THE SO-CALLED HARLOTS of HADRAMAUT by A. F. L. Beeston
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THE SO-CALLED HARLOTS OF HADRAMAUT by A. F. L. Beeston The Kitäb al-Muhabbar of Muhammad ibn Habib al-Bagdadi who died in A.H. 245, contains the following curious passage 1 relative to the apostacy of Hadramaut after the death of the prophet Muhammad. The women who desired the death of Muhammad and their story. When the Prophet of God died, the news of it was carried to Hadramaut by a man of Kulaib, of the Ban! 'Amir ibn 'Auf of the Ban! '1-Gilah, whose name was Gahbal; this family still lives in , Hadramaut at a village called Rahbah. There were in Hadramaut six women, of Kindah and Hadramaut, who were desirous for the death of the Prophet of God; they therefore [on hearing the news] dyed their hands with henna and played on the tambourine. To them came out the harlots of Hadramaut and did likewise, so that some twenty-odd women joined the six. They belonged to various villages of Hadramaut, in Tarim and Mastah 2 and Nugair 3 and Tin`ah 4 and Sabwah5 5 and Damar, and included the following: 1 Edition Haidarabad 1942, pp. 184-9. I am much indebted to Dr R. B. Serjeant of the School - of Oriental and African Studies of London University for first drawing my attention to this inter- esting text. 2 See Hamdani's Gazirat (edition D. H. Miiller, 1884, p. 87) where Mastah is described as a medium-sized village in the neighbourhood of Sibam. 3 Hamdani (Gazirat, p. 203) describes this as "one of the famous castles". It was here that the anti-Muslim party made their last stand on the "day of Nugair". 4 Yaqflt (edition Wiistenfeld, 1866, vol. i, p. 879) identifies Tin'ah as a village in Hadramaut in the neighbourhood of the Wadi Barahut. This wadi (see Encyclopedia of Islam s.v.) enjoyed both in pre-Islamic and in Islamic times an unsavoury reputation arising from its sulphur spring, the Bir Barahut, called by Pliny "Stygis aquae fons", and equally in Islamic times it was said that the wailing of the damned souls could be heard there. Close by was also the ancient monument known as "the tomb of Hud", which was and is "the most important place of pilgrimage in South Arabia". In view of all this, I suspect that we should not be far wrong in recognising this area as the centre of a pagan cult. 1 Although now an insignificant village, Sabwah was in pre-Islamic times not only the 'Amarradah daughter of Ma'dikarib; and Hunaidah daughter of Abisamir; both of these belonged to the asraf. Those who joined them were: al-Taiha' the Hadrami woman, mother of Saif ibn Ma'dikarib; Umm Šaräl,1ïl, daughter of 'Ufair, the grandmother of (Abd al-Rahman ibn Harun of the Urhub 홢 ; Habirah daughter of Suraih, of the Urhub; Furaidah the grandmother of Abu 1-Gulaih of Hadramaut; Malkah daughter of Amanah ibn Qais ibn al-Harit ibn Saiban ibn al-'Atik of Kindah; Asma' daughter of Yazid ibn Qais of the Bani Wahb of Kindah; Malkah daughter of Qais ibn Sarahil, a woman of Kindah, whose brother was killed on the day of Nugair; the daughter of al-Audah ibn Abikarib, a woman of Kindah, whose brother was killed on the day of Nugair ; a woman of Tin`ah, belonging to the šarïf-c1ass, whose name is not recorded; Hirr daughter of Ya'min, a Jewess, from whose name is derived the proverbial expression for adulterousness, "more adulterous than Hirr", and who had a brother named Mauraq who was a qain; and Umm Mi'dan. Thereupon Imru' al-Qais ibn 'Abis al-Kindi wrote to Abu Bakr al-Siddiq (now his governor over Kindah and Sadaf at this time was al-Muhagir ibn Abi Umayyah, and his governor over Hadra- maut was Ziyad ibn Labid of the Bani Bayadah, both of whom had been employed by the Prophet), saying as follows - "The harlots rejoiced on the day when 홢ahbal announced the death of Ahmad the Prophet, the rightly-guided, who had been laid to rest in Yatrib. Oh horseman, if thou dost pass by, convey this message from me to Abu Bakr the successor of Ahmad : Leave not in peace the harlots, black as chaff 2, who assert that Muhammad need not be mourned; satisfy that longing for them to be cut off, which burns in my breast like an unquenchable ember." Moreover a man of Tin'ah, who was a sayif named Saddad ibn Malik ibn Dam`ag, wrote to Abu Bakr thus - metropolis of Hadramaut but also the most important religious centre there. Pliny mentions its "sixty-five shrines" and the ruins of its great temple have been recently described by Philby and Hamilton. 1 Thus vocalised in the printed text. The 'rhb are mentioned in the inscription C. 621 along with the 'hm홢 or Himyarites. It seems to me probable therefore that 'r4b is (like '4mr) a plural of the nisbah-form (perhaps from a place-name such as ltahbah). This suggests that the broken plural formation in question was one parallel to the Ge'ez formation agbur. Possibly therefore this word ought to be vocalised 'Arhflb. I I offer this rendering very hesitantly for the obscure phrase of the original, which is printed in the text siidd '1-darn. .