Page 17 - Arabian Studies (I)

New Light on the Himyaritic Calendar 5

NOTES
1. Epigraphic South Arabian Calendars and Dating, London (Luzac) 1956.
2. Dughyat al-falldlfin of the Rasulid monarch al-‘Abbas b. ‘AIT b. Daud
al-GhassanT, ob. 778 IL/1380 A.D. See pp. 25ff. of this journal. A Ms. copy of
al-Na'amTs poem was placed at Professor Serjeant’s disposal by Qadf Isma‘71
al-Akwa‘.
3. It is of some interest to note that this calendar, as used in Yemen today, is
still calculated according to the Julian system. In western Europe, this was
replaced in 1582 by the Gregorian system, the dates of which were at that time
nine days in advance of dates calculated by the Julian system. This differential
increases by one day in each century, so that today the Julian system has lagged
thirteen days behind the Gregorian one. Consequently, the 1st of Kaniin al-thanT
in the Yemeni calendar as used today is 14 January in the modern European
reckoning. This is attested in a report prepared for the United Nations
Development programme by ‘Abd Allah al-Eryani, with reference UNDP/FAO,
Survey of the Agricultural Potential of the Wadi Zabid, Tcsco-Vizitcrv-Vituki,
Budapest 1971 (AGL:SF/YEM 1, technical report no. 9); see p. 7 there, and
A. M. A. Maktari, Water rights and irrigation practices in Lahj, Cambridge, 1971,
177.
Of course, if the Gregorian system were to be projected backwards before the
sixteenth century, the difference between it and the Julian system would
become progressively less as far as the sixth century, in which the two datings
would be identical. There is consequently not much risk of error involved, when
speaking of an early period, in using Grcgorian-style datings, specially since we
would not in any case expect an absolutely precise correlation between the
Himyaritic months and those of another calendar.
4. I was in error in my placing of dm'n.
5. J. Ryckmans, in a private communication of 7.10.1972, writes: ‘(Jn
examen meme superficiel de la planche de C 46 montre que cet estampage a etc
tres tres mal retouche et n'a done aucune valeur pour les details. II suffit par
example de constater qu 7/ ya des b avec barre (a des hauteurs differents), ou
sans barre transversale . . . ’ Le h du second mot se lit presque comme un h, le h
de “cinq”a une corolle fourchue comme un h.'
6. Annuario 1st. Or. Napoli, n.s. 31,304.
7. Calendars, 39-40.
8. Since, according to the report mentioned above in note 3, ‘the period 3
August to 13 September coincides with the heaviest rain’, an unusually early
flood could have occurred at the end of July.
9. The emended text of C 541 published by Sola Sole in Las dos grandes
inscripciones sudarabigas del dique de Mdrib. Barcelone-Tiibingen, 1960, gives
the reading wqflw/b’hd/’s2r/‘wrhm, with the verb to be equated with Arabic
qafala ‘return home’. This confirms the conjecture I had made in my Calendars
that this sentence is a parenthetic hal clause, ‘they (i.e. the workers) having
returned home for eleven months’, describing the period of intermission of work
due to the plague. It is inserted into the sentence ‘they completed their work in
58 days, in dm‘n of 658’. We are obliged to conclude from this that the 58 days