Topoi 16 (2009) p. 277-332 ARABS, ARABIAS, AND ARABIC BEFORE LATE ANTIQUITY

I. Arabs in Antiquity

The need for imprecision

Human beings usually feel part of a number of overlapping communities, and other people classify them by their membership of these, and possibly other groups. Membership of such communities is identified by criteria which are usually of different types and different degrees of precision. Even today, it is extremely difficult to answer precisely the questions « on what basis does someone identify him/ herself as “ an Arab” ? » or « what do we mean when we call someone “ an Arab” ? » It is, perhaps, better to accept that, like all such labels, this one needs to be ill-defined in order to serve the purposes for which it is used. When clear-cut definitions are required – as for instance in the establishment of legal nationality – precise and restrictive criteria are adopted. But we are all aware of the problems this can cause in individual cases, since human beings seldom fit comfortably into the tight legalistic categories by which bureaucracies would like to define them. For general purposes, most of us use expressions such as « the Arab World » , « Arab » , « the Arabs » , « Arab culture » , etc, in both speech and writing with an imprecision which is necessary if we are ever to get past the stage of defining our terms. Imprecision in thinking and in use of language are characteristic of the way such labels are used at all periods, and I would suggest that we should not necessarily expect to find an obvious, or identifiable, characteristic linking all

those people and peoples who were called « Arab » in antiquity, any more than we can identify such a characteristic in the way the term is used today. It is also probable, that, at different times and in different places, people may have used the term « Arab » of different groups based on different criteria. In most cases, we have no way of knowing what these criteria were, since, before the sixth century AD, few first-hand records have survived from the peoples so described, and the references by others often lack detail.