00:02:05.080So what era are we talking about here?
00:02:10.840Yeah, so this book, Queens and Prophets, my most recent one,
00:02:14.760It looks at late antique Arabia. So in terms of time, you're looking at roughly the second
00:02:22.040to seventh century. Late antiquity, of course, is a term that's coined by Peter Brown and other
00:02:28.780sort of historians that have really given us this gift of looking at history in this way.
00:02:35.880It's the time when sort of Rome and Persia are sort of tearing each other apart and before the0.93
00:02:42.020rise of islam so it sort of falls through the cracks typically um so with this this period of
00:02:46.720late antiquity in arabia is incredibly interesting and when i refer to arabia so if i could talk
00:02:51.600about geography for a minute it includes what we would what we would say is uh greater syria
00:02:57.120including uh jordan lebanon palestine israel and the arabian peninsula including the gcc the gulf
00:03:04.620cooperation councils you know saudi arabia the arabian gulf cities i'm sorry states uh and then
00:03:10.540Of course, the book itself touches upon the history and geography of other neighboring near Eastern and even European Mediterranean provinces and countries like Egypt, Iran, Ethiopia, Turkey, and even Balkan Europe.
00:03:25.280So I'm hoping that the book is relatively comprehensive in its approach.
00:03:29.940Yeah, well, it was interesting. I really wanted you to clarify that right off the bat in this podcast, because these are some of the oldest civilizations on Earth, right?
00:03:40.540Like this area, there's so much history in everything you were just describing, Syria and Egypt and that whole area.
00:03:47.580And so we know what those countries are called now, but it's the period of time you're talking about.
00:03:53.960So you mentioned the Persians, for instance.
00:03:56.520So you're looking at numerous different dynasties, certainly different cultures, ethnicities, religions.
00:04:04.300but they're all you can phrase it as just sort of ancient arabia and that encompasses everything
00:04:11.600that you're talking about yeah so this is a very interesting question and it's it's it's part of
00:04:17.920an ongoing debate among scholars and it's not resolved so what i try to do of course uh you
00:04:23.380you have the book so you'll know at least through exposure that in the first chapter um i try to
00:04:28.820argue, what is Arabian society? It's a term that I need to define. I also talk about terms like Arab,
00:04:35.340Saracen, and Ishmaelite. So by all means, when I say Arabia or Arabian society, we're not talking0.55
00:04:42.980about necessarily one ethnic group or haplogroup or even one language or one religion. But what
00:04:51.320I'm arguing, of course, and it's not just me, I'm building on earlier scholarship, that over the
00:04:55.640course of late antiquity, the people of what I define as Arabian society, this conglomeration of
00:05:02.760empires and trade networks and, you know, warring clans and tribes, that they come together into a
00:05:09.200complex of Arabic language and culture. And that takes place prior to Islam.
00:05:15.920There is a contiguous, perpetuated through history, an entity that we can call Arabia.0.73
00:05:22.040you can sort of hold it with your hands. I say that because this is something that is vehemently1.00
00:05:27.060argued against by a lot of hyper revisionist, hyper skeptical colleagues of mine, you know,
00:05:35.040who argue that there is no Arabia prior to Islam. And in fact, there may not even be any Arabia prior
00:05:40.420to the Abbasid dynasty, which ruled roughly 750 till about 1250 or 1258 with the influx of the
00:05:48.780Mongols. And that to me is an untenable position for so many reasons. And it's one of the reasons
00:05:55.020why I wrote the book. This book is, it's about, it's about female power and pre-Islamic Arabia,
00:06:00.560but it's also about Arabia, period. So, I mean, that brings us beautifully to how you came to
00:06:06.940write this book. You talk about it, I think it's in the introduction of the book that
00:06:09.840not on purpose, I think is how you say it's kind of an accident you came upon this topic. Can you
00:06:14.680explain about how that happened? Yes, of course. So I wrote this book by accident. And it sounds,
00:06:23.740I know, a little bit maybe quaint and maybe a flippant comment, but it's not meant to be. It
00:06:28.200really is. There are a couple of dimensions to this. One, of course, is, you know, over the
00:06:33.480years, I, myself, every scholar evolves over time. We change as human beings, we change as scholars.
00:06:39.480And, you know, I was trained to, I'm a scholar of texts.
00:06:44.320I read texts in Arabic, in Syriac, in Aramaic, and, you know, Arabian dialects, Greek.
00:06:50.120And you tend to sort of just mine the sources and interpret them and, you know, reflect
00:07:34.960I thought that was a story that has not been told, and I have to do it.
00:07:38.700So I sort of veered a little bit away from just merely mining the sources, which is just, you know, we'll look at our sources and just say what they say and go into hyper granular detail about is this a biblical reference? Is this a Quranic reference? Is this a rabbinic reference? Which is good, but doesn't go far enough.
00:07:59.680What about, you know, what about, you know, who are the historical actors that are not being mentioned in the sources? And I'll mention one last thing in this regard. So I'm not alone, of course, in doing this. There's been a move in, I would say, certainly in the past decade, but even past decades, to move away from old fashioned, you know, royal histories and ecclesiastical histories and world histories, which is reflected in the sources.
00:08:26.400They're very, very useful. But to move towards more cultural and popular histories and even anthropological and social science or histories that are that are imbued with the social sciences, which, of course, I learned from, which are, of course, more bottom up.
00:08:42.100So that's also part of the picture. And I'll cite two examples of that. There's, of course, Honey Khafipur and Jack Tanous have recently written, of course, these sort of popular cultural histories on the Middle East. And I'm just, you know, I think I feel like we need to take it a step further now. Well, let's look for the women now.
00:09:00.500No, and that's a lot of what I'm doing with this podcast as well.
00:09:03.120It's really kind of finding in the margins of other people you read about in history.
00:09:08.760It's like, wait, but who is that woman that you mentioned that you're pulling a thread?
00:09:13.100And so you talk about, I think it was also in the introduction of your book,
00:09:15.720you describe it almost, it's not strictly an academic research process.
00:09:20.400You describe it as storytelling, partially, right?
00:09:26.040And I must say, I also really love the name of your podcast, Vulgar History. It's really awesome. But storytelling in this book that I have recently contributed is, and it gives us as scholars and as, you know, historians, a way out rather than sort of, you know, recreating or remaking the sausage over and over again.
00:09:51.880instead of debating, you know, does Arabia crystallize before or after Islam? What happens
00:09:57.880if we actually start telling stories and let the stories guide us? So that's something, again,
00:10:04.160what I describe as narrative history. And, you know, if I can combine my specialization as a
00:10:09.920philologist and borrow tools from storytellers, you know, what do we learn? And one, so by way
00:10:16.220of example, one small thing that we learn by writing a book in this way or reading it is
00:10:20.840We learned that storytelling, especially, for example, ecclesiastical histories that were written for the Byzantine or, you know, the Greek-speaking church in late antiquity, or world histories written for the caliph, who then was the most powerful man on the planet in Baghdad, right?
00:10:40.620These histories were written not merely or not fundamentally to serve as truth for us,
00:10:49.780you know, a thousand years later to just mine.
00:10:53.020They're actually written to share stories and build a communal identity.
00:10:58.500That's what made you Christians, what made you Muslim.
00:11:01.920So when you start to look at sources that way and you start to treat your sources as0.94
00:11:08.560these entities and texts and partners that build identity rather than, you know, arguing about truth
00:11:16.040and authenticity the whole time, you're able to actually say a lot more and, you know, explore
00:11:19.820different perspectives and find, you know, what I would describe, you know, the female agency and
00:11:25.640the female power, which I, of course, discuss at length in the book. I was wondering if you could
00:11:30.000give an example of one of the women who you write about in the book. Oh, yes, of course. So a brief
00:11:37.200introduction is, of course, the book itself has, you know, roughly maybe two parts of what I
00:11:42.460describe. I talk about pagan queens, so pre-monotheistic era queens of Arabia. And then I
00:11:51.020talk, of course, about believer queens. And the language is a little bit ambiguous on purpose.
00:11:57.320So among, of course, the believer queens, there are three who are a really big deal.0.97
00:12:01.280I talk a little bit about Zenobia, and I talk about Mavia, and I talk about Khadija, or Khadija, the wife of Muhammad.1.00
00:12:10.060So, I mean, I might say something about Zenobia since she's the first.
00:12:16.500Of course, she is described by historians as the most romantic figure of, you know, the Roman and Oriental Near East.
00:12:24.340At the same time, she's sort of mysterious, and nobody really knows, you know, the historical Zenobia that well.
00:13:17.160And another thing, of course, is that Zenobia is remembered. Her legacy is enormous in Roman and Arabian traditions for centuries. So she's such a big deal. I argue, of course, the employer of this of Paul and that Paul, you know, has he's accused of adoptionism and other weird, weird religious practices.
00:13:40.440But that, you know, it's again, I'm just looking at a node and a long string.
00:13:43.960And that if we follow along what comes, if we follow what comes before him and what comes after him, it does take you to Christianity in Arabia.
00:19:02.040No, so I really appreciated that you were expanding upon.
00:19:04.740And I guess your ability to read all these different languages and to look at the different sources combined with the approach you're taking of the storytelling really helped to put together.
00:19:15.180Or even just saying that this is what people had, and it was spelled differently, like to put that together, like, well, they mean her, you know, so then being able to add, well, here's what other people are saying about her.
00:19:27.360Yeah, thanks for bringing that up, because, you know, it's important for us as scholars and as historians, as philologists, as critics, as social scientists, to have imagination, to think and have thoughts and to dig deep.
00:19:43.040And we do dig deep. But I think there's sometimes an emphasis on not going far enough. And I think that there is a need for us. There's a need for imagination, especially if you're looking for to write a sort of a cultural history to tell stories about marginalized, but today marginalized populations that you need to actually use imagination and you need to actually go a little.
00:20:06.640you take the, take the data as far as you can. Um, and I think again, it's not, it's not that
00:20:11.220hard to do. We just have to, you know, want to do it. It's just so fascinating to me because
00:20:16.060what you're looking at is such ancient text. You know, a lot of the research I've been doing has
00:20:21.660been, I don't know, 1600s, 1800s, where you have stuff is written in English. I'm able to,
00:20:27.660there's a lot of points of view, but you're looking at what pieces of paper remain from
00:20:32.800that period of time and you have to piece it together almost where you really need to
00:20:38.700bring the imagination to just turn that into a story if all you have is one scrap of, I don't
00:20:44.460know, papyrus or something. Absolutely. And to go back again to connect what we just said,
00:20:51.200you know, to both points, this one and the one earlier, scholars do use imagination whether
00:20:56.120they admit it or not. Because when you're looking at, you know, epigraphic evidence from Arabia,
00:21:01.060like, you know, scribbles on rocks, most of which are funerary. You know, this is this funerary site
00:21:06.400of so-and-so, daughter of so-and-so, whoever touches it is cursed by the god so-and-so.
00:21:11.320You know, it's like a formula. When you look at thousands of these, and you start piecing them
00:21:16.760together, you have to use imagination as well to make those connections. Or, of course, when you're
00:21:23.980looking at literary evidence, when you're looking at books, some of the stuff that you're mentioning
00:21:27.420Now, whether those books are written in Arabic and come from the eighth or ninth century or, uh, you know, Syriac Christian or rabbinic Aramaic sources from, from earlier, you know, third, fourth, fifth century, uh, or Greek sources prior to that.
00:21:42.820It's, it's, uh, to connect all of them.
00:21:46.000First of all, it's, it's a ton of work, right?
00:21:48.120It takes, it takes, it takes a lot of training and, and, and, and toil, but it takes imagination.
00:21:53.820And I don't think that it's wrong to actually, you know, articulate that. And, you know, I think that that's something I've sort of put forth in the book boldly, and hopefully, hopefully it works.
00:22:05.460Well, and you said, again, I promise I read the whole book.
00:22:09.060I keep mentioning things from the introduction, but you really set up everything in there.
00:22:14.220And one of the things you mentioned was that some of your colleagues challenged you in
00:22:18.200this concept or thinking like you were doing some sort of Arabic version of the Da Vinci
00:23:26.580I'm thankful to, again, my detractors and my supporters alike.
00:23:29.500I had to be extra rigorous. I had to go, you know, do my due diligence. And I know still the book as it stands now. Some folks will be very happy about it. Other folks won't be convinced. But there's one point I wanted to mention, of course, which we all have to sort of admit or acknowledge is, you know, pre-Islamic Arabia is a very mysterious place. And it's, there are no books in pre-Islamic Arabia.
00:23:53.220The first book is the Koran, which, of course, is this masterpiece of Arabic language and religion.
00:23:59.020And it's like, what is good? How did this happen? Right.
00:24:01.320So so that is that is a problem for anyone who wants to write about pre-Islamic Arabia is you don't have sources.
00:24:08.360So you have to be extra creative and go really wide and look at neighboring civilizations.
00:24:12.940And now we have, of course, more epigraphic sources and more that, you know, Syriac Christian sources are being, you know, extrapolated and interpreted.
00:24:21.280it so it makes things a little bit easier we're getting there and i think that uh i hope that
00:24:26.480this book changes some opinions and changes how some honestly how some scholars behave
00:24:32.420well because you're looking at historically um like i'm gonna say nearly every historical0.81
00:24:40.680society is a patriarchal society like the instances of women being powerful are so rare
00:24:48.240that, you know, they stand out. So to be, is that part of the challenge is looking at these0.98
00:24:53.440structures that have been accepted as patriarchal societies and saying, well, actually, here's the1.00
00:24:57.420influential women who were there. Is that part of what the pushback was?0.98
00:25:02.160So that's definitely part of it. And I'm also sort of ruminating on your question, but I'll
00:25:08.360add that this book builds, of course, on numerous colleagues who happen to be female and also
00:25:15.640writing about Arab women. So among them, of course, is Leila Ahmed, last name A-H-M-E-D,
00:25:21.480who is, you know, a towering figure in Islamic gender studies. She acknowledges, you know,
00:25:30.420she acknowledges the point that you made, which is all sort of society is patriarchal. It's like,
00:25:35.620oh, you know, what could all the men on the earth agree upon, you know, that they're in charge?0.56
00:25:40.300At the same time, she's acknowledging that especially in pre-Islamic Arabia, you had these
00:25:45.020communities and instances where you have matrilineality and pockets of matriarchal,
00:25:52.200you know, customs. And those, of course, if we ever get a chance to discuss it now,
00:25:57.420or maybe even later, I discuss in future research. It's already written and I'm working on it now.
00:26:02.040But so it's, as scholars understand that nuance is king, right? It's so important
00:26:11.860because history is never linear one two three four five and what what ends up happening especially0.52
00:26:19.800in pre-islamic arabia is you have patriarchy and matriarchy you have men in charge and women in
00:26:24.540charge and that's not conceptually easy to understand or communicate so we get lazy and
00:26:31.800say okay well this is the one narrative we're going to stick to the whole time the reality is
00:26:35.540you have large or widespread, long-lasting patriarchal structures. I discussed them,
00:26:42.560of course, in the final chapter, but nestled between them, among them, before them, and after0.99
00:26:47.580them, almost in perpetuity, are matriarchal structures and polities that, you know, where1.00
00:26:55.300you have queen regents and women. And again, the importance, again, of priestess and goddess,0.81
00:27:01.580they get lost in these, you know, our typical notions of, you know, what is power?
00:27:07.740Well, power is a king or it's a president.
00:27:11.920So we have to do both the nuance of acknowledging that you have men in charge and women in charge,
00:27:19.400and that you also have to look at different categories of power.
00:27:23.440And by, you know, sort of walking and chewing gum, hopefully, you know, this works out.
00:27:27.660And it tells us a new story about pre-Islamic Arabia.
00:27:30.840Well, and something that I come across in my research as well is, especially when you're going really far back, if there's not a contemporaneous account, then you're reading what somebody 500 years later thought, and they're bringing their point of view from 500 years later, or 1000 years later, 2000 years later.
00:27:47.900So trying to break down, well, this person thinks this, but that's because this is what was happening in his world. But 500 years ago, is that what was really happening? So it's just trying to take away the bias of people reporting far after the fact, what actually happened at the time.
00:28:04.720um yes great point because this this of course is the uh is the other problem for so we mentioned
00:28:10.380of course that there are no there are no good sources or no uh immediate sources for pre-islamic
00:28:14.680arabia they're slowly coming out but still it won't be anything not too verbose in its content
00:28:21.140so what do we have we have in fact literary sources which come centuries after the fact
00:28:25.660so you know we have lots of texts and stories you know and histories about pre-islamic arabia
00:28:33.740and men and women that come two, three, four, five, six hundred years after the fact.
00:28:40.640And, you know, they tend to fall onto these tropes and topoids, sort of biblical and Roman
00:28:46.260way of looking at the world where men are in charge.
00:28:49.400And, you know, it sort of tells the story of Arabia in those terms.
00:29:02.780sometimes, and again, there's a lot of debate about that. Sometimes there's none, sometimes
00:29:06.660there's some. The second thing you have to do is read against the text, because the content itself,
00:29:12.040so if you're, I don't know, Sozaman of Gaza, writing your ecclesiastical history, and you're
00:29:17.560talking about these Arabs, these Arabs in Palestine and Sinai and North Arabia, and you're
00:29:23.740saying that they worship in this way, and that they're, you know, that they're sort of, they're0.96
00:29:27.960worshiping abominations or something of that nature. Yeah, that's what he's saying, because
00:29:32.540he's a church man and he wants to promote Christianity in his day. So you have to read
00:29:36.800against it. Oh, well, they were, you know, the majority of the population were another religion1.00
00:29:41.440and this is what they were worshiping. And there was this intrusion of, you know, Christianity0.98
00:29:45.960into the picture. So anyway, there are a number of challenges, but if we as scholars do the work,0.99
00:29:53.900it is not impossible. This is going to be possibly a very big question, which is maybe not the best
00:29:59.900choice. It's like, let's wrap it up with this question. But you touched on this a bit in the
00:30:04.180book, but I'm just wondering what your thoughts are today about the connection between this book
00:30:08.920and the women you discuss and the societies and cultures you discuss and today, current
00:30:14.820situations for women, especially in that region of the world. Yeah. So yeah, that is a big question.
00:30:20.840I will preface by saying a couple of things. One, of course, is I am ultimately a man, a humble man in this world who's trying to learn from his colleagues, both female and male. And I've learned a lot writing this book, not just researching it, and even getting feedback from my colleagues and my students and my friends and family.
00:30:44.520a couple of things i think if we can learn you know what are the lessons maybe of this book as
00:30:52.460far as the contemporary world there are a few so one of course is it realigns our assumptions
00:30:57.520about what monarchy is so if you know if you google the word queen right um or king you know
00:31:05.680you might get the queen of england who left us not too long ago right may she rest in peace
00:31:38.380um so you know by way of example there's a long tradition um it's not as well attested but of
00:31:46.320queenship in qatar and the uae and the arabian peninsula those are of course very new states
00:31:51.580that were you know founded just decades ago but uh they are heir to this tradition that i've been
00:31:58.340you know writing about so that's one another one would be how we think about religion and
00:32:05.080politics today so for example here here in america i would say at least in the united states i don't
00:32:09.220know about canada but you know the emphasis on god and country is first and foremost shaped by
00:32:14.420gender race and class and it sounds maybe kind of you know quaint for me to say that but i mean
00:32:21.140it's fundamentally shaped by men saying this is how things are and there's nothing wrong with that
00:32:26.220if you just if you know that that's what's happening but we don't know that's what's happening
00:32:30.020So, again, it challenges our assumptions.
00:32:32.420It forces us out of our comfort zone when we think about religion and politics that this is how men have told us things are.
00:32:40.860And we've had to write out, you know, women and minorities, whatever that means, and poor people in order for us to privilege ourselves and see ourselves as God and presidents and so on and so forth.
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