Page 145 - Arabian Studies (I)

The Yemenite Settlement ofThacbat 129

Tlie only palaeographical comments made on this inscription, to
my knowledge, are those of Professor Grohmann in his description of
the development of floriated Kufic.3 7 This is a brief comment on the
letter alif as it appears in the Thacbat inscription, as one of the many
illustrations in this specialised article.
We are fortunate to have a precise date for the inscription,
Dhu’l-Hijjah, 540/May—June 1146. Because of the IsmacTlI
dominance of southern Yemen at the time, parallels in style were
sought in particular in Fatimid Egypt and North Africa. Three were
found from these areas; a frieze from Tunis in the Musee Alaoui
dated 503/1 109-10;3 a mosque inscription in Cairo dated
535/1140-41, 3 9 termed by van Berchcm ‘coufique fleuria marble
stele in the Cairo Museum dated 537/1142-43,40 and also described
by Wiet as ‘coufique fleuri’. All three, however, still retain far more
squareness in the form of their letters and are much better and more
consistently executed pieces of work. Indeed, it is because of the
inconsistencies in the script of the Thacbat inscription that there are
difficulties in its reading.41 The best stylistic parallel of all
discovered was a funerary inscription in Busra dated 556/
1160-61.4 2 In this Syrian inscription there is that same roundness
of the letters and their generally less elegant appearance which are
the hallmarks of the Thacbat inscription. For a description of the
latter, one could do no better than to quote Littmann’s remarks on
the Busra inscription. The script of this epitaph is characteristic of
the time when florid Kufic was still imitated, after the introduction
of naskhi.' The Thacbat inscription thus proves to be an excellent
example of the last days of Kufic, before naskhi Finally won the day
in Arabic epigraphy.

No. 2. Plate TV
Birkat al-Aqmar is roughly square, and largely excavated out of
the living rock. On the south, east and west the retaining walls are
largely man made and thickly plastered to render them waterproof.
The rock floor of the cistern and the north wall remain unplastered.
At the time of our visit to the village, there was little water in the
cistern. The ghayl descending Jabal Sabir drops into it over the north
facing wall to the left of the inscription and leaves it to run down
into the village through an outlet in the opposite wall. Presumably
the main use of the birkah would be in times of flood, when the
outlet could be partially blocked and the flow through the village
thus controlled. Indeed without this construction, one could envisage
serious flood damage lower down in the village after rain in the Sabir
catchment area.

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