A History of Sinai

by Lina Eckenstein

Aud was a divinity by whom a group of Arabs took their oath, and the people of Ad or Uz were among the great people of the Arab legendary past, who were smitten by misfortune. The calamities which befell them are, perhaps, reflected in the story of Job.

In the Koran the utterance was put into the lips of Moses, “Hath not the story reached thee of those who were before thee, the people of Noah and Ad and Themud” (xiv. 9).[75] “And unto Ad we sent their brother Hud ... and unto Themud we sent Saleh, but the people received them not as their prophets, and they were destroyed” (vii. 63). “And we destroyed Ad and Themud” (xxix. 38). According to Masudi († 957) Aud, who was sent to the Adites, and Saleh, who was sent to the Thamudites, lived immediately after the Flood, before Abraham.[76]

Many stories were current among the Arabs concerning the wealth and influence of the Adites. They were said to have lived twelve hundred years, when their sons the Shaddad, subjected the country of the Egyptian, and in this they remained two hundred years, and built the city Aour or Awar.[77] The reference is to the great fortress of the Hyksos, the Hatuar of the Egyptians, the Avaris of Manetho-Josephus, situated about twenty miles north of Cairo. If the Adites were instrumental in erecting this city, they must have taken part in the great Hyksos invasion which happened during the Fourteenth Dynasty of Egypt, i.e. about b.c. 2500.

According to Makrizi († 1441), the Adite king who marched against Egypt was Shaddad ben Haddad ben Shaddad ben Ad, and the Pharaoh whom he conquered was Ashmoun ben Masir ben Beisar, son of Cham, son of Noah, whose buildings he destroyed and in his turn he raised pyramids (probably pillars), traced Alexandria and then left for the Wadi el Korah between El Nabouyah and Syria. He built a series of square reservoirs, which resulted in many kinds of cultivation, which extended from Raïah (i.e. Raithou) to Aila (at the head of the Gulf of Arabia) to the western sea (i.e. the Mediterranean). His peoples’ dwellings covered the district between El Dathmar, El Arish, and El Goufar, in the land of Shaleh (along the Mediterranean sea-board in northern Sinai), where there were wells and fruit-trees, and cultivation including that of saffron of two kinds and of the sugar-cane. This land was occupied by Khodem ben El Airan, when God, because of the over-bearing of the Adites, raised a storm, and sand of the desert covered the land they inhabited. Hence the words of the Koran, “And in Ad: when we sent against them the desolating blast, it touched not aught over which it came, but it turned it into dust.”[78]

The Adites at one period controlled the gold and incense route from Inner Arabia to Syria, and the Koran credited them with erecting pillars, probably mazzeboth, in high places. “Hast thou not seen how the Lord dwelt with Ad at Iram, adorned with pillars whose like have not been raised in these lands” (lxxxix. 6). And again, “Build ye land-marks on all heights in mere pastime” (xxiv. 128). Ptolemy, the geographer (a.d. 140), located the Oaditæ to the east of the Gulf of Akaba, and named as their chief city Aramava, which was an important watering station on the way between Petra and Mecca. Aramava is perhaps Iram of the Koran.[79]

The Adites as traders were succeeded by the Thamudites, who, according to the Koran, “hewed rocks in the valley” (xxxix. 8). The reference is possibly to Petra. According to tradition they occupied Aila.[80]

A prophet of the Thamudites was Saleh, who has a special interest for southern Sinai, since the Benu Saleh, who claim descent from him, are among the oldest and most powerful tribes of the peninsula. Saleh in the Biblical record is named as third in descent from Shem, and as the progenitor of Eber (Gen. x. 24).

The remembrance of the Thamudites survives in the present Diar (or land of) Themoud, in north-western Arabia, which includes the great Wadi El Korah which is followed by the pilgrims from Damascus to Mecca. In the Wadi El Korah lie the Medaïn (cities of) Saleh, and some distance south of these, is the pass which is associated with the destruction of the she-camel, the creation of Saleh. For the people of Themoud to whom Saleh was sent, did not accept him. They asked for a sign, whereupon he produced from the rock the Naga or she-camel that gave milk. “Let her go at large,” was his command, “and feed on God’s earth, and do her no harm. Drink there shall be for her and drink there shall be for you, on a several day for each; but harm her not, lest the punishment of a tremendous day overtake you. But the Thamudites hamstrung her, and repented of it on the morrow, for the punishment overtook them.”

This story of the she-camel preserves the tradition of man’s right to the free use of an animal, which was indispensable to the well-being of the man of the desert. According to the Koran, it will be the end of all things when “the sun is folded up, the stars fall, the mountains rock, the she-camel is abandoned and the wild beasts are gathered together” (lxxxi. 1).