A PRE-HISTORY OF ORIENTALISM: HERODOTUS AND STRABOS IMAGE OF ARABIA

Irina Vainovski-Mihai

1. Introduction

For Edward Said (in his pathbreaking book first published in 1978 and then reprinted in 1995) Orientalism is a discursive system and a cultural creation through which the West imagined the East as its Other. Orientalism, he asserts is a style of thought based upon an ontological and epistemological distinction made between the Orient and the Occident (Said 1995: 8). In the quarter century since its first publication, Saids text has brought about several researches on the European discourses about the East and the paradigm it was putting forward became fundamental for different objects of study either refuting or applying it while scrutinizing the versatile character of cultural interaction. Still, most of the scholarly attention spans from the pre- to the post-modern period.

The aim of my paper is to look into the ways in which the image of the Arabians and their lands is construed by its early Others. In expanding the topic chronologically backwards I start from the assumption that many of the modern rhetorical devices of othering and the images they shape out are to be traced back to remote times. On the authority of the Old Testament and of the ancient history writers, the image of Arabia as a fabulous land is shaped, reshaped and reconfirmed through the times, molded into new types of discourse, but carried on to a great extent as such.

I shall highlight some of the contents of this image that has been perpetuated and continues to color the current narratives, reinforcing cultural stereotypes by means of the new media (television, cinema, and Internet). To anticipate only two of the ancient textual evidence which I shall further offer and which are aptly comparable to the elements bricking todays representation: while camels remain since Antiquity an identity marker of Arabia, the topos of the prosperously spice-rich land has been replaced by that of the prosperously oil-rich land. The first case needs no supplementary comment. In the latter one, the wrapping has changed, but transparently the content of the imagological construct remained the same to an overwhelming extent.

527

All along, in the subtext of my paper there will be Nadia Anghelescus concluding answer to a question she has pertinently posed in several instances concerning the role and the responsibility of the academics and researchers involved in Middle Eastern Studies to build on their knowledge in order to bridge the gaps, smooth out misunderstandings and dissipate prejudice:

As for us, those Orientalists who long ago withdrew to the trenches of the very specialized studies of linguistics, philosophy, history, etc. applied to a very distant past, we should perhaps accept the idea that we can no longer remain isolated from the course of contemporary history without risking to miscommunicate with our contemporaries, our fellow Orientalists and Orientals. (Anghelescu 2005: 38)

In dealing with the rhetoric of othering, my essay approaches only circumstantially the opposite, nonetheless complementing angle, as it undoubtedly deserves a detailed scrutiny on its own: the derogatory ancient image of the Arabs as pagan barbarians. Still, I feel the need to point out that, in my view, this pejorative image carries at least three characteristics of the overevaluating image which I shall deal with: 1. It can be traced back to the remote history of the encounter between Arabs and their Others; 2. It is brought down to our times in new forms of expression while preserving its content. 3. Its construction and use is never innocent.

Moreover, I shall not discuss the interpretations of the term of Arab or Arabian in the classical texts. This is out of the scope and intent of my discussion and, theoretically, my analysis is rooted within the approaches of such historians as Philip K. Hitti and Hayden White. Hitti remarks that What a people believes, even if untrue, has the same influence over their lives as if it were true. (Hitti 2002: 88) White defends the concept of history as narrative, the idea that there is always a delicate balance between facts and fiction even in history writing, where the scholars of the field necessarily translate fact into fiction by their mere narrative discourse (White 1973 and White 1987). In other words, I rely on the assumption that, despite some quests for refinement and some cuts against the grain of this scholarship, the academe has endowed the classical texts with a rather canonic interpretation which functions as a textual construction of a scholarly reality. To this, I should add that, in the framework of my paper, it would be rather a research detour to mention debates like, for instance, whether by Erembi Strabo was indeed referring to the Arabs.

Meanwhile, methodologically, I shall employ the means of what I would myself call representational deconstruction, or a mechanism put forward, among others, by Bakhtin (1990) and Leerssen (1991) who maintain that the identification of the Other passes through self-identification as well as by Hartog

528

(1980) who asserts that the Other is a mirror reflexion of the Self, whereby otherness is expressed as anti-sameness.

My analysis is applied to the text of Herodotus Histories and that of Strabos Geography. Their widely quoted and circulated English translations make a very good point in the case of cultural stereotype agency.

2. The texts and the authors

2.1 Herodotus Histories

In the middle of the fifth century B.C., the historian of the Greco-Persian Wars, Herodotus of Halicarnassus traveled to Egypt from Pelusium to Tyre and from there he continued to Babylonia (Rets 2003: 243). His Histories bring together data from earlier sources and information gathered by himself, either through direct observation or inferred from stories told by local people in order to preserve their memory and to serve as examples. In his words:

This is the display of the inquiry of Herodotus of Halicarnassus, so that things done by man not be forgotten in time, and that great and marvelous deeds, some displayed by the Hellenes, some by the barbarians, not lose their glory, including among others what was the cause of their waging war on each other (Herodotus Bk. I, ch. 1, 0).

Consequently, his accounts on Arabia comprised in the Histories are compiling in a systematic and thoroughly structured text, to paraphrase White, narrating the facts and re-narrating the fiction: Now if we agree with the opinion of the Ionians, who say that... if we follow this account, we can show that... as the Egyptians themselves say, and as I myself judge Herodotus Bk. II, ch. XV, 1). Not only that factual data are confirmed, but, in tune with the idea formulated centuries later by Hitti and which I have cited above, namely that a fiction believed in becomes a reality to be lived in, Herodotus honestly asserts in an instance his entire philosophy of compilation: This is the most credible of the stories told; but I must relate the less credible tale also, since they tell it (Herodotus Bk. III, ch. 9, 2).

As Rets remarks, the information offered by the Histories on Arabia is of great importance as beginning with him, Arabia becomes a geographical designation, even if it does not have yet concrete limits in certain parts or, in others, it is a vaguely defined vast area. The creation of the geographic name of Arabia is the work of the Greeks. concludes Rets (2003: 249). And this geographic name will connote, due to Herodotus stories with folktale-like features, a distant legendary country where everything is possible (Rets 2003: 249), a land of fabulous wealth and luxury (Hitti 2002: 45).

529

2.2 Strabos Geography

In his Geography, the Greek traveler and geographer Strabo of Amaseia (66?-24?AD) presents the Inhabited World, as it was imagined at that time and his account, too, is a patchwork of both personal observation and excerpts from previous sources which he strives to verify: Our descriptions shall consist of what we ourselves have observed in our travels by land and sea, and of what we conceive to be credible in the statements and writings of others. (Strabo Bk. II, ch. 5, 11)

For his description of Arabia, comprised in the 16th book, Strabo depend on Hellenistic sources (Weerakkody 2006: 69), mainly those of the first systematic writer on geography, Eratosthenes (Rets 2003: 302), as well as on the personal accounts of his friend and companion lius Gallus (Strabo Bk. II, ch. 5, 12). Strabo appreciates lius Gallus as a trustworthy and valuable informant: The late expedition of the Romans against the Arabians, under the command of lius Gallus, has made us acquainted with many peculiarities of the country. Augustus Csar dispatched this general to explore the nature of these places and their inhabitants, as well as those of Ethiopia (Strabo Bk. XVI, ch. 4, 22). lius Gallus not only explored the region, but also had the experience of being crushed in fact by the rough conditions of the climate and the terrain and not by the treacherous conduct of the Nabataean guide, whom Strabo blames in his attempt to justify his friends defeat.

Strabos authoritative work continues to promote the image of a prosperous people living in an amazing land unfriendly to the outsiders who can no more ignore their wealth and are set either to pacify or conquer them. As Strabo writes about Augustus:

It was his intention either to conciliate or subdue the Arabians. He was also influenced by the report, which had prevailed from all time, that this people were very wealthy, and exchanged their aromatics and precious stones for silver and gold, but never expended with foreigners any part of what they received in exchange. He hoped to acquire either opulent friends, or to overcome opulent enemies (Strabo Bk. XVI, ch. 4, 22).

3. The Images

Leerssen (1991: 130) argues that the imagological reading of a text, referential and non-fictional though it be, should not be pursued in terms of right or wrong, correct or false, but strictly in its textual confines of perception and representation. Thus, in pursuing what I have previously called representational deconstruction, I shall refer to the method suggested by Leerssen (1991: 131)

530

of exploding the claim that certain instances of the text are a zero-degree representation of empirical reality and expose its ideological, discursively constructed nature.

To this aim, I shall put under scrutiny three groups of imagological constructs in the works penned by the authors under discussion.

3. 1 The land and the people

Herodotus gives often the impression of being a wondering stranger, a tourist, James Redfield glosses, and his relativism seems just like a tourists relativism who goes abroad to see people different from himself (Redfield 2002: 27), different from each other in a way he highly enjoys as long as this is the very experience he is expecting for.

In their behavior, Arabians are the Other implicitly compared to his moral and cultural Self and explicitly paralleled to an Other of the Other. He says about the Arabians:

There are no men who respect pledges more than the Arabians. This is how they give them: a man stands between the two pledging parties, and with a sharp stone cuts the palms of their hands, near the thumb; then he takes a piece of wood from the cloak of each and smears with their blood seven stones that lie between them, meanwhile calling on Dionysus and the Heavenly Aphrodite (Herodotus Bk. III, ch. 8, 1).

While the possibly rather similar custom of the Scythians, the Other of the Other who, for being the barbarians taking nomadism as a strategy of warfare (Hartog 1980: 202) and determined to very much shun practicing the customs of any other country, and particularly of Hellas (Herodotus Bk. IV, ch. 76, 1), are depicted in strong overtones:

As for giving sworn pledges to those who are to receive them, this is the Scythian way: they take blood from the parties to the agreement by making a little cut in the body with an awl or a knife, and pour it mixed with wine into a big earthenware bowl, into which they then dip a scimitar and arrows and an axe and a javelin; and when this is done those swearing the agreement, and the most honorable of their followers, drink the blood after solemn curses (Herodotus Bk. IV, ch. 70, 1).

In the 7th chapter we are presented an even more striking description of otherness which draws comparisons to establish symmetries, inclusions and exclusions from what is either already known or is not considered remarkably enough

531

to play the role of visible signs of alterity. Different warriors are listed with their particular outfit and weapons. Herodotus relates them to each other in terms of close otherness (the Sarangae were carrying bows and Median spears ch. 67, 2; the Arians were equipped with Median bows, but in all else like the Bactrians ch. 66, 1; etc.) or separates them into remote otherness, either by simulating the impossibility to put into words the description of their oddity, like in the case of Assyrians (The Assyrians in the army wore on their heads helmets of twisted bronze made in an outlandish fashion not easy to describe. ch. 63, 1) or by setting them entirely apart in leaving aside any comment or comparison, like in the case of the Arabians (The Arabians wore mantles girded up, and carried at their right side long bows curving backwards. ch. 69, 1).

As for Strabo, he assess the degrees of othering and the complex encounter of identities as the amazing experience of somebody else, which, reported as such is given credibility by the eyewitness:

Athenodorus, a philosopher, and my friend, who had been at Petra, used to relate with surprise, that he found many Romans and also many other strangers residing there. He observed the strangers frequently engaged in litigation, both with one another and with the natives; but the natives had never any dispute amongst themselves, and lived together in perfect harmony (Strabo Bk. XVI, ch. 4, 21).

In this instance Strabo scales the identities and shapes out his own relationship with them on three levels: firstly, the Romans marked as strangers; secondly, a mass of alterities homogenously melt into the expression of many other strangers, who are reduced to only what they have in common: residing there and engaging in litigation; and thirdly, the natives, for whom the very term used to designate them is a substantial indicator of difference. Moreover, Strabos Athenodorus apparent positive valuation of the non-confrontational behavior manifested by the natives amongst themselves plays in fact the rhetorical role of setting them apart from the multi-ethnic community of Petra. The process of identifying an Us, a You and a Them always creates solidarities founded on shared values and behaviors.

The Nabateans, Strabo continues, are prudent, and fond of accumulating property, live in lavish houses made of stone, their king gives many entertainments in great buildings (Strabo Bk. XVI, ch. 4, 26).

As for Arabia, it is partially a desert, partially an aromatic country (Strabo Bk. XVI, ch. 4, 25), and partially a land which has an unhealthy and cloudy atmosphere; it is subject to showers, and also to scorching heat, but still its products are excellent (Strabo Bk. XVI, ch. 4, 1) and Arabians, being mostly engaged in traffic and commerce, are not a very warlike people even on land, much less so at sea (Strabo Bk. XVI, ch. 4, 22).

532

3. 2 Camels and flying serpents

There are no horses in Arabia, discovers with amazement Strabo: except horses, there are numerous herds of animals (Strabo Bk. XVI, ch. 4, 2), the sheep have white fleeces, their oxen are large; but the country produces no horses; camels are the substitute for horses, and perform the [same kind of] labor (Strabo Bk. XVI, ch. 4, 2).

While including absence in his strategies of othering, when it comes to camels (there are no horses, but there are camels), Strabo plays in his narrative also on what he sees as remarkable in the persistent presence. The Nomads, he says, live by their camels. They fight from their backs; they travel upon them, and subsist on their milk and flesh (Strabo Bk. XVI, ch. 4, 18). In this paragraph, the differentiation in transcribed within the rhetoric of othering as anti-sameness, to use Hartogs (1980: 213) term, by the repeated image of the camel.

In this respect, Herodotus, too, seems to consider that peculiarity is important, but the difference is not so great as to render meaningless comparisons, which, in the end, imply either his unwillingness to accept the less known on its own terms or his intention to supply the addressees of his writing with the image of a new world that conforms logically, in a way or another, with their known world. Herodotus writes that the Arabians had the same equipment as the men of their infantry, and all of them rode on camels no less swift than horses (Herodotus Bk. VII, ch. 86, 2). The comparison stands in this case on equality, as it does in a previous paragraph when referring to the animals of the Indians (as swift as horses), but in that section a positive evaluation is added: and [camels are] much better able to bear burdens (Herodotus Bk. III, ch.102, 3). This is not the case of the following lines which deserve a closer investigation:

These nations alone were on horseback; the number of the horsemen was shown to be eighty thousand, besides the camels and the chariots. All the rest of the horsemen were ranked with their companies, but the Arabians were posted last. Since horses cannot endure camels, their place was in the rear, so that the horses would not be frightened (Herodotus Bk. VII, ch. 87, 1).

Even more than in the case of the natives of Petra in Strabos fragment quoted above, in this scene, on account of the animal they were riding, the Arabians are set apart physically from the rest of the warriors belonging to various nations. From the fact that the horse belongs to the know world of Herodotus addresses, we may assess the comparison as built on powerful terms, since the relation between the same and the Other is that of fright.

Both Herodotus and Strabo consider that not only the camels are significant to relate about, but also, or even more, the fabulous snakes which inhabit Arabia. Herodotus reports that, at the beginning of the spring, winged serpents fly from

533

Arabia making for Egypt and only the ibis birds manage to crush these invaders (Bk. II, ch.75, 3). These winged snakes of varied color are guarding the spice-bearing trees of Arabia and the Arabians, in order to gather the spices, can drive away the fantastic creatures only by the smoke of storax (Herodotus Bk. III, ch. 107, 1-2). Strabo tempers to a great degree the observation: There are snakes also of a dark red color, a span in length, which spring up as high as a man's waist, and whose bite is incurable (Bk. XVI, ch. 4, 19).

As Hartog points out, any travelers tale that maintains to be a faithful report must contain marvels and curiosities (Hartog 1980: 230). It is noteworthy how Herodotus gradually drives his public into believing the unbelievable: he is apparently in search of confirmations for those who are doubtful (I went to learn about the winged serpents), then he obliquely gives the eyewitness testimony for the existence of such snakes in minutely describing their remains:

There is a place in Arabia not far from the town of Buto where I went to learn about the winged serpents. When I arrived there, I saw innumerable bones and backbones of serpents: many heaps of backbones, great and small and even smaller (Herodotus Bk. 2, ch. 75, 1).

3. 3 Aromatics, naphta and prosperity

Arabia had in Antiquity an aromatic hard currency. As Herodotus and Strabo relate, the Arabians produce frankincense, myrrh, as well as other aromatics (and thanks to them Arabia gives off a scent as sweet as if divine Herodotus Bk. III, ch.113, 1), these aromatics are the medium of exchange with the merchants who arrive there from a distance of at least seventy days (Strabo Bk. XVI, ch. 4, 4) and also these aromatics are the tribute in kind to King Darius. While Ethiopians were exempted from taxes because they were substituted by gifts consisting in unrefined gold, two hundred blocks of ebony, five Ethiopian boys, and twenty great elephants' tusks, alike the Colchians and their neighbors as far as the Caucasus Mountains who were rendering every four years a hundred boys and as many maids, the Arabians were offering a thousand talents' weight of frankincense yearly (Herodotus Bk. III, ch. 97, 1-5).

The two authors imply that prosperity is due to the good use by means of trade of such natural endowments. But sometimes they are available in excess (There is such an abundance of these aromatics, that cinnamon, cassia, and other spices are used by them instead of sticks and firewood. Strabo Bk. XVI, ch. 4, 19) and encourage people to idleness (On account of the abundance which the soil produces, the people are lazy and indolent in their mode of life. Strabo XVI, ch. 4, 19) or to a lavish life.

534

By the trade [in these aromatics] both the Sabans and the Gerrhi have become the richest of all the tribes, and possess a great quantity of wrought articles in gold and silver, as couches, tripods, basins, drinking-vessels, to which we must add the costly magnificence of their houses; for the doors, walls, and roofs are variegated with inlaid ivory, gold, silver, and precious stones (Strabo XVI, ch. 4, 19).

As for what is todays hard currency of the region, in being so specific and unusual, Strabo feels the need to classify it (the first of these, I mean the white naphtha, which attracts flame, is liquid sulphur; the second, or black naphtha, is liquid asphaltus Strabo XVI, ch 1, 15), to explain its properties relying on Eratosthenes account (naphta, he notes, is impossible to extinguish, except with a large quantity of water; with a small quantity it burns more violently, but it may be smothered and extinguished by mud, vinegar, alum, and glue Strabo XVI, ch. 1, 16), its uses (in lamps in lamps instead of oil Strabo XVI, ch 1, 15; or When the carriers become drowsy by the odor of the aromatics, the drowsiness is removed by the fumes of asphaltus and of goat's beard. Strabo XVI, ch. 4, 19) and to include it into the recount of a spectacular and weird experiment for its features carried out by Alexander:

It is said that Alexander, as an experiment, ordered naphtha to be poured over a boy in a bath, and a lamp to be brought near his body. The boy became enveloped in flames, and would have perished if the bystanders had not mastered the fire by pouring upon him a great quantity of water, and thus saved his life. (Strabo XVI, ch. 1, 15).

4. Conclusions

In the recent years several significant studies have been written on Orientalism as a stereotyped discourse on the Oriental Other. Most of them draw on images shaped out and enforced by the colonial mind articulated within the confines of modernity or at its outskirts hyphenated with pre or post. The recurrent images thus singled out are still under discussion as writers, artists, journalists, anonymous authors of urban legends or bloggers peddle storylines in the rhetoric of othering catered for researchers.

My paper has singled out three of such images in Herodotus and Strabos writings with the aim to reveal that both the content and the structure of imagining Arabia and its people have been handed down along the millennia. To put it in Redfields words:

Herodotus often appears as just such a wondering stranger or, as we would say, tourist (one gloss for theoria is tourism), and his relativism seems just

535

such a tourists relativism. The tourist, after all, goes abroad to see people different from himself; it is wonderful that they are different, but there is nothing to wonder about in this, since people simply do differ and it is enjoyable that they do (Redfield 2002: 27).

References Anghelescu, N. 2005. Orientalism seen from the East. Romano-Arabica V: 21-38. Bakhtin, M. 1990. The dialogic imagination: Four essays. In M. Holquist (ed.), Dialogism.

Bakhtin and His World, translated by C. Emerson and M. Holquist. Austin, TX: University of Texas.

Ephal, I. 1982. The ancient Arabs: Nomads at the Border of the Fertile Crescent, 9th-5th Century B.C. Leiden: Brill.

Hartog, F. 1988. The Mirror of Herodotus: The Representation of the Other in the Writing of History. Translated by Janet Lloyd. Berkeley and Los Angeles, CA: University of California Press.

Herodotus. 1920. The Histories. Translated by A. D. Godley. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Hitti, P. K. 2002. History of the Arabs. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Leerssen, J. 1991. Echoes and images: Reflections upon a foreign space. In J. Leerssen and R.

Corbey (eds.), Alterity, Identity, Image. Selves and Others in Society and Scholarship, 123-138. Amsterdam: Rodopi.

Redfield, J. 2002. Herodotus the tourist. In T. Harrison (ed.), Greeks and Barbarians, 24-49. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.

Rets, J. 2003. The Arabs in Antiquity: Their History from the Assyrians to the Umayyads. London: Routledge Curzon.

Said, E. 1995. Orientalism: Western Conceptions of the Orient. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books.

Strabo. 1903. Geography. Translation and notes by H.C. Hamilton and W. Falconer. London: George Bell & Sons.

Weerakkody, D. P. M. 2006. Arabs. In N. Wilson (ed.), Encyclopedia of Ancient Greece, 69-70. New York: Routledge.

White, H. 1973. Metahistory: The Historical Imagination in Nineteenth-Century Europe. Baltimore, MD: John Hopkins University Press.

White, H. 1987. The content of the Form: Narrative Discourse and Historical Representation. Baltimore, MD: John Hopkins University Press.

536