Journal of Semitic Studies doi: 10.

1093/jss/fgad046
© The author. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the University of Manchester.
All rights reserved.

VALENTINA GRASSO, PRE-ISLAMIC ARABIA:

POLITICS, CULTS AND IDENTITIES DURING
LATE ANTIQUITY

A REVIEW ARTICLE

AHMAD AL-JALLAD
THE OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY

Valentina Grasso’s monograph Pre-Islamic Arabia: Societies, Politics,

Cults and Identities during Late Antiquity is the latest contribution to
the ever-sharpening image of pre-Islamic Arabia based on epigraphic,
archaeological, and literary sources.1 The chronological focus of her
study is the 3rd through 7th centuries CE, the period of Late Antiquity.
It marshals a wealth of primary source material to sketch an account
of the social, economic, and religious history of North and South
Arabia, culminating in the emergence of Islam. The narrative is writ-
ten clearly and is easy to follow. The author should be congratulated
for taking on such a monumental project. While the book’s particular
strength is its presentation of a copious collection of primary sources,
it, however, fails to engage with important secondary source material.
This is reflected in the opening statement of the monograph, where
Grasso states that ‘the history of Pre-Islamic Arabia is a rarely explored
subject’ (1). This statement does not take into account the wealth of
articles, books, edited volumes, journals, and professional conferences
on the subject, not to mention the many archaeological and epigraphic
campaigns carried out since the 19th century, spanning every corner
of the Peninsula; even the book’s bibliography, thin as it is in this
regard, testifies against this assertion. This lack of engagement with,
or perhaps even awareness of, important secondary source material is
repeated, again on the first page, where Grasso claims that her book
is the first extended study on late antique Arabia by a single author,
without mentioning Greg Fisher’s 2019 book Rome, Persia, and Ara-
bia: Shaping the Middle East from Pompey to Muhammad, which is

1 Valentina Grasso. 2023. Pre-Islamic Arabia: Politics, Cults and Identities dur-
ing Late Antiquity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, xi + 266 pages. ISBN:
9781009252966, Price: $110.00. (Forthcoming, Journal of Semitic Studies).

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 VALENTINA GRASSO, PRE-ISLAMIC ARABIA

missing from the text and bibliography. This review, acknowledging

the feat of the work, engages critically with selected principal argu-
ments in the book. It does this chronologically, providing a short
synopsis of the chapters, with an extended discussion on the matter of
Arab identity before Islam.
The first chapter provides a brief history of the study of pre-Islamic
Arabia and offers some methodological remarks. Grasso discusses the
issue of Islamic-period historiographical works (20) and the controver-
sies surrounding their use for understanding the origins of Islam and
late antique Arabia. She tells us that ‘[s]ome recently published works
have attempted to verify the historicity of the Muslim sources’, but
provides no references so the reader is left wondering where to look
for these publications.2 The discussion does not come to a verdict
on the matter nor does it outline a methodology for their proper use,
which has consequences on the argumentation throughout the book,
especially Chapter five. Grasso then offers one paragraph on the topic
of pre-Islamic poetry (20-21). She mentions skeptical opinions from
the early 20th century regarding the authenticity of the corpus, but
pays no regard to later studies that have provided convincing counter-
arguments to these positions and methodologies, which distill genuinely
ancient material from this large corpus.3 She then states: ‘[b]ecause of
its controversial dating and irrelevant subject matter, which rarely sheds
light on the issues investigated in this work, pre-Islamic poetry will
be only marginally examined in this monograph’ (21). This state-
ment betrays a lack of awareness regarding the contents of this corpus.
Dmitriev (2010, not cited in the work’s bibliography), for example,
produced an important study of a sixth-century poem concerning
the creation of the world and fall of man by ʿAdī b. Zayd al-ʿIbādī,
a Christian Arab poet from al-Ḥīrah. The text sheds important light
on the literary milieu of the Qurʾān. Sinai’s 2019 study of Allāh, and
his role in the cosmos in the pre-Islamic poetry is ignored, even though
the topic is the direct concern of Chapter five. Klasova (2023) has
recently demonstrated how a close reading of this material can help us
understand the various peoples who inhabited the Peninsula in the
immediate pre-Islamic period, and even their involvement in the geo-
politics beyond Arabia.
Grasso addresses the issue of language in pre-Islamic Arabia,
questioning whether it could have acted as a unifying feature of iden-
tity. On page three, she presents a map detailing the locations of

2 The important book of Al-Azmeh (2014) should have at least been cited here.
3 See the discussion in Sinai, 2019: 1-4; see also Klasova, 2023.

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 VALENTINA GRASSO, PRE-ISLAMIC ARABIA

Nabataeo-Arabic, Old Arabic, and Jafnid inscriptions. The miscon-

ceptions here, along with the failure to engage with relevant scholar-
ship, will illustrate a recurring problem in the book, so it is worth our
time to discuss the details. Nabataeo-Arabic refers to a specific phase
of the Nabataean script, between the 3rd and 5th c. CE, localized in the
northwest of the Arabian Peninsula. The vast majority of these texts
were documented along the darb al-bakrah route, which is not indi-
cated on the map.4 Other important sites of Nabataeo-Arabic texts,
such as Sakākā, are also not indicated.5 The map does not distinguish
between Nabataeo-Arabic texts, which are defined as script-based, and
‘Old Arabic’ inscriptions, which are defined linguistically—both cate-
gories are marked with the same red color. While Grasso never defines
the term ‘Old Arabic,’ the distribution on the map suggests that she
has opted for the traditional definition (pre-Islamic dialects that make
use of the ʾl definite article) rather than a more holistic linguistic-
based definition of the corpus.6 Thus, the red dots confuse two distinct
phenomena: script and language. Even as such, the map is incomplete,
as there are numerous Old Arabic texts by this definition found in the
Syro-Arabian Ḥarrah,7 the Jebel Dhabūb inscription from Yemen,8
and even in central Arabia,9 none of which are identified. The map
marks al-Ḥīrah as the location of Old Arabic inscriptions, but the only
text to my knowledge that has been discovered there is the ʿAbd al-
Masīḥ amulet, which is undated, but exhibits rather advanced paleo-
graphic features.10 The caption mentions the epigraphic surveys in
the Mecca-Ṭāʾif region, led by Hythem Sidky and me, but states that
the results of our surveys were not indicated since they remain unpub-
lished. Sidky and I published the Paleo-Arabic text from Rīʿ al-Zallālah

4 Nehmé, 2010, 2018.

5 The reader is referred to the map in Nehmé (2010, 57) for a comprehensive
presentation of the Nabataeo-Arabic material.
6 On a linguistic definition of Old Arabic and its relationship to the Ancient

North Arabian corpora, see Al-Jallad, 2018.

7 For example, Safaitic C 2446 wgm ʿ[l-] ʾḫ-h nr qtl()-h ʾl-{n}bṭy ‘He grieved for

his brother Nūr, whom the Nabataean(s) killed,’ or the Graeco-Arabic text A1,
Al-Jallad and al-Manaser, 2015.
8 Al-Jallad (2022); Grasso employs my reading and interpretation of this inscrip-

tion later in the book, which requires the use of the ʾl-article.
9 Thamudic B: nm bʾtr ‘By Bʾtr’ h nhy ʾlh ʾl-kbr s 1mʿ l{y/n} ‘O Nuhay, god of

greatness, give ear to me/us’ (Al-Jallad, 2019, 97).

10 Al-Jumailī, 2016. If Grasso is marking al-Ḥīrah based on inscriptions reported

in later, Islamic-period literary sources, then this adds yet a third dimension to the
definition of Old Arabic here; and would also require the marking of several other
locales.

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 VALENTINA GRASSO, PRE-ISLAMIC ARABIA

(Ṭāʾif region) in 2021 (online)/2022 (print),11 and in the same article,

we discuss the ʿAbd Shams Paleo-Arabic inscription from the Tabūk
region.12 Given these gaps, the map is unfortunately an unreliable,
and even potentially misleading, presentation of the distribution of
Nabataeo-Arabic and Old Arabic texts, by any definition.
Grasso moves on to tackle the question of Arab identity in pre-
Islamic times (23-38). Through a superficial tour of the sources she
comes to the conclusion that pre-Islamic Arabia was an ‘Arab-less
land.’ The strongest argument for this was already made by Peter
Webb, in his 2016 monograph, which is not engaged with adequately
in the chapter, considering that many of her claims parallel and are
preceded by Webb’s;13 he is afforded a single footnote (n. 217). Grasso
devotes two paragraphs to the matter of the Arabs in Assyrian sources.14
Her main argument is that ‘Arabia is entirely missing from Assyrian
sources’ (24). She claims that while ‘Pharaoh is the king of Egypt,
Shamsi is queen of the A-rib-bi [sic],15 a clear indicator of the lack
of a common Arabian identity’ (ibid). While it is unclear how this is
meant to demonstrate a lack of Arabian identity, the distinction she
is trying to make is untenable. Both Egypt and the A-ri-bi are referred
to by the same determinative, KUR, a sign that indicates a land. In other
texts, the Arabs are qualified with the LU2 determinative, which refers
to a people. Thus, Assyrian writers knew both a land of Arabia and
a distinct people associated with it. The next paragraph concerns the
issue of Arabs in the Hebrew Bible, but is far too short to adequately
treat this material; the reader is referred to Eph’al and Retsö for an
in-depth analysis of these sources.16 The discussion of Arabs in Classi-
cal sources ignores Macdonald’s masterful article on the subject,17 and
once again fails to engage with Webb’s analysis of the same material
where he draws the same conclusion.18 Grasso claims that the Rawwāfah
11 Al-Jallad and Sidky, 2022; see this article for a comprehensive presentation

of the Paleo-Arabic inscriptions. The remaining texts documented during our two
seasons of fieldwork are currently under review and should appear shortly in pub-
lication.
12 The results of our survey, which Grasso alludes to in the caption, were

announced only after the publication of this article.

13 Webb, 2016.
14 See Webb (2016, 34) for a critical engagement with the same material,

where he equally argues that these references do not point towards a single Arab
community.
15 Grasso consistently mistranscribes the Akkadian a-ri-bi as a-rib-bi.
16 Eph’al, 1984, §2; Retsö, 2003, §8.
17 Macdonald, 2009a, V.
18 Webb, 2016, 44-47.

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 VALENTINA GRASSO, PRE-ISLAMIC ARABIA

inscription attests the lexeme ‘Saracens’, which she connects with

Nabataean šrkt (27),19 but as Macdonald demonstrates convincingly
there is no etymological connection between the two words. Instead,
Saracen appears to derive from the Arabic šarrāq ‘migrators (into the
desert)’.20 She then goes on to state that scenitae and saraceni were used
to distinguish between unconquerable Bedouins and the first Roman
allies (27), an argument similar to Macdonald (not cited), namely, that
Saracen was used to distinguish nomadic Arabs beyond Roman con-
trol from the inhabitants of the Province of Arabia.21 The same section
advances the spurious statement: ‘[t]here is no direct attestation of a
group describing themselves as ‘Arabs’ in ancient times.’22 However,
Macdonald (2009b) and Hoyland (2007) assemble numerous exam-
ples of individuals in antiquity self-identifying as ‘Arabs’ from across
the Near East. Macdonald concludes that the term Arab originated as
an endonym which signaled a vague complex of language and cul-
ture.23 To add to this, in 2020, I published two Safaitic inscriptions,
roughly dated to the turn of the era, in which the term ʾʿrb is used in
a self-identifying context to refer to the nomads of the Syro-Arabian
Ḥarrah. Grasso objects to this by stating that I claim the only tangi-
ble thread connecting the people of the Ḥarrah is the production of
Safaitic inscriptions (33). While it is unclear how this is supposed to
undermine the use of ʾʿrb as an endonym, it is a misrepresentation of
my argument. In the same article, I state:
While it is true the main mode of identification in the Safaitic inscrip-
tions is tribal, it is possible that (ʾ)ʿrb referred to the broader complex
of language and culture that bound these tribes together…[t]he inscrip-
tions provide evidence for an array of common cultural practices, from
funerary traditions, religious expressions, ritualistic installations, a com-
mon social organization and more. And in addition to this, and perhaps
most importantly, they reveal that the nomads east of the Ḥawrān—at
least those who composed these texts—shared a common language. Such
a complex of shared linguistic and cultural practices would seem to fit
Macdonald’s idea of what a term like Arab could encompass (Al-Jallad,
2020, 429-430).

19 This was the original suggestion of Graf and O’Connor, 1977 (not cited).
20 Macdonald, 2009a, VIII, 3-4, 6-10.
21 Macdonald, 2009b, 297.
22 This is the exact conclusion of the first chapter of Webb’s book (2016, 49,

not cited): ‘there was no tradition in ancient times of groups using the word ‘Arab’
to describe themselves.’
23 Macdonald, 2009b, 304.

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 VALENTINA GRASSO, PRE-ISLAMIC ARABIA

Grasso’s claim that no groups in antiquity referred to themselves

as Arabs also rests on a dubious reading of the Namārah inscription,
which she incorrectly identifies as written in the ‘transitional script’
(28).24 The Namārah inscription is in fact composed in an archaizing
Nabataean script. The inscription is the tombstone of mrʾlqyš son of
ʿmrw, who is proclaimed king of all ʾl-ʿrb.25 Grasso positively iden-
tifies him as a Naṣrid without qualification, but this is a hotly con-
tested matter and no contemporary sources support this connection.26
She claims the text describes king mrʾlqyš as ‘the leader of the ʾAsd
and Madhḥij tribes whom he conquered during a military campaign
to Najrān’ (ibid). This too is incorrect. The inscription states that he
ruled over Nizār, Maʿadd, and an ambiguous term ʾš(d/r)yn, which
could be taken as the two ʾAsds, but Robin has suggested that it should
be understood instead as the ‘two Syrias.’27 He is not described as a
leader of Maḏḥig (=Maddhij), but rather as waging war against them,
ḥrb mdḥgw. These errors do not inspire confidence in the author’s
ability to handle epigraphic texts.
Grasso invokes Macdonald’s edition of the inscription, in which
he follows Zwettler’s argument that ʾl-ʿrb should refer to one of the
areas of northern Mesopotamia referred to as ʿrb in the Old Syriac and
Hatran inscriptions.28 This explanation rests on two philologically
problematic points. The first is that the phrase ʾl-ʿrb kl-h (all the ʿrb)
should read instead ʾl-ʿrb kl-hʾ (with a feminine singular pronoun)
or kl-hm (with a masculine plural pronoun) if referring to a people.
But in the same edition, Macdonald presents an ingenious solution
to this—the Arabic dialects of the region, as known from the Safaitic
inscriptions, exhibit a feminine singular suffix pronoun that termi-
nated in a consonant, so -ah, as in some modern Arabic dialects. If the
language of the Namārah inscription exhibited the same form, then
24 There is no engagement with Webb (2016,75)’s understanding of the Namārah

inscription, where he also argues that ʾl-ʿrb does not refer to a community of people
who identified as ‘Arabs’.
25 For the most recent edition of this text, see Macdonald, in Fiema et al., 2015,

406.
26 See Fisher and Macdonald’s contribution in Macdonald, 2015b, 75-76.
27 Robin in Bordreuil et al., 1997, 267.
28 Macdonald in Fiema, 2015, 406-407. Grasso departs from Macdonald’s

edition and instead follows Bellamy’s (1985) reading of line 4 as frsw ‘and they were
made chief men’, to support Marʾ al-Qays’ status as a Roman phylarch. Macdonald’s
edition, based on a close examination of the stone itself, proves Bellamy’s reading to
be impossible, and should thus be discarded. The interpretation of line 4 is the sub-
ject of serious debate. See Al-Jallad (2021a) for an alternative analysis that removes
phylarch status.

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 VALENTINA GRASSO, PRE-ISLAMIC ARABIA

the feminine singular pronoun, which would be the expected referent

for a group in Arabic, would be spelled simply as -h, removing any
problem in the interpretation of ʾl-ʿrb kl-h as ‘all the Arabs.’29 The
second issue arises from the equation of ʾl-ʿrb with the region called
ʿrb in northern Mesopotamia. In all of its attestations, the region ʿrb is
an undefined proper noun. If the Namārah inscription were referring
to the same region, the line should read mlk ʿrb kl-h. Rather, the use
of the definite article strongly suggests that it is referring to a group
rather than a toponym. This exact phrase finds a parallel in the Hatran
inscriptions, ‘the Arabs, all of them’, suggesting that it is a pan-tribal
identity.30 Corroboration also comes from the South Arabian inscrip-
tions, which Grasso discusses following this section.31 The South Ara-
bians refer to groups from the same region, and in many cases the same
tribes, as ʾʿrb, the plural of ʿrby.
Thus, we have two witnesses from opposite sides of the Penin-
sula referring to tribes in central and northern Arabia as Arabs; this
strongly suggests that the term was used as an endonym, which was
adopted by neighboring peoples.32 The Namārah inscription is an
official text composed in the Arabic language, in a script which is to
become the Arabic script, which employs ʿrb as an endonym, and
refers to tribal groups called ʿrb by others. To argue that there was no
self-conscious Arab identity in this period would appear to be special
pleading. What is more, the following centuries exhibit a process
of further cultural homogenization. In the 1st millennium BCE and
the early centuries of the 1st millennium CE, central and north Ara-
bia boasted a number of distinct scripts and languages, used by both
oasis dwellers and nomads. Between the 4th and 6th centuries CE,
these scripts and languages had all given way to the Nabataeo-Arabic
script and written register. By the sixth century, all of north and west
Arabia, excluding Yemen, was employing the Arabic script and lan-
guage, and, in addition to this, the Roman Era of Bostra (also used
in the Namārah inscription). Moreover, these inscriptions display a

29 See Al-Jallad, 2021.

30 Retsö, 2003, 468.
31 Grasso does not engage with Robin’s 2006 important analysis of the refer-

ences to ʿrb/ʾʿrb in the Ḥimyarite inscriptions.

32 Grasso (32, n. 192) states that the tribes referred to as ʾʿrb did not consider

themselves to be Arab based on the fact that ‘’Ḥujr son of ʿAmr’ … celebrated him-
self as ‘mlk of Kiddat’, and not of the Arabs/Arabians.’ I fail to see how this proves
that Kiddat (Classical Arabic, kindah) did not consider themselves Arabs. Why would
the king of a single tribe call himself ‘king of the Arabs,’ a supratribal identity, when
he was after all only king of only Kindah?

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 VALENTINA GRASSO, PRE-ISLAMIC ARABIA

common liturgical vocabulary and pietistic formulae.33 Hoyland has

already suggested that the growing number of Arabic inscriptions,
along with increased commercial activity from Najrān to Damascus,
and the spread of Christianity indicate that major changes were taking
place, possibly linked to identity.34 The homogeneity of the 6th cen-
tury inscriptions, in language and content, speaks against Grasso’s
claim that the pre-Islamic Arabs did not possess ‘a distinguishable
culture’ (36).
The second chapter focuses on north Arabia between the third and
fifth centuries CE. Grasso argues that these centuries witnessed the
integration of the northern Arabians into the Roman and Iranian
empires, which also resulted in the proliferation of Christianity across
the Peninsula. Grasso repeats the claim that a new type of saddle was
developed at this time, which increased the threat posed by nomads
to settled areas (45). However, she neither cites nor engages with the
objections raised to this thesis by Macdonald (2015a), who demon-
strates that camels would not have been used as war mounts. It is
welcome to see evidence from the Safaitic inscriptions informing his-
torical reconstruction, but unfortunately relevant scholarship on the
subject has been omitted. For example, Grasso interprets the Safaitic
inscription SIJ 76 ‘he rebelled against the Romans the year the Per-
sians came to Bostra’ as referring to Shāpūr I’s Syrian military cam-
paign in 252-3 or 260 (49). The historical analysis and dating of this
text were carried out by Knauf, who is not referenced.35 Her discus-
sion of the Safaitic graffiti at Pompeii ignores the important article of
Helms on their historical context.36 It is unclear how these texts call
into question the ‘supposed nomadism of the Safaitic writers’ (49).
The Safaitic inscriptions provide abundant evidence that their authors
led nomadic lifeways and that they were also drafted into Roman mili-
tary units,37 and Helms convincingly argues that these texts were left
by Arab soldiers, not ‘active traders’. Grasso then offers an explanation
for the ‘abrupt’ end of the Ancient North Arabian scripts in the 4th cen-
tury, claiming that the spread of Christianity caused these scripts to
lose their raison d’être (51). This is based on a misunderstanding of the
basis of the dating of the corpus and their contents. There is no
evidence for an abrupt end of the Ancient North Arabian (ANA)
documentation—the fourth century terminus ad quem is simply a guess
33 Al-Jallad and Sidky, 2022.
34 Hoyland, 2017, 129.
35 Knauf, 1984.
36 Helms, 2021
37 Al-Jallad and Bernard, 2021; Al-Jallad, 2022.

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based on the fact that, at the time, no Safaitic inscriptions seem to refer
to Christianity.38 The number of Safaitic texts that describe events
beyond the desert are a tiny minority and their contents cannot be
generalized to the entire corpus. It is certainly possible that the disap-
pearance of Safaitic was a gradual process and that texts continued
into the 5th century. But this explanation would only apply to Safaitic.
The other desert Ancient North Arabian corpora contain no dated
inscriptions and make no references to events beyond Arabia; there-
fore, we cannot know when they ceased to be produced. Grasso claims
that the ANA texts are primarily religious, but this is not the case. The
Thamudic C and D inscriptions, for example, contain no prayers.
They are usually simple signatures and amorous messages. It is unclear
how the spread of Christianity would have been incompatible with
these writing traditions. Another problematic claim is that there was
a reluctance to carve ‘Old Arabic’ inscriptions prior to the 4th century
and that these texts became more abundant after the 4th century. As
mentioned earlier, Grasso never defines what Old Arabic is. But if the
definition rests on the shape of the definite article, ʾl, the epigraphic
record simply attests the fact that this form of the definite article was
not dominant in the North Arabian dialect continuum prior to the
4th century, and not some mysterious reluctance of people who hap-
pen to speak with this article form to write their dialect. The increase
in number and geographical scope of inscriptions in the Nabataeo-
Arabic script bearing the ʾl definite article suggests a process of lin-
guistic and cultural homogenization in the 4th-6th centuries CE, which
again implies the emergence of a common identity.
Chapter 3, which was originally published in the Journal of Late
Antiquity 13.2 (2020), focuses on the conversion of Ḥimyar to mono-
theism in the 4th century CE. Its main arguments are that Ḥimyarites
became Jewish sympathizers/God fearers, rather than fully converting
to Judaism, and that, based on recent epigraphic discoveries, tradi-
tional South Arabian religion survived past the fourth century in non-
official contexts.39 She goes on to argue that the choice to convert
to a Jewish-inspired monotheism was politically motivated, possibly
to strengthen Ḥimyar’s relationship with Iran. Grasso summarizes the
main views on South Arabian monotheism, beginning with Beeston’s
term Raḥmānism, an independent creed inspired mainly by Juda-
ism. She then states that Gajda regards monotheistic South Arabia

38 There is now one Safaitic inscription that likely refers to Jesus; Al-Jallad and
al-Manaser, 2021.
39 See Stein, 2009.

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 VALENTINA GRASSO, PRE-ISLAMIC ARABIA

as consisting of three communities: Jews, Jewish proselytes and more

neutral monotheists. Grasso characterizes the opinion of Robin, the
most prolific authority on the subject, as follows: a significant part
of the aristocracy adhered to Judaism while the remainder adhered
to ‘a minimalist form of Judaism’ (73). She then offers her own view
regarding the matter: ‘I argue for the existence of two religious com-
munities in fourth- and fifth-century South Arabia, namely local Jews
and elites who were Jewish sympathizers’ (ibid), whom she later con-
nects with the phenomenon of God-fearers in the Mediterranean world
(80-81). But this is hardly different than Robin’s opinion:
Just as in the Roman world, there would have been two degrees of
obedience to Judaism: firstly, a full adherence involving a strict com-
pliance to the Law and a life in separation and, secondly, a minimalist
Judaism of the kind we see in the Roman world with the so-called ‘God-
fearers’ (metuentes, σεβόμενοι τὸν Θεόν, or θεοσεβεῖς), for whom ‘fear-
ing God’ meant rejecting polytheism (Robin, 2014, 54).
In the same article, Robin refers to this minimalist Judaism as a
‘Jewish-sympathizing monotheism’40 and its adherences as ‘Jewish-
sympathizing’.41 He states that in the kingdom of Ḥimyar, this mini-
malist (Jewish sympathizing) form of Judaism was the official reli-
gion while strict Judaism was an ideal reserved for the few. On the
political ramifications of this conversion, Grasso argues:
The Ḥimyarite kings’ choice to adopt a monotheism inspired not by
Christianity but by Judaism potentially had international implications,
distancing Ḥimyar from Rome, Aksūm and the Roman allies of North
Arabia (i.e., the Christian Salīḥids and later the Jafnids). Ḥimyar may
have aimed to strengthen its relationship with Iran. (90).
Likewise Robin:
The religious policy of Ḥimyar…supports the hypothesis of a formal
or implicit alliance with Sasanian Persia. Polytheism, abandoned by
the elites in the course of the fourth century, was rejected and officially
replaced by a new religion of Jewish inspiration around 380. Such a
choice assured the Sasanians that Ḥimyar had distanced itself from
Rome (2014, 45).
Grasso discusses the names of God in the monotheistic Himyarite
inscriptions (74); this issue is taken up in much more detail in Robin’s
important contribution to the subject.42 On the distribution of the
40 Robin, 2014, 27.
41 Robin, 2014, 59.
42 Robin, 2022.

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 VALENTINA GRASSO, PRE-ISLAMIC ARABIA

monotheistic theonym rḥmnn, she incorrectly states that it is attested

in North Arabia (ibid). The Safaitic inscriptions she cites record the
epithet rḥm, which must be interpreted as raḥīm and not raḥmān.
Chapters 4 and 5 detail the political and religious transformations
occurring in the 6th century in North and South Arabia. Chapter 4
focuses on the interactions between Jews and Christians in 6th cen-
tury South Arabia, the spread of Christianity and ultimately Aksūm’s
invasion of Ḥimyar. The chapter devotes some space to the episode of
the martyrs of Najrān, but does not cite or engage with Nebes’ impor-
tant article on the subject.43 Grasso analyzes the 5th-6th century CE
Christian Arabic inscriptions from the region of Najrān and argues
that local Christians adopted the Arabic script as an ideological choice
to distinguish themselves from the non-Christian kingdom of Ḥimyar
(96). This argument has been previously made by Robin et al., who
are not cited here either.44 Grasso accepts the common connection
of Qurʾān 85:4-8 with the massacre of Christians at Najrān, but one
should note that alternative interpretations of these verses exist.45 She
supports the idea that Abraha’s campaign of 552 in Central Arabia is
one and the same as the campaign against Mecca known from Muslim
legends. Robin has shown that the two events cannot be linked, as a
new inscription of Abraha dated after September 552 has been dis-
covered.46 Grasso, however, is quite skeptical of the possibility of an
elephant leading a campaign against Mecca (121), and instead views
stories involving this animal as part of Islamic-period myth making.
She proposes that fossils of Pliocene elephants in Arabia could have
fueled this imagination. This explanation strains credulity. Even if
sixth-century Arabians managed to excavate such fossils (and reassem-
ble them properly), how would they know that they belonged to
an elephant, since the trunk does not fossilize? Through an analysis
of the religious vocabulary of Abraha’s inscriptions, Grasso argues
that he deliberately distanced himself from the Church of Aksūm and
claimed a direct Syriac lineage for his faith (124). A reference to Robin
would have been appropriate here, who interprets the evidence in the
same way: ‘[u]nder Abraha, Ḥimyar’s church, now separated from
Aksūm, drew closer to Antioch and Syria.’47 Likewise, she argues that
in opening invocations, Abraha preferred to call Christ the Messiah
(ms1ḥ) rather than son (bn), to avoid angering the Jewish community
43 Nebes, 2010.
44 Robin et al., 2014, 1048, 1050.
45 Silverstein, 2019.
46 Robin, 2015: 151.
47 Robin, 2015: 154.

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 VALENTINA GRASSO, PRE-ISLAMIC ARABIA

of South Arabia (124-125). Robin, who is not cited here either, makes
the same argument, explaining the change in phraseology as an attempt
to compromise with a population whose elites had long been influ-
enced by Judaism.48
Chapter 5 focuses on the political and religious transformations
occurring in 6th century North Arabia, focusing on the Jafnids and
Naṣrids. The chapter surveys the epigraphic corpus associated with
the Jafnids; more thorough studies of the same corpus can be found
in chapters 6 and 7 of Arabs and Empires before Islam (2015) and espe-
cially Gatier’s contribution to Robin and Genequand (2015). The lat-
ter contribution is so important to the study of Jafnid epigraphy that
its omission severely undermines the chapter. Pages 150ff. cover the
titles and career progression of Arab phylarchs. It is surprising to see
no reference to Fisher (2019, 114-120) who treats the same subject,
in much greater detail, which in turn draws on the material presented
in Bevan et al. (2015). Grasso briefly discusses the nature of Arab king-
ship (152), especially with regard to the use of the title mlk ‘king,’ but
fails to engage with the many scholars who have done this before her,
most importantly Fisher and Robin.49 She then applies Wickham’s five
criteria to define a late antique state to the Jafnids and concludes that
‘they cannot be conceived of as “states”’ (162). This discussion should
have cited Fisher and Drost (2016), who have done the same thing.
Something has gone wrong with the translation of the Jebel Usays
Paleo-Arabic inscription (151). Grasso claims that its author was
a leader of the Aws tribe, but nothing in the text suggests this; it
merely mentions that he was an Awsite. She goes on to argue that the
Nabataean script evolved in administrative centers to compose bureau-
cratic documents (152),50 and proposes a connection between the rise
of Christianity and the development of the Arabic script, something
previously suggested by Hoyland (not cited).51 It is important to note,
however, that the Arabic script itself is simply the 6th century phase
of the Nabataean script; it was not created ex nihilo but is the result of
a gradual evolutionary process.52 While the proliferation of the Ara-
bic script may have been motivated by the spread of Arab Christi-
anity, its development from Nabataean was already underway in the
3rd century CE, well before one can plausibly argue for the widespread
penetration of Christianity in Arabia.
48 Ibid.
49 Fisher, 2017; 2019, 182-186; and Robin in Avner et al., 2013.
50 A citation of Nehmé (2013,14) would have been appropriate here.
51 Hoyland, 2017, 129; also see Al-Azmeh, 2017, 148.
52 Nehmé, 2010.

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 VALENTINA GRASSO, PRE-ISLAMIC ARABIA

Grasso sometimes presents arguments she wishes to counter with-

out providing citations, so it is impossible to know whose claims she
is engaging with. For example, she states: ‘[n]onetheless, the general
view which sees the Jafnids’ identity providentially “constructed” one-
directionally by Rome is disputable’ (149), to which she offers a cor-
rective. But I know of no one who has argued along these lines. Grasso
compares the Jafnids and Naṣrids with the Germans (159); this com-
parison has been made numerous times in the literature so it is shock-
ing that nothing is cited.53
Chapter 6, which is an expanded version of the paper published
as Grasso (2021), is devoted to the immediate background of Islam,
and attempts to sketch a religious and political history of the Ḥijāz in
the 6th and early 7th centuries CE. Grasso tells us that she will argue that
‘Muḥammad built his career on the existing basis of flexible henothe-
ism, professing a strict monotheism similar to those of the surround-
ing scriptural communities and very much inspired by their preaching,
but which developed autonomously in the distinctive Arabian milieu’
(177), a view that appears compatible with Al-Azmeh (2017). The chap-
ter begins with a discussion on the relationship between Hubal and
Allāh at the Meccan sanctuary. Grasso suggests that Hubal is the epi-
thet of Dushara in the Nabataean context based on her peculiar under-
standing of a Nabataean inscription, but her interpretation is not ten-
able. The Nabataean inscription in question reads: l-dwšrʾ w-hblw w-l-
mnwtw ‘for Dūsharē and Hubalu and for Manōtu’.54 Hblw is clearly
introduced by the conjunction w, which to my mind rules out its inter-
pretation as an epithet. As Healey observed, the lack of a preposition
before Hblw simply suggests a closer relationship with Dushara, the
nature of which is impossible to discern from the extant sources. While
she claims that Hubal is widely attested in the Nabataean corpus (177),
his worship in fact seems to have been quite restricted, as he only
appears in a single Nabataean inscription from Hegra and a couple of
theophoric names. She also claims that Hubal is attested in Safaitic,
Dadanitic, and Taymanitic. The consonantal sequence hbl is attested
in these corpora, but as a personal name and not as the name of a god.
As such, it should probably be connected with the Hebrew name ‫ֶה ֶבל‬
‘Abel’.
Grasso argues that the Qurʾān must have been composed in an
Arabian milieu, based not only on its language but also on the fact that
the text mentions eight pre-Islamic Arabian deities. A similar line of

53 To provide just one example: Hoyland, 2010.

54 Healey, 1993, 154, H 16.

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 VALENTINA GRASSO, PRE-ISLAMIC ARABIA

argumentation, but based on a much wider array of evidence, is found

in Suleiman Dost’s dissertation: An Arabian Qur’ān: Towards a Theory
of Peninsular Origins (2017; not cited). The chapter continues with an
outline of the distribution of the three goddesses of Sūrat al-Najm
in pre-Islamic literary and epigraphic sources (180-184), and contends
that there is no archaeological evidence for the veneration of these
deities that post-dates the 4th century CE. Indeed, Nehmé (2021,
2022; not cited) has documented the gradual disappearance of the
pagan gods from the Nabataeo-Arabic and Paleo-Arabic inscriptions,
from the 3rd c. CE to the 6th c. CE, from the northern Ḥijāz, paral-
leling the shift to monotheism in South Arabia. Grasso then provides
a brief, and far from comprehensive, discussion on the five Noahic
gods, mentioned in Sūrah 71 (184-186). The discussion of these dei-
ties sets up the stage for the chapter’s main argument: the Ḥijāz on
the eve of Islam was henotheistic, a view that goes back to Wellhausen
(1897) and indeed can be found in Classical Islamic scholarship.55
Grasso argues that in the 5th – 6th c. CE the high god of the Ḥijāz,
Allāh, was merged with the monotheistic high god of South Arabia,
al-Raḥmān/Raḥmānān.56 To support this, she cites the Jabal Ḏabūb
inscription, of which she provides the following reading and inter-
pretation: ‘[i]n the name of Allāh, the Raḥmān, have mercy upon us,
Lord of Heaven (rb s1mwt) […]’ (192). While Grasso cites the editio
princeps, al-Hajj and Faqʿas 2018, in the footnote (n. 155), the reading
and interpretation are taken from my edition of the inscription, which
is not cited.57 The original edition understood the first line simply
as the Islamic basmala. Moreover, the connection of the inscription
with certain themes in the Psalms and treating it as a witness to the
merger of Allāh and Raḥmān are major points in Al-Jallad (2022),
which are lacking in the editio princeps. Grasso simply asserts that the
Ḥijāz was henotheistic, but she fails to argue the case convincingly.
She rejects the interpretation of the ‘daughters of Allāh’ as angels, but
does not provide any counter arguments, nor does she engage with
Crone’s proposal that the Mušrikūn were in fact ‘God-Fearers’.58

55 For example, Ibn Taymiyyah (2004, 1, 155; I thank Sean Anthony for this
reference) asserts that the Quraysh and other Mušrikūn affirm that Allāh alone
created the heavens and the earth and placed gods beside him all the while asserting
that their gods were created.
56 This has been previously suggested by Jomier, 2001 and Kropp, 2015, who

are not referenced.

57 While this article appeared in print in 2022, the pre-print version was avail-

able online since 2019.

58 Crone, 2010, 2017.

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 VALENTINA GRASSO, PRE-ISLAMIC ARABIA

Grasso then moves on to examine the biography of Muhammad

and to reconstruct the religious environment of the Ḥijāz on the
eve of Islam, focusing primarily on the Qurʾān and archaeological/
epigraphic material (195-202). At only six pages, it is an entirely inade-
quate treatment of the subject matter, and is not abreast of the latest
developments in the field.59 The section mishandles the epigraphic
sources pertaining to this subject. In attempt to argue for Jewish com-
munities across Arabia, she refers to three Safaitic inscriptions that
supposedly attest to ‘Jewish communities living between Ḥawrān
and North Arabia’ (220). The mention of yhd in Safaitic does not
refer to local, Arabian Jewish tribes, but rather the Hasmoneans and
the Herodian rulers of the Ḥawrān.60 The discussion of the inscrip-
tional evidence for Jews in the Ḥijāz misses the important Nabataeo-
Arabic inscription UJadhNab 538, which is dated to Passover, ḥg
ʾl-pṭyr, 303 CE.61
The final part of the chapter seeks to contextualize Muḥammad’s
ministry in the period of ‘crisis’ emerging from the collapse of ‘South
Arabia and allied kingdoms of the North’ (207), viewing him as a reflex
of a broader phenomenon of the emergence of prophets and holy men
in Arabia. She gives some attention to the character of Musaylimah,
Muhammad’s rival prophet from Yamāmah (205). While in the intro-
duction and elsewhere in the book, Grasso treats Islamic-period narra-
tive sources with extreme skepticism, here stories about Musaylimah
are presented as historical facts upon which theories can be construct-
ed.62 Even though Grasso tells us there is no ‘objective evidence’ (206)
for the existence of Musaylimah, she simply assumes he did exist. The
chapter ends with a brief explanation for the success of Muhammad
and the Medinan state: unlike Musaylimah, who seems to have directed
his message to a local, urban audience, Muhammad preached a pan-
tribal monotheism.
Grasso’s book is a welcome addition to the growing number of
publications on pre-Islamic Arabia and the emergence of Islam, but
it could have been much better grounded in primary source material

59 For an excellent and up-to-date study of the biography of Muhammad, draw-

ing on non-Muslim and Muslim sources, see Anthony, 2020. Despite its importance
to the goals of this section, Anthony’s book is only cited once, in a tangential foot-
note (n. 177). Sinai’s (2017, §3) important chapter on the Quranic milieu, drawing
on the same methods, is not referenced at all.
60 See Al-Jallad, 2021b on references to yhd in the Safaitic inscriptions.
61 Nehmé, 2018, 185.
62 For a close etiology of the narratives of the Jāhiliyyah prophets, see Hawting,

2017 and Al-Azmeh, 2017, 392ff., both of which are not engaged with.

15
 VALENTINA GRASSO, PRE-ISLAMIC ARABIA

and would have benefited from a more thorough and ethical engage-
ment with the secondary literature. This renders the book not quite
up to acting as a satisfactory primer on the subject and the uninitiated
reader would still need to consult older publications to stay abreast
of certain developments, earlier contributions to the field, and the
extent to which its intellectual offerings are anticipated by those of
previous scholars.

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