The Population of South-Eastern Arabia - Dissertation Example

The region has a long, unevenly documented history spanning the period from the last quarter of the 5th and a larger part of the 4th millennium BC up to the early Islamic periods and onward, based on archaeological investigations by several expeditions and researchers1 2 3 4 5Since this dissertation focuses on the period from 300 B.C to 700 CE, the chronology as presented here is also confined to the same period, based on evidence of sites and artifacts found and dated in the region.This study attempts, on the one hand, to study the population by tracing the immigration into South-Eastern Arabia from 300 BC to 700 CE based on current archaeological investigations on this period.

This is to know who inhabited the region at that time. In addition, this is supplemented by also tracing historical sources about the early migrations to the region. For instance, if the Yemeni medieval historian al-Hamdani mentions “Abna” as Persian-speaking high-status minority groups in parts of Yemen for the 9th century CE, then one may conclude that such smaller pockets of elite minority Persian speakers may well have existed in wider parts of southern Arabia (including South-Eastern Arabia) two centuries before al-Hamdani.

Along with such correlations of archaeological evidence with historical source indications, certain hypotheses have been established about the majority (Arabic and other Semitic speakers) and minority groups for South Eastern Arabia. This was combined with an assessment of the historical dynamics of the dissemination, the simultaneous expansion of some and the shrinking of other languages in the area as outlined above.In a second step, this study has been undertaken to identify the tribes and groups in the overall South Eastern Arabian area for the period in question.