin (1991); Macdonald (1995a).
2 See Papathomopoulos (1984); Segal (1984); MacAdam (1989).
3 On the distorted image of bedouins among settled folk, see Shaw 1982–3.
4 Two still-valuable overviews are Olinder (1927) 11–19; Caskel (1927–30).
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