Page 13 - Arabian Studies (I)

NEW LIGHT ON THE HIMYARITIC

CALENDAR
by A. F, L. BEESTON

The list of month names attested in the pre-Islamic South Arabian
inscriptions of the fourth to sixth century A.D. differs to a
considerable extent, though not entirely, from the names attested in
earlier Sabaean dialect material. In a monograph which 1 published in
1956,1 I listed eleven names occurring in texts attributable to the
late period; and I made an attempt, based on analysis of the
epigraphic data, to suggest approximately where seven of these
months occurred in the year, but had to admit that evidence for
siting the remaining four names was not available.
Some four years ago, both Professor R. B. Serjeant and Professor
M. al-Ghul drew my attention to an Arabic qasidah dealing with the
seasons and ascribed to a certain al-Bahr al-Na‘amI, a resident of
San‘a’ and a member of the Himyarite family called A1 Dili Na‘amah,
which contained references to the Himyaritic month names. While
this showed manifest connections with the epigraphic evidence, the
manuscript tradition did not seem very secure, for there are several
obvious scribal corruptions in it, and one name is missing. However,
Professor Serjeant has now kindly placed at my disposal a transcript
from an Arabic prose work on agriculture2 which he is currently
engaged in editing, and which also contains a list of the Himyarite
months together with their equivalents in the calendar which is used
today in Syria and adjoining countries, i.e. the one in which
January = Kanun al-thanl, February = Shubat, etc. These month
names are moreover used for agricultural purposes at the present day
in Yemen.3 The Himyaritic names in the Arabic prose text show so
close a correspondence to the epigraphic names that it must be
accepted as embodying a completely authentic tradition. Moreover,
the identifications given for those names do not, except in one
instance,4 differ by more than one month from the placings which I
had, in my earlier monograph, deduced from the epigraphic evidence.
Not only can we thus feel reasonably confident that we now know

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