By Wefa M. S.
In “Ancient and Oriental Music” book edited by Egon Wellesz, chapter V, page 236, “The Music of Ancient Mesopotamia”, Henry George Farmer states, “…It has been said that ‘the old danced whilst the young made music. One imagines that there were toil songs among the ancient Semites, as we know in the ‘well song’ of Numbers xxi.17. Singers and drummers, in a picture of Assyrians felling palm-trees, certainly appear to be facilitating labor. Indeed an Assyrian annalist gives a picture of the Arabs who, as prisoners of war, were working as slaves at Nineveh, where they sang their native songs to relieve their sorrows. Their exotic music fascinated the idle Assyrians who begged for more.”
The earliest mention of the term
‘Arab’ was recorded during the reign of the Assyrian King, Salmanassar III
(858-824 BCE) when Assyrians were at war near Al-Asi River, north of Homa in
Syria. The war was between the Assyrian army on one side and the Arameans,
Phoenicians and Arabs on another; all backing the king of Damascus. The war
ended in favor of the Assyrian King who wrote: “Qarqar is the capital; I burnt
and destroyed it: 1200 Knights, 20,000 soldiers and 1000 camels for the Arab
Jandibo….”
During the Assyrian king, Tiglat Pilesar III (745-727 BCE), who was mentioned in the Torah, Arabian queen, Zabiba, was recorded as follows: “…and so the Aribi [meaning Arabian] queen, Zabiba paid taxes …” to the Assyrian king Pilesar III. In his reign, there was also a mention of another Arabian queen, Sams, Shams or Shamsa.
Arabs were also mentioned during
King Sargon II (721-705 BCE). He was quoted as saying, “The distant Arabs who
live in the Badiya [or Peninsula] don’t have a king or ruler and they never
paid taxes to any king before me.”
In documenting the war against
Babylonians, Assyrian King, Sencharib (705-681 BCE) stated that, “he took
soldiers of an Arabian army, led by Basqanu, as prisoners”. Basqanu was the
brother of Arabian queen Yatie. In 691 BCE, Sencharib also mentioned that he
went to war against another Arabian queen, Talkhono, and later against the Arab
King, Khazayli (خزعلي).
The term ‘Arab’ was recorded in
Assyrian manuscripts as Aribi, Arbi, Arabi or Urbi. Arabs were also mentioned
numerous times in the Torah as well as ancient Greek and Roman
manuscripts.
Therefore, the statements indicating
that Arab history began with Islam and in the Arabian Peninsula are far from
the truth. In ancient times, and depending on who was in power and where they
lived, Arabs spoke their native language, Arabic, and the languages of the
region, Aramaic and Hebrew; all Semitic languages. There is absolutely no
evidence as to which of the Semitic languages appeared or was spoken
first. One thing is certain: Only Arabic (of all Semitic languages) is still
used closest to its original form (more than one and half thousand years) in
books, newspapers, TV/radio, films, the UN and in religious mosques and
institutions with the largest number of speakers (in comparison to speakers of other Semitic languages).
Jaroslav Stetkevych*, an emeritus
professor of Arabic at the University of Chicago, described Arabic language as
follows: “It has lived for one millennium and a half essentially unchanged,
usually gaining, never completely losing. Venus-like, it was born in a perfect
state of beauty, and it has preserved that beauty in spite of all the hazards
of history and all the corrosive forces of time. It is true that there was not
always that Praxitelean limpidity of line about it. Figuratively speaking, it
has known its Gothic, its Renaissance and its Baroque periods. It has known
austerity, holy ecstasy and voluptuousness, bloom and decadence. It exuberated
in times of splendor and persisted through times of adversity in a state of
near-hibernation. But when it awoke again, it was the same language. The fact
that Arabic long survived and still had the vitality to burgeon a new might be
due to religious and social factors, but the quantitative ability to expand and
the qualitative capacity to attain perfection and to maintain its essential
characteristics are merits of the language exclusively.”
Ancient Arabs followed paganism and
practiced Judaism, Christianity and Islam. A minority of Arabs are Sabi'a (aka Mandaeans) who have been living in Iraq for centuries or Druze who live outside of Iraq, mainly in Syria and Lebanon. Christian
Arabs have been living in Egypt, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Palestine and Sudan. The largest number of Jewish Arabs have lived in Algeria, Egypt, Iraq, Morocco and Yemen. Moslem Arabs are the vast majority and have been living in twenty different countries extending from Yemen, Oman and Iraq in Asia to Sudan, Libya and Mauritania in Africa.
In the 20th Century and with the
European colonization and later Euro-American monopoly, the terms ‘Arab Jew’ or ‘Jewish
Arab’ became a matter of debate to the extent of rejecting these terms by
Ashkenazi Jews (European converts to Judaism), Zionists and
pro-Zionists in the industrial west. Due to this identity rejection along with the continued discrimination against Jewish Arabs (in some Arab countries and especially in Israel), the history and
contributions of Arabs in general and of Jewish Arabs in particular have been
marginalized.
The interference of Ashkenazi Jews (who adopted and funded Zionism) in the lives of Jewish Arabs has been mentioned
in depth by Naeem Giladi, Yeheskeil Kojaman, Ella Shohat, Shoshana Madmoni-Gerber, Zvi Bendor, Sami Shalom, David Shasha, Sami Michael, Samir Naqqash, Shimon Ballas and others. In his book, “Ben
Gurion’s Scandals,” Giladi mentions in details how the Zionists applied terror and used explosives to
force Iraqi Jews to leave Iraq for Israel and use them as cheap labor.
There is a large body of misinformation and errors made about the history of Arabs in general and especially in Iraq that necessitate re-evaluation and correction, not only in history books and journals, but also in school curriculum and the media.
* Died on June 21, 2021
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Sources:
1. “Ancient and Oriental Music,” edited by Egon Wellesz, Oxford University Press.
2. “The Link,” Volume 31, Issue 2, April-May 1998.
3. “Tareekh al-Musiqa al-Arabiyah” by Subhi Anwar Rashid, Bavaria Institute, 2000.