Online Corpus of the Inscriptions of Ancient North Arabia

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.

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.