Online Corpus of the Inscriptions of Ancient North Arabia
Lead Research Organisation:
University of Oxford
Department Name: Oriental Institute
Abstract
OCIANA aims to open up the history of ancient Arabia in the millennium before the rise of Islam: first, by publishing online a corpus of all known pre-Islamic inscriptions of ancient north and central Arabia which are at present extremely difficult to access even for the specialist; and second, by publishing research tools, monographs, journal articles, conference proceedings and theses which will demonstrate how this material radically corrects and deepens our understanding of all aspects of its history, languages and cultures.
Today, our knowledge of the ancient history of Arabia is derived largely from external sources (Assyrian, Greek, Roman, etc.) or the often somewhat garbled accounts by historians in the Islamic period. Although excavations have taken place in the rest of the Middle East for more than 150 years, they have only been undertaken in the Gulf, Oman and Yemen for the last 60, and only in recent decades in Saudi Arabia which covers the major part of the Peninsula. Moreover, a significant section of the population in historical times has always been nomadic and the archaeology of nomadic societies has not yet begun in Arabia.
However, we have another rich source of information. For Arabia was unique in the ancient world in that while literacy was widespread among the settled populations it was apparently almost universal among the nomads. Between the mid-1st millennium BC and the 4th century AD these nomads covered the rocks of the Syro-Arabian deserts with tens of thousands of graffiti. These give us a vivid picture of their way-of-life, social structures, personal emotions, and relations with each other and with the settled peoples of Arabia and beyond (Romans, Jews, Nabataeans, etc.), information which is almost entirely lacking for Middle Eastern nomads at any other period. These, with the monumental inscriptions and graffiti of the settled peoples, are the only indigenous written sources we have for the ancient history of most of Arabia.
These texts are the only source for a group of dialects known as Ancient North Arabian (ANA) which are related to Arabic but distinct from it, and are written in alphabets unique to Arabia. In addition to the historical information they contain, they are of fundamental importance for Comparative Semitics, the history of the alphabet, and the study of ancient literacy. While they provide the key to understanding ancient Arabia, they are also an important source for the ancient Near East in general. For Arabia was geographically and strategically central to the region, and its peoples had links from Anatolia to Ethiopia and from the Mediterranean to India, through the lucrative trade in Arabian frankincense and luxury goods from across the Indian Ocean.
The study of these texts has a distinguished history but they are now very difficult to access since they are scattered in numerous books, articles and unpublished theses, with no research tools. As a result of this and other factors, the history, languages and cultures of ancient Arabia are no longer taught at any university in Europe or North America, at a time when scholars in many different fields are showing an ever increasing interest in them. OCIANA will reverse this situation by making this treasure-house of material readily available by: (1) creating in 2 stages an easily updatable, online corpus of the approximately 48,000 ANA texts known so far; (2) producing a large range of online, easily updatable, research tools from the texts in OCIANA; (3) training 2 post-doctoral researchers and a doctoral student in ANA epigraphy and the languages, history and cultures of ancient Arabia; (4) enabling them to make international contacts through the project's partnerships, workshop and conference. Thus, while holding posts in Arabic, Semitics, ancient Near Eastern history or other fields they will be able to continue research on ancient Arabia and, it is hoped, eventually restore the subject to university curricula.
Today, our knowledge of the ancient history of Arabia is derived largely from external sources (Assyrian, Greek, Roman, etc.) or the often somewhat garbled accounts by historians in the Islamic period. Although excavations have taken place in the rest of the Middle East for more than 150 years, they have only been undertaken in the Gulf, Oman and Yemen for the last 60, and only in recent decades in Saudi Arabia which covers the major part of the Peninsula. Moreover, a significant section of the population in historical times has always been nomadic and the archaeology of nomadic societies has not yet begun in Arabia.
However, we have another rich source of information. For Arabia was unique in the ancient world in that while literacy was widespread among the settled populations it was apparently almost universal among the nomads. Between the mid-1st millennium BC and the 4th century AD these nomads covered the rocks of the Syro-Arabian deserts with tens of thousands of graffiti. These give us a vivid picture of their way-of-life, social structures, personal emotions, and relations with each other and with the settled peoples of Arabia and beyond (Romans, Jews, Nabataeans, etc.), information which is almost entirely lacking for Middle Eastern nomads at any other period. These, with the monumental inscriptions and graffiti of the settled peoples, are the only indigenous written sources we have for the ancient history of most of Arabia.
These texts are the only source for a group of dialects known as Ancient North Arabian (ANA) which are related to Arabic but distinct from it, and are written in alphabets unique to Arabia. In addition to the historical information they contain, they are of fundamental importance for Comparative Semitics, the history of the alphabet, and the study of ancient literacy. While they provide the key to understanding ancient Arabia, they are also an important source for the ancient Near East in general. For Arabia was geographically and strategically central to the region, and its peoples had links from Anatolia to Ethiopia and from the Mediterranean to India, through the lucrative trade in Arabian frankincense and luxury goods from across the Indian Ocean.
The study of these texts has a distinguished history but they are now very difficult to access since they are scattered in numerous books, articles and unpublished theses, with no research tools. As a result of this and other factors, the history, languages and cultures of ancient Arabia are no longer taught at any university in Europe or North America, at a time when scholars in many different fields are showing an ever increasing interest in them. OCIANA will reverse this situation by making this treasure-house of material readily available by: (1) creating in 2 stages an easily updatable, online corpus of the approximately 48,000 ANA texts known so far; (2) producing a large range of online, easily updatable, research tools from the texts in OCIANA; (3) training 2 post-doctoral researchers and a doctoral student in ANA epigraphy and the languages, history and cultures of ancient Arabia; (4) enabling them to make international contacts through the project's partnerships, workshop and conference. Thus, while holding posts in Arabic, Semitics, ancient Near Eastern history or other fields they will be able to continue research on ancient Arabia and, it is hoped, eventually restore the subject to university curricula.
Planned Impact
In addition to its value to academic beneficiaries discussed in the previous section, this project will have an impact both outside and within academia in three principal ways.
First and most important, at a time when much of the archaeological, historical and linguistic heritage of Arabia is threatened or being destroyed through vandalism and development, OCIANA provides both a means for the preservation of that heritage and a tool by which it may be more effectively studied, disseminated and appreciated. Many of the inscriptions included in OCIANA have already been lost, and many more will disappear during the course of the project. Road-building, the construction and spread of settlements, agricultural projects and oil and gas pipelines have all taken a toll, while easy access to almost all parts of the peninsula in 4x4 vehicles has resulted in inscriptions and rock art being deliberately vandalized or covered with spray-paint graffiti. Transcriptions, drawings and photographs are the only surviving records of many of these carvings, but the majority of these records are either unpublished or appeared in books and articles which are very difficult to access, even for specialists. Yet they represent a major part of the heritage of the Arabian Peninsula. The dialects recorded in these inscriptions are found nowhere else and have features which appear to be unique among the Semitic languages. What is more, the history of pre-Islamic Arabia has until now been written almost entirely from external sources. These inscriptions are virtually the only indigenous accounts which can balance the historical narrative and as such should be a source of pride to the inhabitants of Arabia. In the past, Saudi Arabia in particular has denigrated its pre-Islamic past, but the present king (both before and after his accession) has fostered a much greater interest in the ancient history of the kingdom. The astonishing extent of literacy in ancient Arabia has provided a wealth of data for reconstructing its history, and this project will help that process by making available the content of these texts. We are already working with Saudi scholars who have recorded large numbers of ANA inscriptions and are anxious to use the material provided by OCIANA in their research and teaching. The project's conference on the contribution of ANA and Old Arabic inscriptions to our understanding of ancient Arabia, and of the milieu in which Islam emerged, will be used to publicize this precious resource among a much wider range of potential users, both in Arabia and abroad, such as museums, tourism planners, heritage managers, writers, TV and radio programmers, etc.
Second, the project will also be important in increasing western understanding of the historical background of a crucial but little understood area of the Middle East. OCIANA and the research publications for which it will provide the material will form the basis for more popular studies of ancient Arabia which will contradict the belief that the Peninsula was always populated simply by illiterate camel-herding nomads, and demonstrate that, on the contrary, for almost 1000 years the nomads were literate and at the same time Arabia has always been a place of commerce and often of conspicuous consumption in permanent settlements. OCIANA will provide the material for presenting to the West a more accurate and nuanced picture of ancient Arabia, and thereby of its modern successor, which will enter the popular consciousness through general histories, museum displays and exhibitions, and documentaries on radio and television.
Third, we hope that the pooling of the information from OCIANA in Oxford and CSAI in Pisa, via the European Research Council's DASI portal, with significant input from several partners in the Arab Middle East, will provide a model for other international IT collaborations.
First and most important, at a time when much of the archaeological, historical and linguistic heritage of Arabia is threatened or being destroyed through vandalism and development, OCIANA provides both a means for the preservation of that heritage and a tool by which it may be more effectively studied, disseminated and appreciated. Many of the inscriptions included in OCIANA have already been lost, and many more will disappear during the course of the project. Road-building, the construction and spread of settlements, agricultural projects and oil and gas pipelines have all taken a toll, while easy access to almost all parts of the peninsula in 4x4 vehicles has resulted in inscriptions and rock art being deliberately vandalized or covered with spray-paint graffiti. Transcriptions, drawings and photographs are the only surviving records of many of these carvings, but the majority of these records are either unpublished or appeared in books and articles which are very difficult to access, even for specialists. Yet they represent a major part of the heritage of the Arabian Peninsula. The dialects recorded in these inscriptions are found nowhere else and have features which appear to be unique among the Semitic languages. What is more, the history of pre-Islamic Arabia has until now been written almost entirely from external sources. These inscriptions are virtually the only indigenous accounts which can balance the historical narrative and as such should be a source of pride to the inhabitants of Arabia. In the past, Saudi Arabia in particular has denigrated its pre-Islamic past, but the present king (both before and after his accession) has fostered a much greater interest in the ancient history of the kingdom. The astonishing extent of literacy in ancient Arabia has provided a wealth of data for reconstructing its history, and this project will help that process by making available the content of these texts. We are already working with Saudi scholars who have recorded large numbers of ANA inscriptions and are anxious to use the material provided by OCIANA in their research and teaching. The project's conference on the contribution of ANA and Old Arabic inscriptions to our understanding of ancient Arabia, and of the milieu in which Islam emerged, will be used to publicize this precious resource among a much wider range of potential users, both in Arabia and abroad, such as museums, tourism planners, heritage managers, writers, TV and radio programmers, etc.
Second, the project will also be important in increasing western understanding of the historical background of a crucial but little understood area of the Middle East. OCIANA and the research publications for which it will provide the material will form the basis for more popular studies of ancient Arabia which will contradict the belief that the Peninsula was always populated simply by illiterate camel-herding nomads, and demonstrate that, on the contrary, for almost 1000 years the nomads were literate and at the same time Arabia has always been a place of commerce and often of conspicuous consumption in permanent settlements. OCIANA will provide the material for presenting to the West a more accurate and nuanced picture of ancient Arabia, and thereby of its modern successor, which will enter the popular consciousness through general histories, museum displays and exhibitions, and documentaries on radio and television.
Third, we hope that the pooling of the information from OCIANA in Oxford and CSAI in Pisa, via the European Research Council's DASI portal, with significant input from several partners in the Arab Middle East, will provide a model for other international IT collaborations.
Organisations
- University of Oxford (Lead Research Organisation)
- University of Pisa (Collaboration)
- Sorbonne University (Collaboration)
- Hashemite University (Collaboration)
- University of Jordan (Collaboration)
- Friedrich Schiller University Jena (FSU) (Collaboration)
- Aix-Marseille University (Collaboration)
- Tishreen University (Collaboration)
- Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa (Collaboration)
- UNIVERSITY OF SYDNEY (Collaboration)
- King Faisal Centre for Research and Islamic Studies (Collaboration)
- Leiden University (Collaboration)
- University College London (Collaboration)
- University of Western Australia (Collaboration)
- British Museum (Collaboration)
- St. Francis Xavier University (Collaboration)
- National Center for Scientific Research (Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique CNRS) (Collaboration)
- Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities (Collaboration)
- UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD (Collaboration)
- University of Texas at Austin (Collaboration)
- University of Lyon (Collaboration)
- University of Nice Sophia-Antipolis (Collaboration)
- University of Catania (Collaboration)
- German Archaeological Institute (Collaboration)
- François Rabelais University or University of Tours (Collaboration)
- Saudi Commission for Tourism and Antiquities, Riyadh (Collaboration)
- University of Münster (Collaboration)
Publications
??????? ?
(2017)
???? ????? ?????? ????? (??????) : ????? ????? ?? ??????? ???????? = Ancient North Arabian (Safaitic) Inscriptions : Short Messages from the Jordan Badia
in Jordan Journal for History and Archaeology
Al Manaser A
(2020)
Looting of antiquities in Jordan: A General Overview
in Adumatu
Al-Jallad
(2020)
The Oxford Handbook of the Quran
Al-Jallad A
(2020)
?Arab, ?A?rab, and Arabic in Ancient North Arabia: The first attestation of (?)?rb as a group name in Safaitic
in Arabian Archaeology and Epigraphy
Al-Jallad A
(2018)
Safaitic Inscription C 4714 and the Old Arabic Names for the Planet Mars
in Wiener Zeitschrift für die Kunde des Morgenlandes
Al-Jallad A
(2021)
The particle ?kdy in the Namarah inscription and a new interpretation of line 4
in Journal of Semitic Studies
Al-Jallad A
(2021)
On the origins of the god Ru?aw and some remarks on the pre-Islamic North Arabian pantheon
in Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society
Description | Thirty months into a forty-two month project, it is still premature to report on the key discoveries and developments of the OCIANA Project. That said, as reported under 'Research Databases', we are well advanced (and, indeed, ahead of schedule) in the entry of the various corpora into the database. Most importantly, the publication of the first grammar of Safaitic (see A.M. al-Jallad, An Outline of the Grammar of the Safaitic Inscriptions, Brill: Leiden, 2015, under 'Publications'), which could not have been written without the as yet incomplete database of Safaitic inscriptions is a ground-breaking development. Comparably revolutionary developments are now possible with the virtual completion of the Safaitic and Dadanitic corpora, so that the basic the tools are now ready for the study of the prosopography and social organisation, and of the philology of pre-Islamic North Arabia. |
Exploitation Route | In February, we carried out a "soft-launch" of the databases of Safaitic and Dadanitic inscriptions within the OCIANA. It is now the first time become possible for scholars in all disciplines to access and interrogate the great majority of the sole autochthonous sources for Northern Arabia before the coming of Islam. In addition, following the publication of al-Jallad's grammar of Safaitic in 2015, the study of the linguistics and philology of one of the North Arabian 'dialects' - a close ancestor of classical and thence modern Arabic - has been put on an entirely new footing. The ongoing collection and entry of a massive corpus of data recording the location and distribution of these inscriptions will provide the authorities responsible for the protection of antiquities and the development of tourism in the various modern states of Northern Arabia with a new resource for cultural heritage management. |
Sectors | Education Leisure Activities including Sports Recreation and Tourism Culture Heritage Museums and Collections |
URL | http://krc.orient.ox.ac.uk/ociana/index.php |
Description | After forty-two months, the Second Phase of the OCIANA Project comes to an end on 31st March. It has achieved all its goals and more. It has produced an online database of over 40,000 inscriptions including a large number which were previously unpublished. Each of these inscriptions is presented with a unique siglum, with in the case of previously published texts any previous sigla they may be known by. The text is then presented in a transliteration into roman script and formalized glyphs, translated into English, with apparatus criticus, commentary, and all available information about the inscriptions including as accurate a provenance as can be achieved. Over 100,000 photographs from existing collections have been scanned and entered, as well as digital photographs from more modern collections, so that as many texts as possible have one or more photographs, as well as the traditional hand copies. The inscriptions have been tagged for onomastic and grammatical data and it is possible to produce concordances of genealogies and of narratives and prayers. In addition to the online database, five volumes have been compiled, and made available online for download, of each of the major corpora: Dadanitic, Hismaic, Safaitic and Taymanitic, and a fifth volume of the smaller collections (Dispersed Oasis North Arabian, Dumaitic, Hasaitic, etc.). These can be downloaded free of charge from the OCIANA website and can be used on tablets or even mobile telephones. Already, these have been greeted with congratulations from many scholars working in this and other fields. In addition, the release of the contents of the database in both XML and JSON formats will allow scholars to reuse the data created by the project in future studies and applications. Even during its development, OCIANA was used extensively by scholars and was the basis for Dr Ahmad Al-Jallad's ground-breaking Grammar of the Safaitic inscriptions and the grammar of the Taymanitic inscriptions by one of his doctoral students, Fokelien Kootstra. He has two other doctoral students working on large collections of Safaitic inscriptions, one in Leiden and one at the University of Texas at Austin. Their collections will be added to OCIANA in Phase 3 which will be based at the University of Leiden and will start later in 2017. Other scholars and doctoral students in France, Germany, Italy, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, the USA and elsewhere, and in many disciplines, have already used the database and this has inspired a considerable growth of research on ancient Arabia and a demand for teaching its history, archaeology and epigraphy. In addition, the OCIANA Project has generated more than forty analogue publications, with several more still in press or in preparation, including Languages, scripts and their uses in ancient North Arabia, the proceedings of the OCIANA Special Session at the Seminar for Arabian Studies to be held in August 2017. The Seminar for Arabian Studies is the only annual international conference highlighting the latest research on all aspects of Arabia except modern politics. It meets for three consecutive days each summer in the British Museum and attracts approximately 200 participants. To celebrate the completion of Phase 2 of the OCIANA project and the launch of its online database and pdfs of its corpora, there will be a day-long Special Session on "" at the Seminar on 4th-6th August 2017 (see under "Other Outputs"). The dissemination of greater knowledge about the languages and cultures of pre-Islamic North Arabia assists the governments of the region, principally Jordan and Saudi Arabia in the development of cultural heritage management and tourism policies. In July 2014, Dr Ali al-Ghabban, Vice President of the Saudi Commission for Tourism and Antiquities, visited the OCIANA Project in Oxford, with a view to extending co-operation between the Project and the Commission. There are now a large number of Saudi and foreign excavations and surveys taking place in Saudi Arabia - far more than ever before - as the opening up of archaeological research there coincides with the great increase in interest in its history and cultures. The OCIANA Project team continue to collaborate closely with the Department of Antiquities of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, and several employees and ex-employees of the Department are contributors of data to the OCIANA. In Spring 2015, members of the OCIANA team formed the Badia Project which, together with the Jordanian Department of Antiquities, made a highly productive epigraphic survey of the area of Murabb al-Sharafat in Jordan; the results will be published in the OCIANA. A second epigraphic survey in taking place in March-April 2017 under the directorship of Dr Ali al-Manaser, a resarcher on the OCIANA Project. |
Sector | Education,Leisure Activities, including Sports, Recreation and Tourism,Culture, Heritage, Museums and Collections |
Impact Types | Cultural Societal |
Description | Council for British Research in the Levant, Research Grant |
Amount | £4,657 (GBP) |
Organisation | Council for British Research in the Levant (CBRL) |
Sector | Charity/Non Profit |
Country | United Kingdom |
Start | 03/2015 |
End | 04/2015 |
Description | Khalili Research Centre Research Grant |
Amount | £5,000 (GBP) |
Organisation | University of Oxford |
Department | Khalili Research Centre (KRC) |
Sector | Academic/University |
Country | United Kingdom |
Start | 06/2017 |
End | 08/2017 |
Description | Lorne Thyssen Research Fund for Ancient World Topics |
Amount | £2,500 (GBP) |
Organisation | University of Oxford |
Department | Wolfson College |
Sector | Charity/Non Profit |
Country | United Kingdom |
Start | 03/2015 |
End | 04/2015 |
Description | Pillars of Wisdom Trust |
Amount | £100 (GBP) |
Organisation | Pillars of Wisdom Trust |
Sector | Charity/Non Profit |
Country | United Kingdom |
Start | 03/2015 |
End | 04/2015 |
Description | Seminar for Arabian Studies |
Amount | £5,000 (GBP) |
Organisation | British Foundation for the Study of Arabia |
Sector | Learned Society |
Country | United Kingdom |
Start | 06/2017 |
End | 08/2017 |
Description | The Lorne Thyssen Research Fund for Ancient World Topics |
Amount | £35,186 (GBP) |
Organisation | University of Oxford |
Department | Wolfson College |
Sector | Charity/Non Profit |
Country | United Kingdom |
Start | 03/2021 |
End | 02/2022 |
Description | The Lorne Thyssen Research Fund for Ancient World Topics |
Amount | £2,314 (GBP) |
Organisation | University of Oxford |
Department | Wolfson College |
Sector | Charity/Non Profit |
Country | United Kingdom |
Start | 02/2017 |
End | 02/2017 |
Title | OCIANA (Research Infrastructure) |
Description | The OCIANA (Online Corpus of the Inscriptions of Ancient North Arabia) is in itself a virtual research infrastructure which will collect together everything that is known about the inscriptions of ancient north and central Arabia. Although the future of the Digital Archive for the Study of pre-Islamic Arabian Inscriptions (DASI) established by our partners in Pisa (Università degli Studi di Pisa - Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa) is far from certain, following the retirement of Professor Alessandra Avanzini and the consequent abandonment by the Università di Pisa of research and teaching of the languages and cultures of ancient Arabia, it is still hoped that it will be possible to pool the data for ancient north and central Arabia with that from the Corpus of South Arabian Inscriptions (CSAI). This would constitute the prime resource for the ancient history of Arabia since it would contain for the first time all the indigenous written material from the peninsula in the millennium before the rise of Islam. Not only this, but, during the project, digital research tools, such as vocabularies, onomastic lists, concordances of genealogies, etc. will be produced from the corpus. These will be periodically updated and will be used to produce grammars (see under notable impacts, below), dictionaries, a chrestomathy, and works of synthesis on numerous aspects of ancient Arabia, which will introduce the subject to an ever wider audience and foster research in many different fields. The OCIANA and the works which flow from it will thus change our understanding of the languages, cultures, and history of ancient Arabia, of the ancient Near East, and of the milieu in which Islam was revealed. |
Type Of Material | Improvements to research infrastructure |
Year Produced | 2014 |
Provided To Others? | Yes |
Impact | The most important and significant impact of the project to date is the publication of the five PDF volumes of the inscriptions from the OCIANA (Dadanitic, Hismaic, Safaitic, Taymanitic, and Smaller Collections - see Publications). These are freely available and downloadable online. Dr Ahmad Al-Jallad (University of Leiden) has described this as 'the greatest advance in Ancient North Arabian studies since the decipherment of the scripts', and we anticipate that they will become essential to the study and teaching of the subject in the future. The other most significant impact to date from the development of the OCIANA has been the first grammar of the Safaitic language which is scheduled to be published under the aegis of the OCIANA project in Spring 2015 (see Publications: Ahmad M. al-Jallad, An Outline of the Grammar of the Safaitic Inscriptions, Brill: Leiden, 2015). A second revised edition of this grammar is now in preparation, which again draws heavily upon the data in the OCIANA. The first grammar of the Taymanitic inscriptions has also been published, largely as a result of the OCIANA, by Fokelien Kootstra, a doctoral student of Prof. Al-Jallad's (see Publication: Fokelien Kootstra, 'The Language of the Taymanitic inscriptions and its classification', Arabian Epigraphic Notes, 2, 2016, 67-140). |
URL | http://krcfm.orient.ox.ac.uk/fmi/webd#ociana |
Title | OCIANA (Database) |
Description | At the end of Phase II of the project, the OCIANA database now holds some 45,054 inscriptions, of which 40,301 (99.9% of the total) are associated with images. To break this down by language: Dadanitic: inscription records: 1,989, of which only 6 records have no image, and all have translations; grammar records: 5,626; onomastic records: 3,963, genealogy records: 1,873. Dispersed Oasis North Arabian: inscription records: 23, all of which have images, but 3 lack translations; grammar records: n/a; onomastic records: n/a; genealogy records: n/a. Dumaitic: inscription records: 3, all with images, all with translations; grammar records: n/a; onomastic records: n/a; genealogy records: n/a. Greek: inscription records: 30, all with images, 10 lack translations; grammar records: n/a; onomastic records: n/a; genealogy records: n/a. Gulf Aramaic: inscription records: 1, complete with image and translation; grammar records: n/a; onomastic records: n/a; genealogy records: n/a. Hasaitic: inscription records: 43, 5 without images, all have translations; grammar records: 244; onomastic records: 103; genealogy records: 28. Hismaic: inscription records: 3,690, 27 without images, 20 lack translations; grammar records: 2,803; onomastic records: 5,652; genealogy records: 3,190. Latin: inscription records: 2, both with images and translations; grammar records: n/a; onomastic records: n/a; genealogy records: n/a. Minaic: inscription records: 9, all with images and translations; grammar records: n/a; onomastic records: n/a; genealogy records: n/a. Mixed Safaitic/Hismaic: inscription records: 46, all with images and translations; grammar records: n/a; onomastic records: n/a; genealogy records: n/a. Nabataean: inscription records: 4, 1 without an image, all with translations; grammar records: n/a; onomastic records: n/a; genealogy records: n/a. Palmyrene: inscription records: 1, complete with image and translation; grammar records: n/a; onomastic records: n/a; genealogy records: n/a. Safaitic: inscription records: 33,864, 6 without images, and 50 lack translations (but are mostly duplicates of other records); grammar records: 111,582; onomastic records: 82,851; genealogy records: 30,841. Taymanitic: inscription records: 481, 1 without an image, all have translations; grammar records: 763; onomastic records: 831: genealogy records: 414. All of the information regarding geographical provenance available for records in OCIANA has now been added, with latitudinal and longitudinal coordinates included wherever possible. The tagged grammar elements have allowed us to export dedicated word lists for each script, which researchers are working towards publishing after the formal end of Phase II of the project. In addition, every inscription record in the database has been exported as a standalone html webpage, to allow scholars easily to cite records and link to them. These records follow a standard URL structure, with the following shown as an example: http://krc.orient.ox.ac.uk/ociana/corpus/pages/OCIANA_0036433.html These web pages can be indexed for Google searches independently of the OCIANA database, which should increase their exposure. To ensure that the data from OCIANA remains available, and platform-independent for the long term, all of the database records have been exported and added to the Bodleian ORA in both XML and JSON formats: the DOI for these resources is cited below (10.5287/bodleian:OBVk0AY52) https://doi.org/10.5287/bodleian:OBVk0AY52 The Khalili Research Centre will continue to host the OCIANA database after the end of the AHRC-funded, Oxford-based, OCIANA Phase II on 31st March 2017, and Macdonald (the academic director of the project) and Burt (the ITC officer for the project) will continue to involved in Phase III of the OCIANA Project. In Phase III, most new work on the OCIANA, including the addition of the Thamudic corpus, will be undertaken at the University of Leiden under the direction of Dr Ahmed Al-Jallad. |
Type Of Material | Database/Collection of data |
Year Produced | 2013 |
Provided To Others? | Yes |
Impact | The most important and significant impact of the project to date is the publication of the five PDF volumes of the inscriptions from the OCIANA (Dadanitic, Hismaic, Safaitic, Taymanitic, and Smaller Collections - see Publications). These are freely available and downloadable online. Dr Ahmad Al-Jallad (University of Leiden) has described this as 'the greatest advance in Ancient North Arabian studies since the decipherment of the scripts', and we anticipate that they will become essential to the study and teaching of the subject in the future. The other most significant impact to date from the development of the OCIANA has been the first grammar of the Safaitic language which is scheduled to be published under the aegis of the OCIANA project in Spring 2015 (see Publications: Ahmad M. al-Jallad, An Outline of the Grammar of the Safaitic Inscriptions, Brill: Leiden, 2015). A second revised edition of this grammar is now in preparation, which again draws heavily upon the data in the OCIANA. The first grammar of the Taymanitic inscriptions has also been published, largely as a result of the OCIANA, by Fokelien Kootstra, a doctoral student of Prof. Al-Jallad's (see Publication: Fokelien Kootstra, 'The Language of the Taymanitic inscriptions and its classification', Arabian Epigraphic Notes, 2, 2016, 67-140). |
URL | http://krcfm.orient.ox.ac.uk/fmi/webd#ociana |
Description | Abbadi: Amman |
Organisation | University of Jordan |
Country | Jordan |
Sector | Academic/University |
PI Contribution | We have provided full access to the OCIANA and to the expertise of the project's staff. |
Collaborator Contribution | Prof. Sabri Abbadi (emeritus) has contributed photographs and other data of published and unpublished Ancient North Arabian inscriptions from Jordan. |
Impact | The data provided are being or have been entered into the OCIANA and will be made available online. |
Start Year | 2013 |
Description | Betts: Sydney |
Organisation | University of Sydney |
Country | Australia |
Sector | Academic/University |
PI Contribution | We have provided full access to the OCIANA and to the expertise of the project's staff. |
Collaborator Contribution | Prof. Alison Betts has contributed photographs and other data of published and unpublished Ancient North Arabian inscriptions from Jordan. |
Impact | The data provided have been entered into the OCIANA and will be made available online. |
Start Year | 2013 |
Description | Bloomfield: Oxford |
Organisation | University of Oxford |
Country | United Kingdom |
Sector | Academic/University |
PI Contribution | Josef Bloomfield at Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford, who is being supervised by Michael C.A. Macdonald, is using the Online Corpus of the Inscriptions of Ancient North Arabia as an important source for his thesis on "Animal-human interaction in the ancient Near East, c. 1000 BC to 700 AD". |
Collaborator Contribution | He is entering new inscriptions into the OCIANA database. |
Impact | n/a |
Start Year | 2020 |
Description | Braemer: Nice |
Organisation | University of Nice Sophia-Antipolis |
Country | France |
Sector | Academic/University |
PI Contribution | We have provided full access to the OCIANA and to the expertise of the Project's staff. |
Collaborator Contribution | Dr Frank Braemer has contributed photographs and other data of published and unpublished Ancient North Arabian inscriptions from Jordan. |
Impact | The data provided are being or have been entered into the OCIANA and will be made available online. |
Start Year | 2013 |
Description | DASI: Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa |
Organisation | Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa |
Country | Italy |
Sector | Academic/University |
PI Contribution | The Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa is responsible for the design of the DASI database and the common search facility for the two corpora of South Arabian and North Arabian inscriptions, i.e. respectively, Pisa's Corpus of South Arabian Inscriptions (CSAI) and Oxford's OCIANA. The OCIANA team collaborates extensively with the design team. While the OCIANA Project was still in its planning stage, the OCIANA Computing Officer, Mr Dan Burt, participated in the ESF Exploratory Workshop <>, Berlin (Germany), 19-21 October 2011, in the course of which he held preliminary discussions with the team from the Scuola Normale. Subsequently, members of the OCIANA team made three visits to Pisa in 2013-14, in large part to hold further discussions with the team from the Scuola Normale. |
Collaborator Contribution | The Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa is responsible for the development of the common search facility through which the two corpora of inscriptions may be searched. |
Impact | The common facility that will allow the two corpora of inscriptions to be searched through a single portal is currently under development by the DASI team in Pisa, and inscriptions from the two corpora - CSAI and OCIANA - are still being entered into the databases. Therefore no outcomes have yet resulted from this collaboration. During 2015 it became clear that this outcome was unlikely to be realised in the manner originally planned. On the retirement of Prof. Alessandra Avanzini, the University of Pisa abolished her chair and abandoned research and teaching of the languages and cultures of ancient Arabia. The Scuola Normale's interest in DASI extends no further than providing the ITC element. The fate of DASI is not yet clear. If it can be taken up by another institution, such as the Center for the Study of Ancient Arabia at the University of Leiden, then the planned collaboration between OCIANA and DASI may yet be realised, and we are actively exploring this possibility. |
Start Year | 2013 |
Description | DASI: Università di Pisa |
Organisation | University of Pisa |
Country | Italy |
Sector | Academic/University |
PI Contribution | All of the data from The Online Corpus of the Inscriptions of Ancient North Arabia will be accessible through an ERC-funded joint project of the Università degli Studi di Pisa and the Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa, the Digital Archive for the Study of pre-Islamic Arabian Inscriptions (DASI), so that it will be possible to search the two corpora of South Arabian and North Arabian inscriptions through a single portal. |
Collaborator Contribution | Before the formal start of the OCIANA Project, DASI paid for two post doctoral researchers to spend three months each entering data for the corpora of Dadanitic and Safaitic inscriptions into DASI. These data have now been copied into the OCIANA. |
Impact | The common facility that will allow the two corpora of inscriptions to be searched through a single portal is currently under development by the DASI team in Pisa but will be available at http://dasi.humnet.unipi.it. During 2015 it became clear that this outcome was unlikely to be realised in the manner originally planned. On the retirement of Prof. Alessandra Avanzini, the University of Pisa abolished her chair and abandoned research and teaching of the languages and cultures of ancient Arabia. The fate of DASI is not yet clear. If it can be taken up by another institution, such as the Center for the Study of Ancient Arabia at the University of Leiden, then the planned collaboration between OCIANA and DASI may yet be realised, and we are actively exploring this possibility. |
Start Year | 2012 |
Description | Eichmann: Berlin |
Organisation | German Archaeological Institute |
Country | Germany |
Sector | Public |
PI Contribution | We have provided full access to the OCIANA and to the expertise of the project's staff. |
Collaborator Contribution | Prof. Riccardo Eichmann has contributed photographs and other data of published and unpublished Ancient North Arabian inscriptions from Saudi Arabia. |
Impact | The data provided are being or have been entered into the OCIANA and will be made available online. |
Start Year | 2013 |
Description | Imbert: Aix-Marseille |
Organisation | Aix-Marseille University |
Country | France |
Sector | Academic/University |
PI Contribution | We have provided full access to the OCIANA and to the expertise of the project's staff. |
Collaborator Contribution | Prof. Frédéric Imbert has contributed photographs and other data of published and unpublished Ancient North Arabian inscriptions from Jordan, Saudi Arabia and Syria. |
Impact | The data provided are being or have been entered into the OCIANA and will be made available online. |
Start Year | 2013 |
Description | Kennedy: Western Australia |
Organisation | University of Western Australia |
Country | Australia |
Sector | Academic/University |
PI Contribution | We have provided full access to the OCIANA and to the expertise of the project's staff. |
Collaborator Contribution | Prof. David Kennedy has contributed photographs and other data of published and unpublished Ancient North Arabian inscriptions from Jordan. |
Impact | The data provided are being or have been entered into the OCIANA and will be made available online. |
Start Year | 2013 |
Description | MacDonald: St Francis Xavier |
Organisation | St. Francis Xavier University |
Country | Canada |
Sector | Academic/University |
PI Contribution | We have provided full access to the OCIANA and to the expertise of the project's staff. |
Collaborator Contribution | Prof. Burton MacDonald has contributed photographs and other data of published and unpublished Ancient North Arabian inscriptions from Jordan. |
Impact | The data provided are being or have been entered into the OCIANA and will be made available online. |
Start Year | 2013 |
Description | Nehmé: CNRS |
Organisation | National Center for Scientific Research (Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique CNRS) |
Country | France |
Sector | Academic/University |
PI Contribution | We have provided full access to the OCIANA and to the expertise of the project's staff. The structure of the OCIANA database has been made available to Dr Nehmé for her own research on the corpus of inscriptions in Nabataean. |
Collaborator Contribution | Dr. Laïla Nehmé has contributed photographs and other data of published and unpublished Ancient North Arabian inscriptions from Jordan and Saudi Arabia. She will be responsible for the Nabataean inscriptions to be entered into the OCIANA in Phase Three of the Project. |
Impact | The data provided are being or have been entered into the DASI and will be made available online. In Phase Three of the Project, the corpus of inscriptions in Nabataean will be added to the OCIANA. |
Start Year | 2014 |
Description | Parr: UCL-IoA |
Organisation | University College London |
Country | United Kingdom |
Sector | Academic/University |
PI Contribution | We have provided full access to the OCIANA and to the expertise of the project's staff. |
Collaborator Contribution | Mr Peter Parr (retired) has contributed photographs and other data of published and unpublished Ancient North Arabian inscriptions from Jordan. |
Impact | The data provided are being or have been entered into the OCIANA and will be made available online. |
Start Year | 2013 |
Description | Rawan: Tishreen |
Organisation | Tishreen University |
Country | Syrian Arab Republic |
Sector | Academic/University |
PI Contribution | We have provided full access to the OCIANA and to the expertise of the project's staff. |
Collaborator Contribution | Dr Schirin Rawan has contributed photographs and other data of published and unpublished Ancient North Arabian inscriptions from Syria. |
Impact | The data provided are being or have been entered into the OCIANA and will be made available online. |
Start Year | 2013 |
Description | Robin: Paris |
Organisation | National Center for Scientific Research (Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique CNRS) |
Country | France |
Sector | Academic/University |
PI Contribution | We have provided full access to the OCIANA and to the expertise of the project's staff. |
Collaborator Contribution | Prof. Christian Robin (retired, now Membre de l'Institut de France, Académie des inscriptions et belles-lettres) has contributed photographs and other data of published and unpublished Ancient North Arabian inscriptions from Saudi Arabia. |
Impact | The data provided are being or have been entered into the OCIANA and will be made available online. |
Start Year | 2013 |
Description | Sartre: Tours |
Organisation | François Rabelais University or University of Tours |
Country | France |
Sector | Academic/University |
PI Contribution | We have provided full access to the OCIANA and to the expertise of the project's staff. |
Collaborator Contribution | Prof. Maurice Sartre (emeritus) has contributed photographs and other data of published and unpublished Ancient North Arabian inscriptions from Jordan. |
Impact | The data provided are being or have been entered into the OCIANA and will be made available online. |
Start Year | 2013 |
Description | Scagliarini: Ragusa |
Organisation | University of Catania |
Country | Italy |
Sector | Academic/University |
PI Contribution | We have provided full access to the OCIANA and to the expertise of the project's staff. |
Collaborator Contribution | Dr Fiorella Scagliarini has contributed photographs and other data of published and unpublished Ancient North Arabian inscriptions from Saudi Arabia. |
Impact | The data provided are being or have been entered into the OCIANA and will be made available online. |
Start Year | 2013 |
Description | Searight: BM |
Organisation | British Museum |
Country | United Kingdom |
Sector | Public |
PI Contribution | We have provided full access to the OCIANA and to the expertise of the project's staff. |
Collaborator Contribution | Ms Ann Searight (retired) has contributed photographs and other data of published and unpublished Ancient North Arabian inscriptions from Jordan. |
Impact | The data provided are being or have been entered into the OCIANA and will be made available online. |
Start Year | 2013 |
Description | Stein: Jena |
Organisation | Friedrich Schiller University Jena (FSU) |
Country | Germany |
Sector | Academic/University |
PI Contribution | We have provided full access to the OCIANA and to the expertise of the project's staff. |
Collaborator Contribution | Prof. Peter Stein has contributed photographs and other data of published and unpublished Ancient North Arabian inscriptions from Saudi Arabia. |
Impact | The data provided are being or have been entered into the OCIANA and will be made available online. |
Start Year | 2013 |
Description | Stiehl: Münster |
Organisation | University of Münster |
Country | Germany |
Sector | Academic/University |
PI Contribution | We have provided full access to the OCIANA and to the expertise of the project's staff. |
Collaborator Contribution | Emeritus Prof. Dr. Altheim Stiehl has contributed photographs and other data of published and unpublished Ancient North Arabian inscriptions from Saudi Arabia. |
Impact | The data provided are being or have been entered into the OCIANA and will be made available online. |
Start Year | 2013 |
Description | Stokes: Austin |
Organisation | University of Texas at Austin |
Country | United States |
Sector | Academic/University |
PI Contribution | We have made available in electronic form the photographs of the Safaitic inscriptions recorded in April 2015 by the Badia Project in the area of Murabb al-Sharafat for Philip Stokes, a doctoral student, to edit in his Ph.D. dissertation and to publish either in a published version of his dissertation or elsewhere. |
Collaborator Contribution | Phillip Stokes will enter the Safaitic inscriptions the area of Murabb al-Sharafat into the OCIANA. |
Impact | It is too early for there to be any significant outcomes to date. |
Start Year | 2015 |
Description | Villeneuve: Sorbonne |
Organisation | Sorbonne University |
Country | France |
Sector | Academic/University |
PI Contribution | We have provided full access to the OCIANA and to the expertise of the project's staff. |
Collaborator Contribution | Prof. François Villeneuve has contributed photographs and other data of published and unpublished Ancient North Arabian inscriptions from Jordan and Saudi Arabia. |
Impact | The data provided are being or have been entered into the OCIANA and will be made available online. |
Start Year | 2013 |
Description | Yon: Lyon |
Organisation | University of Lyon |
Department | Université Lumière Lyon2 - National Center for Scientific Research (Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique CNRS) |
Country | France |
Sector | Academic/University |
PI Contribution | We have provided full access to the OCIANA and to the expertise of the project's staff. |
Collaborator Contribution | Dr Jean-Baptiste Yon has contributed photographs and other data of published and unpublished Ancient North Arabian inscriptions from Syria. |
Impact | The data provided are being or have been entered into the OCIANA and will be made available online. |
Start Year | 2013 |
Description | al-?ara?sheh: Amman |
Organisation | Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities |
Department | Department of Antiquities |
Country | Jordan |
Sector | Public |
PI Contribution | We have provided full access to the OCIANA and to the expertise of the project's staff. |
Collaborator Contribution | Dr Rafi? al-?ara?sheh has contributed photographs and other data of published and unpublished Ancient North Arabian inscriptions from Jordan. |
Impact | The data provided are being or have been entered into the OCIANA and will be made available online. |
Start Year | 2013 |
Description | al-Dhuyayb: Riyadh |
Organisation | King Faisal Centre for Research and Islamic Studies |
Country | Saudi Arabia |
Sector | Academic/University |
PI Contribution | We have provided full access to the OCIANA and to the expertise of the project's staff. |
Collaborator Contribution | Professor Solaiman Al-Dhuyayb (Al-Theeb) has contributed photographs and other data of published and unpublished Ancient North Arabian inscriptions from Saudi Arabia. |
Impact | The data provided are being or have been entered into the OCIANA and will be made available online. |
Start Year | 2013 |
Description | al-Eskoubi: Riyadh |
Organisation | Saudi Commission for Tourism and Antiquities, Riyadh |
Country | Saudi Arabia |
Sector | Public |
PI Contribution | We have provided full access to the OCIANA and to the expertise of the project's staff. |
Collaborator Contribution | Dr Khalid al-Eskoubi has contributed photographs and other data of published and unpublished Ancient North Arabian inscriptions from Saudi Arabia. |
Impact | The data provided are being or have been entered into the OCIANA and will be made available online. |
Start Year | 2013 |
Description | al-Husan: DoA Mafraq |
Organisation | Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities |
Department | Department of Antiquities |
Country | Jordan |
Sector | Public |
PI Contribution | We have provided full access to the OCIANA and to the expertise of the project's staff. |
Collaborator Contribution | Dr Abdulqader al-Husan has contributed photographs and other data of published and unpublished Ancient North Arabian inscriptions from Jordan. |
Impact | The data provided are being or have been entered into the OCIANA and will be made available online. |
Start Year | 2013 |
Description | al-Jallad: Leiden University, Center for the Study of Ancient Arabia |
Organisation | Leiden University |
Country | Netherlands |
Sector | Academic/University |
PI Contribution | The OCIANA database has been made available to Dr Ahmad al-Jallad, Assistant Professor of Arabic Language and Linguistics, and to his research students (see below). Mr Michael Macdonald (Academic Director of the OCIANA Project) and Dr Ali al-Manaser (OCIANA Researcher with special responsibility for Safaitic) work especially closely with Dr al-Jallad and his students, in particular on the grammar of the Safaitic corpus. After the end of the AHRC-funded phase of the based at Oxford, the OCIANA will move to Leiden for Stage III. |
Collaborator Contribution | Dr Ahmad al-Jallad, Assistant Professor of Arabic Language and Linguistics, worked as Post Doctoral Researcher responsible for the Safaitic Corpus in the preliminary stages of the OCIANA Project and is currently a Research Associate of the OCIANA Project. Dr al-Jallad has used the data in the OCIANA to write a monograph - <>, Brill: Leiden, 2015 - which in turn is being used by the OCIANA Project team in the interpretation and translation of the Safaitic inscriptions. A second edition of this grammar, making use of data entered onto the OCIANA, is currently in preparation. Three of Dr al-Jallad's doctoral students, conducting research on the languages and cultures of Ancient North Arabia, are now both using the OCIANA database for their own research, and contributing their own grammatical tagging and translations to the OCIANA database: Fokelien Kootstra, <>; Chiara Della Puppa, <>; Jouni Harjumaki, <>. |
Impact | The publication of the first ever grammar of Safaitic, largely made possible by the data contained within the OCIANA: A.M. al-Jallad, An Outline of the Grammar of the Safaitic Inscriptions, Brill: Leiden, 2015. A second edition of this grammar, making use of data entered onto the OCIANA, is currently in preparation. Since the start of the OCIANA Project, and especially since the foundation of the Center for the Study of Ancient Arabia in March 2015, the University of Leiden has emerged as the European centre of excellence in the field. At the time of writing, we are discussing with Leiden whether or not, at the end of this stage of the Project in 2017, the Center for the Study of Ancient Arabia should take over OCIANA Project and develop it in the future. |
Start Year | 2012 |
Description | al-Qudrah: Zarqa |
Organisation | Hashemite University |
Country | Jordan |
Sector | Academic/University |
PI Contribution | We have provided full access to the OCIANA and to the expertise of the project's staff. |
Collaborator Contribution | Dr Hussein M. al-Qudrah has contributed photographs and other data of published and unpublished Ancient North Arabian inscriptions from Jordan. |
Impact | The data provided are being or have been entered into the OCIANA and will be made available online. |
Start Year | 2013 |
Description | al-Zoubi: Zarqa |
Organisation | Hashemite University |
Country | Jordan |
Sector | Academic/University |
PI Contribution | We have provided full access to the OCIANA and to the expertise of the project's staff. |
Collaborator Contribution | Prof. Mahdi al-Zoubi has contributed photographs and other data of published and unpublished Ancient North Arabian inscriptions from Jordan. |
Impact | The data provided are being or have been entered into the OCIANA and will be made available online. |
Start Year | 2013 |