> Date: Fri, 07 Jun 96 13:47:00 PDT
> Reply-to: wilkinso@polisci.sscnet.ucla.edu
> From: "Wilkinson, David POLI SCI" <wilkinso@polisci.sscnet.ucla.edu>
> To: WORLD SYSTEMS NETWORK <wsn@csf.colorado.edu>
> Subject: Re: South Arabian world system/civilizat
> X-To: andrei@rsuh.ru
> Thank you for the reply to my query about the politico-diplomatic-military
> linkages of South Arabia; as I regard such linkage, of a sustained and
> continuing character, as the essential criterion for an area's
> inclusion/exclusion in a civilization/world system, the status of
> South Arabia on that score would appear to be intriguingly ambiguous until at
> least 26 BC. "[C]ontinuous embassies...made themselves the friends of..."
> would for me be language decisively descriptive of South Arabian
> membership in the Central system, probably from the first such embassy.
>
> The duration and content of the embassies to Assyria, and the reasons to
> believe or disbelieve in the continuation of such contact with the empires
> that succeeded Assyria, would be important, from my perspective, in
> determining when South Arabia first entered the Central system. (I would use
> trade ties as evidence of entry into the trade network which I call the Old
> Oikumene, which entirely includes but is larger than the Central
> Civilization/world system.)
>
> For me, another important form of social-taxonomical data is city sizes
> and numbers. Can you say what range of estimates you would consider
> currently persuasive for the number and size (population or area) of any
> urban centers of South Arabia for any dates or range of dates down to say the
> embassies to the Roman emperors?
>
> David Wilkinson
>
>
>`
I agree with you completely that for the 1st mil. BC in your
terminology South Arabia should be considered as a part of the Old
Oikumene rather than the Central Civilization. With respect to the
date of its absorbtion by the Central Civilization I would be more
cautious. I would date it for sure by the 4th cent. AD (the
transition to Monotheism in Yemen) - since that time we have really
intence political-military-diplimatic-ideological interconnections
between SA and the CC core. Between the 1st BC and the 4th century AD
SA seems to have been just on the brink to have been incorporated
into the CC - I would refer to the "Indian" and
"Chaldaean"ambassodors mentioned as participants in the "coronation"
ceremonies of a Hadrami king of the 3rd cent. AD, remarkable
diplomatic "northward" activities of the Sabaean and then Himyarite
king in the 3rd-4th centuries (aimed mainly at ther Central and North
Arabian "kings"['mlk], but eventually reaching as far as Persia
[Sharafaddi:n 31 inscription of the end of the 3rd cent.AD]), coupled
with the military activities firstly by the 3rd AD Sabaean kings reaching
Central Arabia and then by the 4th AD Himyarite kings getting to North
Arabia [see especially the newly published [by Robin and Gaida]
`ábada:n inscription] &c &c. In general the impression is that South Arabia was
incorporated into the Central Civilization mainly through the
activities of the South Arabians themselves, rather than by the
activities of the Central Civilization - a possibility which does not
seem to have been seriously treated in your account of the Central
Civilization theory.
Yours,
Andrey.