Thamud


The Thamūd is an ancient civilization in the Hejaz known from the 8th century BCE to near the time of Muhammad. The Thamud civilization was located in the north of the peninsula. Although they are thought to have originated in Southern Arabia, Arabic tradition has them moving north to settle on the slopes of Mount Athlab near Mada'in Saleh.
Numerous Thamudic rock writings and pictures have been found on Mount Athlab and throughout central Arabia.

History

The oldest known reference to Thamud is a 715 BC inscription of the Assyrian king Sargon II, which mentions them as being among the people of central and eastern Arabia subjugated by the Assyrians. According to Islamic tradition, the Thamūdi existed much earlier than this, whose ancestors are said to be Iram and Ars.
They are referred to as ‘Tamudaei’ in the writings of Aristo of Chios, Ptolemy, and Pliny.

The Qur’an

Like the ʿĀd, the Quran mentions the Thamud in chapter 7, al-A'raf, in the context of several prophets who warned their people of coming judgment. The verses advise Thamud to take warning from the destruction of ʿĀd:
This verse suggests some kind of relationship between ʿĀd and Thamud, and ʿĀd may even have been a part of Thamud's history and culture. However the ʿĀd lived in the Hadhramaut of present-day Yemen, unlike the Thamud, who lived in the Hejaz. Just as Nuh's people were seen as the ancestors of ʿĀd, it seems ʿĀd were seen in a similar relation to Thamud. On the other hand, there is evidence that shows that the Thamūd, just like the 'Ād, originated in southern Arabia and later on moved north.
A bit further on from the passage quoted above, the Quran says,
In Surah al-Qamar, it says “Indeed, we sent upon them one shriek, and they became like the dry twig fragments of a pen.”

Ibn Khaldun

Historian and scholar, Ibn Khaldun also mentions the Thamud several times in his universal history Kitābu l-ʻibar written in the late 14th century, but only in passing, seldom giving much information.

Script

A script graphically similar to the Semitic alphabet has been found in southern Arabia and up throughout the Hejaz. The script was first identified in a region in north central Yemen that is known as Thamud, which is bound to the north by the Rub' al Khali, to the south by the Hadhramaut and to the west by Shabwah. The script was named after the place where it was first discovered, not for the people. Inscriptions in Thamudic come mostly from northern Saudi Arabia, but can be found throughout the Arabian peninsula.

Identity

Very little information is known about the identity or the nationality of Thamud, but they are referred to as Arabs in Bibliotheca historica by the Greek historian Diodorus Siculus.
The title and description given by Photius to the Thamud indicates that they had a status similar to Qedarites who have been identified as Arabs.
In 2003, Professor Jan Retsö in a research in his book The Arabs in Antiquity concluded that Thamudic people were Arabs.
Roman historian Pliny the Elder stated the Thamūd people and other Arabian ethnic groups lived among and nearby the city of Domata, an Arabic cognate to the Biblical son of Ishmael, Dumah, whose descendants became stone-carving Edomites. The change from "Dumah" or "Dumat" to "Thamūd" may be attributed to undefined vowels in written Semitic languages as well as gradual shifting of consonantal pronunciation and dialects due to time and nomadic changes in location.

Use of the name

After the disappearance of the original people of Thamud, Robert Hoyland suggested that their name was subsequently adopted by other new groups that inhabited the region of Mada'in Saleh.
This suggestion is supported by ʿAbdullah ibn ʿUmar and Ibn Kathir who report that people called the region of Thamud Al-Hijr, while they called the province of Mada'in Saleh as Ardh Thamud and Bayt Thamud. The conclusion that can be taken from the evidences above is that the term ‘Thamud’ was not applied to the groups that lived in Mada'in Saleh, such as Lihyanites and Nabataeans, but rather to the region itself.
According to Classical Arabic sources, it was agreed upon that the only remaining group of the native people of Thamud are the tribe of Banu Thaqif which inhabited the city of Taif south of Mecca.

Disappearance

As it was told in the Quran the original people of Thamud vanished. It is suggested that the story mentioned in the Quran explains that “they may have been destroyed by one of the many volcanic outbreaks that have formed the far-reaching Arabian lava fields.”