In The Clash of Civilizations, Huntington defines Civilization as “a cultural identity”, specifically, “the highest cultural grouping of people and the broadest level of cultural identity have short of that distinguishes humans from other species. “ (Huntington 23-24) The author of Arabia and the Arabs: From the bronze age to the coming of Islam, Robert G. Hoyland, essentially agrees – “There is some awareness that [the Arab people] may not all have possessed the same racial origins, but none doubted that they had come to form a single ethnic (socio-cultural) community.” (Hoyland 229). Before we can discuss how a people as diverse as those who lived in ancient Arabia can end up having a single cultural identity, we must first look at who these people were.
In Hoyland’s book, Ancient Arabia is demarked as the land including the Arabian Peninsula, stretching northward through the Syrian Desert. This area is approximately equivalent to one-quarter of the continental US. This large piece of land contained diverse people with distinctive histories and traditions due to their original isolation from each other (because of the vast deserts) and due to their closeness to different nations and cultures near to each corner of Arabia (Egypt, Mesopotamia, Iran, etc.) (Hoyland 5). Because of the lands great deserts and lack of resources, such as the bare necessities: food and water, many Arab tribes were nomadic in nature. In fact, even the term “Arab” is used in biblical texts, describing these nomadic people, and was likely used by these nomads themselves as a way to describe themselves separate from others. Those that were sedentary generally existed near the boundaries to other nations or along habitable shorelines.
Because of the natural resource issue and weather tendencies, Arab civilizations first appeared where resources were more abundant and living conditions more stable and comfortable – in the South and East ends of Arabia. The people living on the east side of Arabia had much contact with and thus influence from Mesopotamia and trade and thus show up in historical writings first (Hoyland 10). Later, due to trade and military conquests by outside parties (Byzantine Empire, Sasanian Empire, Rome, and Iran to name a few), Arabia opened up and forced Arabian people to take part in world power games. What brought these people of diverse backgrounds together was namely language, but also their military prowess and religious ideas, the last of which became more important post-Islam (Hoyland 230-246).
Although the Arab people had influences exerted over them from neighbors via trade and greedy empires, language was their glue of unity and it primarily identified them from the others. The southern Arabs were noted as the “Arabic-speaking Arabs” by historians and it is likely a mass migration of these southern Arabs that brings the language to the rest of the land (Hoyland 233-236). Arabic is written in a script that has its origins in the Nabataean alphabet, which now, post transformations, constitutes the Arabic script. Although documents describing the history of Arabia are rare, the oral tradition of Arab poetic mastery is where much information about the history of these people is derived. One of the features of Arabic that united the people of this vast land was the ability for the diction of the poetry to be understood by anyone speaking Arabic, regardless of dialect. Their poetry was a way to write the past, especially for the nomadic tribes, who likely used oral traditions versus written as a way to pass along information (Hoyland 242). Many of the poems celebrated their military prowess, which was another part of the cultural glue.
Although many nomadic Arabs aided the entering empires with their battle skill, they still seemed to hold their own identity as Arabs. But, because of their military partnerships with these outside forces, they were also influenced by their culture, idea of imperialism, and even religion. Still, an Arab was an Arab. Even the settled Arabs, whether settled due to an abundance of resources, or because of the economic relations with neighboring empires (or conquering empires), they still held their language and historic identity enough to remain Arab first.
Even with the advent of Islam, perhaps because of the advent of Islam, the Arab identity is even stronger. Language again played a very important role of even Islamic “Arab-ness”. There was a lot of upheaval and confusion in the early days of Islam, after Mohammed’s death. It was to the Islamic nomadic Arabs that the scholars turned to in order to sort out the confusion of what laws should be composed and how Islam should be taught. Abu ‘Amr ibn al-‘Ala’ ultimately tied the Arabic language to the study and practice of Islam by promoting “Quranic and grammatical studies” by routinely dispatching “his students to nomad informants to resolve [points] of grammar, to ask about ‘the speech of the nomadic Arabs’… especially elderly sheikhs who had been alive before Islam” (Hoyland 245).
Ancient Arab identity was firmly rooted in language. Even as tribes migrated, settled, and dispersed, language was something they held in common, in opposition to the “others”. Language separated them from the Romans and Iranians, even as imperialism infiltrated their culture. Language tied religion to the identity of ancient Arabs in the early Islamic days. Even now, language plays a huge role in the identity of Muslims, as Arabic is the language of the holy book and prophet. Many non-Arab converts to Islam often adopt an Arabic name in honor of that tie. They will often have a desire to learn Arabic to read the Qur’an and even visit the homeland of the prophet Mohammed. (Hoyland 8)
By this standpoint, Arab civilization fits with Huntington’s definition, as Language is what separates the Arab from the non-Arab, more than anything else, although their cultural and religious traditions often also play a large part. It is even possible to agree with his idea of a “clash of civilizations” with the knowledge that Arabic is becoming less important in a world almost ruled by the English language. Most Arab students learn English early in life, whereas English and other speaking students don’t usually learn Arabic unless it is in relation to Islamic education. Will a war erupt over language? I doubt it. It is more likely that Arabic could be lost to assimilation. Would that change the identity of “Arab”? Likely. What would take its place? Perhaps religion.
Bibliography
Hoyland, Robert G. Arabia and the Arabs: From the Bronze Age to the Coming of Islam. London: Routledge, 2001. Print.
Huntington, Samuel. The clash of civilizations. Foreign Affairs, 72(3):22-49. 1993.
Written on October 10, 2011 for my Global Studies class, Encountering Differences
