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Xenophon's Arabia*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 August 2014

Fred M. Donner
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Extract

In his Anabasis recounting his march on Babylon with the Persian prince Cyrus in 401 B.C., Xenophon provides his readers with many descriptive details about the area that would come to be called Mesopotamia. He speaks of villages, of wheat, barley and dates, of fields under cultivation and of many other indications of settled life. He also offers a brief description of the flora and fauna of Mesopotamia, in which he mentions wormwood, aromatic shrubs, wild asses, bustards, gazelles and ostriches. Musil, who travelled extensively in this region at the beginning of the twentieth century, commented favourably on the accuracy of some aspects of the picture drawn by Xenophon.

Yet, for all the verisimilitude of Xenophon's description, anyone who has travelled in Mesopotamia, or who is familiar with the accounts of it found in later classical authors such as Strabo or Pliny, cannot help but feel that something is missing in Xenophon's account. What is missing is any reference to pastoral life in the region, particularly the camel pastoralism long associated with Arabia and Arabs. Sheep are mentioned, in passing, only once in the sections of the book devoted to Xenophon's passage through this area, in association with the villages of Cyrus's mother, Parysatis, situated along the upper Tigris, and there is no mention whatsoever of goats or camels, or of nomadic pastoralists who might have herded flocks of such animals. This dearth of positive evidence for nomadism in Xenophon's account might tempt one to conclude that pastoral nomads—at least Arab nomads of the kind described by Strabo and Pliny—had not yet arrived in this area in 401 B.C. But Xenophon himself thwarts such a ready conclusion by calling the part of Mesopotamia lying east of the Khābūr river “Arabia”, a name which in itself implies the existence of Arab nomads.

Type
Research Article
Information
IRAQ , Volume 48 , 1986 , pp. 1 - 14
Copyright
Copyright © The British Institute for the Study of Iraq 1986

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Footnotes

*

It is a pleasure to thank my colleagues Robert Biggs, Walter Farber, Donna Freilich, Charles E. Jones and especially Matthew Stolper of the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago for assistance and for many helpful suggestions. For convenience I have cited the Loeb translation of classical texts in most cases. The following abbreviations are used in the notes:

BSOAS = Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London

JAOS = Journal of the American Oriental Society

PW = Paulys Real-Encyclopädie der classischen Altertumswissenschaft … neue Bearbeitung … hrsg. v. Georg Wissowa (Stuttgart: J. B. Metzler, 1894–1963, with supplements)

RLA = Reallexikon der Assyriologie (Berlin & Leipzig: Walter de Gruyter & Co., 1928—continuing)

ZDMG = Zeitschrift der deutschen morgenländischen Gesellschaft

References

1 Xenophon, of course, never uses the term “Mesopotamia,” which apparently first appears in Greek works of the Hellenistic period ( Schachermeyr, F., “Mesopotamien (Name),” in PW 29, column 1106Google Scholar; Finkelstein, J.J., ‘“Mesopotamia”,” Journal of Near Eastern Studies 21 [1962], 73–92 discusses the use of this term and its precursors)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. In the present article, “Mesopotamia” will designate the area lying between the Euphrates and the Tigris rivers, from the Taurus mountains in the north to the place where the two rivers come closest to one another in central Iraq, near modern Baghdad, in the south (see map). This usage differs somewhat from the traditional one, which employs the term “Mesopotamia” for the whole area between the two rivers, down to the Persian Gulf. In our usage, the southern half of the Tigris-Euphrates valley in Iraq—roughly south of Babylon—will be referred to as “Babylonia.” For a detailed study of the historical geography of Mesopotamia (in our sense of the word), see Dillemann, Louis, Haute-Mésopotamie orientale et pays adjacents (Paris: Paul Geuthner, 1962)Google Scholar.

Xenophon's route of march through this area has been most carefully reconstructed by Musil, Alois, The Middle Euphrates (New York: American Geographical Society, 1927), Appendix II, 213–26Google Scholar; by Barnett, R. D., “Xenophon and the Wall of Media,” Journal of Hellenic Studies 83 (1963), 1–26 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and by Boucher, Arthur, L'Anabase de Xenophon (Paris and Nancy: Berger-Levrault, 1913)Google Scholar. The last, while including some useful material, has not found general acceptance; his identification of Xenophon's Thapsakos with Birecik, for example, is refuted by Honigmann, E. (“Thapsakos”, PW series II, vol. 9A, column 1277)Google Scholar. Cf. also note 5 below. Bell, Gertrude, “The East Bank of the Euphrates from Tel Ahmar to Hit,” Geographical Journal 36 (1910), 513–37CrossRefGoogle Scholar, proposes several identifications for toponyms from Xenophon's march.

2 Middle Euphrates, 222, on the bluffs and gullies around Pylae, which he evidently places near the modern town of Hīt: “Xenophon's picture of this part of the Euphrates valley is true to nature.”

3 Anabasis, II.4.27. Assuming that πρόβατα, “cattle”, means “sheep”, as it usually does. Cf. Barnett, 25, on the possible location of these villages.

4 Aramean nomads, herding asses and sheep, had of course penetrated Mesopotamia and dominated it during the second millennium B.C., but they had long since become settled and assimilated with the local village population. The standard work on this phenomenon is Kupper, Jean-Robert, Les nomades en Mésopotamie au temps des rois de Mari (Paris: Société d'Editions “Les Belles Lettres”, 1957)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; see also his essay, “Le rôle des nomades dans l'histoire de la Mésopotamie ancienne,” Journal of the Economie and Social History of the Orient 2 (1959), 113–27Google Scholar. Briant, Pierre, Etat et pasteurs au Moyen-Orient ancien (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press and Paris: Editions de la Maison des sciences de l'homme, 1982)Google Scholar finds Arabs in eastern Mesopotamia in the fifth century B.C., but does so on the basis of Xenophon's use of the term “Arabia” to designate that region (pp. 119–25); cf. note 16 below.

On nomads in Mesopotamia during the first six centuries A.D., see Dillemann, , Haute-Mésopotamie orientale, esp. 73–9Google Scholar, “La Steppe et le Nomadisme.”

5 Assuming that Xenophon's “Araxes” really is the Khābūr, as argued by most modern students of the problem. Only Boucher, L'Anabase, 45, adopts a different opinion; he identifies Xenophon's Araxes with the river Balīkh, and his Mascas with the Khābūr, largely on the basis of Xenophon's account of the length of the marches. Musil, , Middle Euphrates, 221 Google Scholar, derives the name Araxes “from the Arabic designation for the canal bringing water from al-Ḫâbûr to the ancient town of Corsote. This canal, already known to the Assyrian king Tukulti Enurta II, was called in the Middle Ages, as it is today, Dawrîn, and emptied into the Euphrates at the foot of the rocks of al-'Arṣi … “Araxes” is the Greek transliteration of the Arabic 'Arasi ('Arṣi or 'Erṣi in dialect) …” Barnett, , “Xenophon …”, 3 Google Scholar and Dillemann, , Haute-Mésopotamie orientale, 74 Google Scholar, simply state the equation Araxes = Khābūr. One wonders, however, whether Xenophon was referring not to the lower Khābūr itself, but to one of its upper tributaries, the Zergan; in the sixth century A.D., at least, its district is called the Arxama or Arzama (cf. sources cited in Dillemann, , Haute-Mésopotamie orientale, 103 and index)Google Scholar.

6 On the Gordyaeans ( = the ancient Carduchi) and Mygdonians, see Dillemann, , Haute-Mésopotamie orientale, 110–13Google Scholar; cf. Strabo, , Geography XVI.1.23–4Google Scholar. See also Briant, 61, 71 on the Carduchi.

7 Cf. Strabo, XVI.3.1, on skēnitai in Mesopotamia—but here the latter means the area between the Tigris and Euphrates in southern Iraq, i.e., not Mesopotamia as we use it in this essay, but Babylonia.

8 e.g. Natural History V.21 on Thapsacus = Amphipolis on the Euphrates in Syria; VI.32 on Chaldeans in southern Iraq. Presumably skēnitae = camel pastoralists, nomades = pastoralists in varying degrees of seden-tarization: see Dillemann, , Haute-Mésopotamie orientale, 88 Google Scholar.

9 See Dillemann, , Haute-Mésopotamie orientale, 95–9Google Scholar, who suggests that the Mandani may have been the same as the Orrhoei.

10 Xenophon's Hellenica and his lesser writings do not seem to refer to Arabia or Arabians, or to provide any further information on Mesopotamia.

11 Cook, J. M., The Persian Empire (London: J. M. Dent & Sons Ltd., 1983), 202 Google Scholar.

12 On the chronology of Xenophon's campaign, see Breitenbach, H. R., “Xenophon (6)”, PW series 2, volume 18, column 1579 ff. (“Analytischer Index”)Google Scholar; Anderson, J. K., Xenophon (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1974), 197 Google Scholar. Boucher, , L'Anabase, 45 Google Scholar, puts the march from Thapsacus to the Babylonian frontier between 27 July and 28 August.

13 On migration patterns of nomads in Mesopotamia in recent times, see von Oppenheim, Max, Die Beduinen, I: Die Beduinenstämme in Mesopotamien und Syrien (Leipzig: Otto Harrassowitz, 1939), esp. 22 ff.Google Scholar; Dillemann, , Haute-Mésopotamie orientale, 73–4Google Scholar; Raswan, Carl R., “Tribal Areas and Migration Lines of the North Arabian Bedouins,” The Geographical Review 20 (1930), 494–502 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; also Bell, “The East Bank of the Euphrates …”, infra.

14 Anabasis 1.5.1; Diodorus Siculus, Library of History XIV.21. On Cyrus's expedition and the return of the Ten Thousand in general: XIV.19–31, 37.

15 These inscriptions are conveniently presented in Kent, Roland, Old Persian (New Haven: The American Oriental Society, 1953)Google Scholar. The additional texts and fragments discovered since the publication of Kent's collection contain no references to Arbāya: see Mayrhofer, Manfred, Supplement zur Sammlung der altpersischen Inschriften (Wien: Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1978)Google Scholar.

16 Schachermeyr, F., “Mesopotamien (Bevölkerung),” in PW 29, column 1131Google Scholar. Ernst Herzfeld's Statement that the land between the Khābūr, the Tigris and the Euphrates was called “Arabia” in the Achaemenid inscriptions seems unfounded (“Hatra,” ZDMG 68 [1914], 655–76)Google Scholar. In The Persian Empire. Studies in Geography and Ethnography of the Ancient Near East (Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner, 1968), 304–6Google Scholar, Herzfeld justifies this conclusion mainly on the basis of Xenophon's usage of “Arabia” in Anabasis 1.5; the other evidence Herzfeld adduces, however, including the quotes from Hecataeus in Herodotus IV.39, highlights the anomalous character of Xenophon's usage and makes it appear more likely that Arbāya in Old Persian meant the Syrian steppe, i.e. west of the Euphrates. Segal, J. B., “Some Syriac inscriptions of the 2nd–3rd centuries A.D.”, BSOAS 16 (1954), 13–36 CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Briant, , Etat et pasteurs, 168 Google Scholar, rely on Herzfeld's authority in making the same claim.

17 Persepolis H has “… men of Maka, Arabia, Gandara, Sind …” The last two places are, of course, in India, but the location of Maka cannot yet be determined: see Kent, Roland, “The Present State of Old Persian Studies,” JAOS 56 (1936), 217–18Google Scholar.

18 Behistun, Naqsh-i Rustam A, Susa E, and Susa M have the sequence “… Babylonia, Assyria, Arabia, Egypt …”

19 Herzfeld, , The Persian Empire, 305 Google Scholar. However, Helm, Peyton R., “Greeks” in the Neo-Assyrian Levant and “Assyria” in Early Greek Writers (diss., University of Pennsylvania, 1980), 297–8Google Scholar, observes that the conflicting sequences of localities in the Old Persian lists makes it impossible to define clearly even the boundaries of “Assyria”/Athūra solely on the basis of their testimony—in particular, whether it included territory on both banks of the Euphrates, or only the east bank.

20 See Eph'al, Israel, The Ancient Arabs. Nomads on the Borders of the Fertile Crescent, 9th–5th Centuries B.C. (Jerusalem: The Magnes Press and Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1982), 194–5Google Scholar, on the testimony of the Septuagint, the Book of Nehemiah and the silver bowls from Wadi Thumilat, all of which show that “… during the fifth century B.C. nomads dwelt near the eastern border of lower Egypt …”

21 Rainey, A. F., “The Satrapy ‘Beyond the River’,” Australian Journal of Biblical Archaeology 1 no. 2 (1969), 51–78, at p. 52Google Scholar. The exhaustive discussion of the satrapy system on the basis of classical sources by Leuze, Oscar, Die Satrapieneinteilung in Syrien und im Zweistromlande von 520–320 (Halle/Saale: Max Niemeyer Verlag, 1935)Google Scholar, must now be supplemented and corrected by fuller cuneiform evidence.

22 Rainey, , “The Satrapy ‘Beyond the River’,” 53 Google Scholar; Cook, , The Persian Empire, 82 Google Scholar.

23 Eph'al, , The Ancient Arabs, 178–9, 190 Google Scholar. Cf. 192 on the dearth of cuneiform sources for Palestine and Transjordan for the period 560–450 B.C.

24 Line 208: “Do not show to an Arab the sea or to a Sidonian the desert, for their work is different (?).” The full text is found in Cowley, A., Aramaic Papyri of the Fifth Century B.C. (Oxford: Clarendon press, 1923)Google Scholar. The editor concludes that the text originated in Babylonia in the mid-seventh century B.C. or later, was translated into Aramaic sometime between 550 and 450 B.C., and that the extant papyrus copy was made in the late fifth century B.C. The word “camel” also occurs in these papyri only once, also in the Ahiqar cycle (line 91)—as a beast of burden.

25 This analysis has been carried out by Zadok, Ran, On West Semites in Babylonia during the Chaldean and Achaemenian periods. An Onomastic Study Jerusalem: H. J. & Z. Wanaarta and Tel-Aviv University, 1977 Google Scholar; revised version, 1978), which has a broader chronological and geographical focus than the title implies. Cf. his modified version of part of this work, “Arabians in Mesopotamia during the late Assyrian, Chaldean, Achaemenian and Hellenistic Periods, chiefly according to cuneiform sources”, ZDMG 131 (1981), 42–82 Google Scholar.

26 Zadok, , On West Semites, 237 Google Scholar; “Arabians in Mesopotamia,” 80–3.

27 Zadok, , On West Semites, 215 ffGoogle Scholar.

28 Zadok, , On West Semites, 220–1Google Scholar, “Arabians in Mesopotamia,” 63–5—assuming that Zadok's “Gozan” = Guzāna. On latter see RLA, “Tell Ḥalaf.”

29 Harper, R. F., Assyrian and Babylonian Letters, vol. 4 (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press; London: Luzac & Co., 1896), no. 547Google Scholar. Some of the critical passages in the text, considered unreadable by Harper, have been resolved by K. Deller. See “Die Verdrängung des Grundstamms von ezēbu durch rammû in Neuassyrischen,” Orientalia 30 (1961), 345-54, at 350 Google Scholar and his note in Orientalia 34 (1965), 261 Google Scholar; also Eph'al, Israel, “‘Arabs’ in Babylonia in the Eighth century B.C.,” JAOS 94 (1974), 108–15, at 113 Google Scholar.

30 For Sūkhu (= Eph'al's Sukhi?) see Parpola, Simo, Neo-Assyrian Toponyms (Kevelaer: Verlag Butzon und Bercker Google Scholar; Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener Verlag des Erziehungsvereins, 1970), s.v. “Sūru”—fortress of Sūkhu—on the Khābūr.

31 Herzfeld, , The Persian Empire, 3, 46–7Google Scholar; Kessler, Karlheinz, Untersuchungen zur historischen Topographie Nordmesopotamiens nach keilschriftlichen Quellen des 1. Jahrhunderts v. Chr. (Wiesbaden: Dr. Ludwig Reichert, 1980), 229 Google Scholar.

32 Eph'al, , “‘Arabs’ in Babylonia,” 109 Google Scholar.

33 Eph'al, , “‘Arabs’ in Babylonia,” 113 Google Scholar.

34 These are collected and analysed by Eph'al, , The Ancient Arabs, infra, esp. 75–173 Google Scholar.

35 Eph'al, , The Ancient Arabs, 157–65Google Scholar. See also Weippert, Manfred, “Die Kampfe des assyrischen Konigs Assurbanipal gegen die Araber,” Die Welt des Orients 7 (1973), 39–85 Google Scholar. One of Asurbanipal's campaigns took place in the Palmyrene region, two in the steppe fringes of Syria-Palestine roughly between modern Ḥimṣ and 'Ammān.

36 The regular migration patterns of pastoral nomads depend on the change of seasons and the incidence of rainfall, which produce fodder for grazing; the purpose of the migration is, of course, to lead the herds through successive pasturing districts. Raids, on the other hand, often take nomads far outside their normal territories (i.e., outside the districts normally visited during their seasonal migrations), seldom involve the whole pastoral group, and have booty as their objective. The intrusion of nomads into settled districts sometimes occurs when drought or other factors cause normal pastures to fail; such incursions can perhaps best be viewed as aberrations (presumably temporary) in the normal migratory cycle. In other cases—when the political authority protecting settled communities collapses, for example—nomads are tempted to send raiding parties into the villages in search of booty. On raiding, see Musil, Alois, The Manners and Customs of the Rwala Bedouins (New York: American Geographical Society, 1928), 506–40Google Scholar.

37 Zadok, , “Arabians in Mesopotamia,” 58 Google Scholar, notes that he “… could not find a single name referring to an individual living/acting in Sargonid Assyria proper and Upper Mesopotamia (except the Harran region …) which is Arabian according to the most reliable criterion, viz., the phonological one.”

38 This is argued by Eph'al, , The Ancient Arabs, 10 ff.Google Scholar, with regards to the later prophets. Briant, , Etat etpasteurs, 113–14Google Scholar, argues that in much of the Old Testament “Arab” means simply “nomad”.

39 On Genesis 29. 1 ff. see especially de Vaux, Roland, The Early History of Israel (Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1978), 170–1, 225 Google Scholar.

40 Note 4.

41 As the translator of the Loeb edition, John C. Rolfe, observes at this point (note c).

42 This is argued by Briant, , Etat et pasteurs, 122–3Google Scholar.

43 Cook, , The Persian Empire, 20–1Google Scholar.

44 Walser, Ceroid, Hellas und Iran (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1984), 103 Google Scholar, notes that “many ethnographic details of Xenophon betray the style of Herodotus.” Hirsch, Steven Wayne, Xenophon and Persia (diss. Stanford, 1981), 132 Google Scholar, lists several episodes in which Xenophon closely parallels Herodotus and concludes that Xenophon knew Herodotus's work, even though he never mentions him as a source.

45 Just as Curtius did when he mentioned his “Arabia” somewhere east of the upper Tigris: cf. Briant, , Etat el pasteurs, 122 Google Scholar.

46 Musil, Middle Euphrates, mentions a number of plants encountered during his travels in this region, but makes no comment on the aromatic qualities of any of them. Most common seems to have been the ṭarfā' or tamarisk. The sidr or lotus tree (Zizyphus spina Christi), which is known to have a sweet, somewhat aromatic quality, is mentioned once (p. 151). Bell, “The East Bank of the Euphrates,” mentions only tamarisk.

47 Maricq, A., “Res Gestae Divi Saporis,” Syria 35 (1958), 305, note 5Google Scholar; Dillemann, , Haute-Mésopotamie orientale, 75–8Google Scholar, “Le pays d'Arob”; Fiey, J.-M., Assyrie Chrétienne, 3 vols. (Beirut: Imprimerie Catholique, 1965–1968), infraGoogle Scholar.

48 It is interesting in this context to compare the reception accorded Xenophon's “Arabia” with that of Quintus Curtius's reference to Arabia as lying east of the Tigris, noted above (History of Alexander V. 1.11 ). Since this area (historical Adiabene) was never called Arabia in later times, Curtius's reference is routinely dismissed as simply an error on his part, or perhaps as an indication of the presence of non-Arab nomads, e.g., Kurds.

49 Merkel, Eberhard, “Erste Festsetzung im fruchtbaren Halbmond,” in Altheim, Franz and Stiehl, Ruth, Die Araber in die alten Welt, I (Berlin: W. de Gruyter, 1964), 164 Google Scholar. Merkel, Even, however, accepts without further examination the authenticity of Xenophon's reference to “Arabia” (p. 165)Google Scholar.

50 Segal, J. B., Edessa, ‘The Blessed City’ (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1970), 16 Google Scholar; Merkel, , “Erste Festsetzungen,” 141 ff., 313 (on Ḥimṣ, Sinjār)Google Scholar; Herzfeld, Ernst, “Hatra,” ZDMG 68 (1914), 655–76Google Scholar.

51 On these developments see esp. Dostal, W., “Zur Frage der Entwicklung des Beduinentums,” Archiv für Völkerkunde 13 (1958), 1–14 Google Scholar; also Bulliet, Richard, The Camel and the Wheel (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1975), 87–110 Google Scholar.