camels and arabian balîya and other forms of sacrifice: a review of archaeological and literary...

Camels and Arabian balıya and other forms ofsacrifice: a review of archaeological and literaryevidence

IntroductionThe Arabic term balıya describes the sacrifice of ananimal for a deceased individual to use in theafterlife as it was conceived in the pre-Islamic periodin Arabia. As a result of the nature of the balıyaimmolation, in its archaeological survival the skele-ton that remains from balıya animal sacrifices tendsto be found complete rather than disarticulated.

Skeletal remains of a number of balıya immola-tions have been excavated in Arabia and itsneighbours in sufficiently intact condition to bereadily recognizable archaeologically, so that themanner of the immolation can be precisely inter-preted in a number of well-researched cases. Thehuman burials of which the balıya forms an elementare often marked by tokens of prestige and indica-tions of rank, especially in the form of interredweapons (Hell 1960; Pellat 1971).

In the completeness of their survival, balıya animalskeletons differ from the remains of other forms ofimmolation,generally termedinArabicasdhibh inpre-

Islamic and Islamic contexts (Bousquet 1965:213–214)1. The equivalent of the Islamic Arabic dhibhinHebrewis thekorban, theritualanimalslaughterthatwas performed before the destruction of the Temple in70 CE by the Romans. In the Syrian Christian tradition,the Syriac term used to describe dhibh@ is qurbano2.

Related forms of animal sacrifice are attested inpre-Islamic south Arabia in musnad inscriptionsfrom temples and altars but these too seem distinctfrom the balıya. As far as I am aware, there appearsto be no direct reference to the balıya in thepublished corpus of pre-Islamic inscriptions fromsouth Arabia, although this point deserves furtherresearch. Where musnad inscriptions deal withsacrifice or dedication to a deity, they were not

The paper surveys the recent archaeological information for the balıyaimmolation tradition of pre-Islamic Arabia, whereby a camel or other valuedanimal was slaughtered to accompany a person of status in death so that theyhad an animal to ride or to maintain their status in the afterlife. In contrast tothe dhibh immolation, which is prescribed in the Holy Qur’an in memory ofthe sacrifice of the Prophet Ibrahım, the balıya is forbidden in Islam. Unlikethe dhibh immolation, the balıya sacrifice was interred whole and providesprecise archaeological information about the circumstances of its slaughterand burial. Information about such immolations derives largely fromexcavations in southern and eastern Arabia.

Keywords: Arabia, camels, balıya, sacrifice, United Arab Emirates, AbuDhabi, Sharjah, Yemen, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia

Geoffrey KingDept. of Art and Archaeo-logy, School of Oriental andAfrican Studies, University ofLondon, Thornhaugh Street,London WC1H 0XG, UK

e-mail: [email protected]

1 The terms dhibh@ and dhabıh@ a are treated as being synon-ymous in this paper.

2 I am grateful to Dr Emma Loosley for observations on thetradition of the Syrian Christian church of the qurbano ofthe western Syrian church (or qurbana in eastern Syriac).

Arab. arch. epig. 2009: 20: 81–93 (2009)

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balıyas but dhibh@ in character and the animals offeredtended to be sheep or bulls. Camels do not seem tobe mentioned in such contexts.

This silence of the epigraphic evidence is striking,as pre-Islamic south Arabian inscriptions tend to beextremely exact regarding sacrificial offerings, re-cording lists of immolated domesticated and gameanimals, sometimes in large numbers. The dedica-tion of incense in its various and precise categoriesof value and of gold is also specified. By contrast, thebalıya of camels and other animals does not seem togenerate epigraphic record in southern Arabiabefore Islam, yet archaeological evidence from southArabia shows that it was widespread.

These dhibh@ -type sacrifices in their varying formsgenerally involved the consumption of the slaugh-tered animal and its consequent disarticulation andthe scattering of the bones. This distinguishes thesetypes of sacrifice from the balıya where the entireskeleton is often recovered more or less intact in anarchaeological context.

It is hardly surprising that excavated balıyas in theArabian Peninsula should have largely involvedcamel immolation but there is evidence that a balıyacould also involve other animals that were consid-ered prestigious, including cattle, horses and don-keys. The selection of the animal involved in balıyasacrifice was based on its relative prestige and utilityin the world of the living, a world that was reflectedin the pre-Islamic Arabian concept of the afterlife.Without archaeological evidence, we would knowvery little in detail of the manner of the Arabianbalıya of the jahilıya and yet it was both widespreadand sometimes very extravagant, reflecting thewealth and the prestige of the interred.

With the coming of Islam to Arabia, the traditionof the balıya immolation was gradually abandonedand as a result, descriptions in the literary sources ofthe Islamic period of the manner of its practice arelimited and even misleading. It is only througharchaeological excavations in recent years that theArabian balıya has come to be understood in detail.The main evidence for our knowledge of it isderived from excavations in Yemen and the UnitedArab Emirates (U.A.E.), although there is evidencefrom al-Bah@ rayn as well.

The balıya and other pagan practices should haveceased with the ending of the jahilıya and the comingof Islam to Arabia. There is no shortage of evidence

of the intense suppression of paganism in placeswithin range of al-Madına al-Munuwarra in thelifetime of the Prophet Muh@ ammad (S.)3. Yet furtherafield in the peninsula older social customs like thebalıya do not seem to have been immediatelyobliterated with the ascendancy of Islam. Rather,they seem to have persisted for a time side by sidewith the orthodoxy of the new faith. Unfortunately,however, our knowledge of early Islamic burials inArabia based on archaeology is insufficient toestimate how long the balıya tradition and othercustoms like burial of weapons with the interredlingered, despite the coming of Islam. Was it for afew decades or for a very much longer period? Thiswe do not know (for an important study of thepre-Islamic period, see Henninger 1999; see alsoChelhod 1955, 1971).

Textual and archaeological evidence of the balıyaGoldziher was one of the first scholars to record thebalıya sacrifice although he does not record the termas such:

‘Les temoignages archeologiques prouvent, dansbien des cas, que les squelettes de chameaupeuvent etre associes a des sepultres humaines,soit comme partie integrante de la meme struc-ture, soit encore dans le contexte general d’unenecropole, soit a proximite immediate de sepul-tures humaines’ (Goldziher 1967: 216–220; cf.Jacob 1897: 141; Potts 1990: 278–279, n. 56).

Goldziher’s perception was entirely accurate and anumber of immolation burials, mainly of camels andmostly as balıyas, have been recorded since he wrote in1887. A detailed survey of the archaeological evidencefor camel immolations was published in 1994 in animportantpaperbyBurckhardtVogt (1994).Since thenthere have been more excavations of sacrificialanimals,mainly insouthernandsouth-easternArabia.

These excavations at archaeological sites haveprovided detailed material evidence of the balıyaritual, especially with respect to camels, and horseand donkey balıyas have also been recorded, the

3 For recent summaries of the information on the suppres-sion of the idolatry of the jahilıya, see King 2002a; 2002b;2004.

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former in Sharjah, U.A.E. and the latter inal-Bah@ rayn. There is also evidence of the persistenceof balıya burial well into early Islamic times fromexcavations at Jabal al-Buhays in Sharjah, and atal-Rabadha in Saudi Arabia another pre-Islamiccamel immolation practice, the farac, continued aslate as the cAbbasid period. The continuation of thebalıya and other forms of un-Islamic immolation intothe Islamic period suggests that while al-Madına’spolitical rule had penetrated all of Arabia by the endof the Rid @d @a (Apostasy) wars of 11 ⁄ 632–13 ⁄ 634, thenew Islamic customs were unevenly spread in thisearly period, and the balıya practice was not yetsuppressed, judging by the excavated evidence atJabal al-Buh@ ays.

Vogt’s summary of the archaeological record ofthe 25–27 Arabian camel burials known in 1994 is anextremely useful piece of research (1994: nos 4–8,possibly 9–10; 16–21 and 23–26)4. He recorded aseries of cases, presumably balıyas, with the camelslaughtered in a kneeling posture, many of themaccompanying a human burial. He lists two camelskeletons found in a kneeling position at site A 158at Mazruca in Qat@ar (third century CE); fourinstances of camel burial at al-Dur at Umm al-Qawain, U.A.E., dated to the first century CE–thirdcentury CE and four more (B 17, B18.2, B 19.2 and B20.2) at Beles (Balıs?) in Yemen (first–second centuryCE) (Uerpmann & Langguth, in press)5. At Raybunin the H@ ad@ ramawt in Yemen he records camelinhumation at cemetery XV (dated from sixth ⁄ fifthBCE to early first century BCE) and at cemetery XVII(fourth century CE and eleventh century CE).

The sites at Beles and Raybun, and a site at Bat inOman discussed below, are defined as camelcemeteries by Vogt, but it is unclear if the camelsburied there were associated with human interments(Sedov 1988, cited in Vogt 1994: 280; Sedov 1997:215)6. However, Dr Sedov has noted the associationof camel and human burials at Raybun and he hasalso noted the same at al-H@ ammariyat and WadıcArf, both sites in H@ ad@ramawt. He has suggestedthat the camels were killed as the possessions ofwarriors of rank, i.e. that they were indeed balıyas.

The wide chronological span of Raybun cemeteryXVII (between the fourth century CE and eleventhcentury CE) indicates that the site continued in usefar into the Islamic period. However, it is unclearfrom the published reports whether the balıyacustom with a camel accompanying a human burialcontinued down to the eleventh century CE, far intothe Islamic period.

Vogt observes that in eleven of the twenty-sevencases of camel burials that he cites, the camel wasinterred with its neck removed and he suggests thatthe intention was that, in its incomplete state, thecamel could not arise from the grave to abandon itsowner in the afterlife (Vogt 1994: 285; Mashkour1997: 733–734).7 However, in the light of H-P.Uerpmann and M. Uerpmann’s account of a camelburial at al-Milayh@ a (Mleiha) in Sharjah, which isdiscussed below (Uerpmann H-P 1999: 116), thismay be a questionable conclusion or at least not auniversal.

Since Vogt published his list of excavated camelinhumations, a number of other camel burialsassociated with human interments have been foundin various parts of Arabia. These have been dated toboth the pre-Islamic and the early Islamic period,although the latter group are not necessarilyassociated with converts to Islam.

At al-Dur in the territory of Umm al-Qawain,U.A.E., a male human skeleton has been excavatedby O. Lecomte. This skeleton was accompanied by acamel, a sword and a scabbard, and it is dated to225–300 CE (Potts 1990: 278–279; Lecomte 1993: 195–217).

A remarkable camel and horse balıya accompany-ing a human burial has been identified at Tomb 4 atal-Milayh@ a in Sharjah and dated to some timebetween 300 BCE and 200 CE8. The al-Milayh@ aburial has been reported at length by Sabah al-Jasimand the skeletons involved have been analysed byM. Mashkour and by H-P. Uerpmann and M.Uerpmann (Anonymous 1994; Jasim 1999; Mashkour

4 Vogt terms Raybun as a ‘place of camel’.5 I have not been able to access this work.6 I have not been able to access Sedov 1988.

7 Mashkour moderates Vogt’s interpretation, suggesting weknow too little to arrive at firm conclusions on this issue.

8 Mashkour points out that Sabah al-Jasim prefers a datebetween the second century BCE and the first century CE,while M. Mouton suggests a date of first–second centuryCE. See the brief summary in Hellyer 1998: 100–102.

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1997: 729 [Grave A ⁄ 1], 731–732 [Grave M ⁄ 12];Uerpmann H-P 1999: 102–118).

The funeral at al-Milayh@ a was sumptuous, withthe interred individual accompanied by twelvecamels and two horses in a particularly extravagantbalıya, which was clearly intended for an importantand extremely wealthy person. The human skeleton,which this balıya accompanied, was not found by theexcavators.

The balıya camels were placed in the middle of thegraveyard and they appear to have been arrangedconcentrically around the lost human burial thatonce lay in a central chamber. Of the camels, tenwere definitely buried in a kneeling position andtwo more were probably also buried in the sameposition. One of the horses was also buried kneeling.One must assume that all of these animals had beenhamstrung.

Dr Sabah al-Jasim has described the manner inwhich the balıya camels excavated at al-Milayha hadhad their heads pulled back and their legs hobbledbefore being left to die in a burial pit near the graveof their owner. There is also archaeological evidencefrom al-Milayha that the balıya involved the camelsbeing killed in a crouching position, presumablyafter being hamstrung to ensure that they hadsettled in the prepared grave pit (Jasim 1999: 95–99). This process of hamstringing represents analternative method of balıya to the tethering recordedby Ibn Manz@ur and possibly also used at Jabal al-Buh@ ays (see below).

Among the camels of the great balıya at al-Milayh@ a, three were of exceptional size, apparentlyhybrids bred of the mating of Bactrian camels andArabian dromedaries, a type no longer encounteredin south-eastern Arabia. Such mating may seemexotic in Arabia but it has been widespread in theMiddle East for many centuries. It was driven by thefact that Bactrian ⁄ dromedary hybrids are exception-ally strong and such hybridisation had been prac-tised since at least Neo-Assyrian times (934–609BCE) if not earlier, according to Professor D.T. Potts.He bases his analysis on archaeological and textualevidence from Anatolia, Syria, Iran, Azerbaijan,Khurasan and Afghanistan (2004).

Potts describes the history and benefits of cross-breeding between dromedaries and Bactrian camels,and the practice of exporting Bactrians westwardsfrom their natural habitat on the Chinese ⁄ Inner

Asian borderlands to be cross-bred with Arabiandromedaries. Generally and preferably, it was maleBactrians that were bred with the best of the femaleArabian dromedaries, the result being a hybridcamel of great strength, long potential of life and anability to carry extremely heavy loads over longdistances.

The immolation of these three very large hybridbalıya camels at al-Milayh@ a is a mark of the status ofthe individual human interred. Uerpmann notes thatthe hybrids were of an age when their value forcarrying heavy loads would have been at its great-est. He also observes that the nine dromedarycamels in this balıya were also of considerable valueas they were at an ideal age both for breeding andfor riding. In the light of this, Uerpmann regards theimmolated dromedaries in the balıya also to havebeen valuable animals when alive, like the hybrids.

He suggests that the horses in the cemetery couldhave been even more valuable than the camels,arguing that the presence of only two horses, one ofthem with heavy golden decoration, the other withan iron bridle, is an indication of their extremelyhigh value even compared with the camels (Uerp-mann H-P 1999: 116). The iron of the horsebridle was imported like the gold accoutrements.Cumulatively, all of this evidence indicates that theindividual who was buried with these animals andwith artefacts of such high value was a person ofvery considerable wealth and status to have hadsuch a rich balıya.

A precisely dated camel balıya has been found atJabal al-Buh@ ays (site BHS 12) near al-Madam inSharjah, U.A.E. Excavation of al-Buh@ ays 12 wasconducted by Dr Sabah al-Jasim in 1995 (Jasim 1999).It revealed a human burial accompanied by a camelinhumation and it was a secondary grave-use. Thecamel’s death was dated by C14 analysis of thecontents of its stomach to 640–680 CE with a 2rdeviation and to 655–670 CE with a 1r deviation.Both dates fall well within the early Islamic period9,yet in every respect the nature of the inhumation

9 At this stage, the cUman peninsula was ruled virtually asan independent state by its Al Julanda Muslim princes. Itwas not brought under the Umayyads until a date towards86 ⁄ 705 when al-H@ ajjaj b. Yusuf, the governor of the Islamicmashriq, sent an army to bring south-east Arabia under thecontrol of the Umayyad caliphate.

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suggests that Islam had not yet universally eradi-cated pagan balıya funerary rites, as the interredhuman was accompanied by iron arrowheads, apractice that was customary in pre-Islamic Arabiabut unacceptable in Islamic times. Certainly Islamicpractices have no part in this balıya.

The bodies of the human and the camel interred atal-Buh@ ays had been placed together in a reusedBronze Age tomb, which was dated to the thirdmillennium BCE. This grave reuse matches exactlythe practice recorded by J. Benton at Jabal al-cImala(Jebel Al Emala).

Detailed analysis of the Jabal al-Buh@ ays 12inhumations has been undertaken by H-P. Uerp-mann and M. Uerpmann. The human skeleton wasthat of a male and as it was accompanied by ironarrowheads, it has been assumed that the individualwas a warrior (Uerpmann & Uerpmann 1999: 456).The camel may have been killed by cutting thethroat and breeching its blood vessels. It is unclear ifit was hamstrung first or tethered. The camelappeared to have been forced into the confined pitof the existing Bronze Age tomb in which it was tobe buried. Uerpmann and Uerpmann are convincedthat the camel was alive when it was brought intothe narrow Bronze Age grave where it was to die.They also suggest that it tried to get up before itsdeath (1999: 455).

In contrast to Vogt’s interpretation of theabsence of camel necks at the sites that hediscussed in South Arabia and which he suggestedwas a means of stopping the camel deserting itsowner in death, Uerpmann and Uerpmann take adifferent view. They suggest that the absence ofthe remains of a neck and head in situ at al-Buh@ ays 12 was a consequence of the effects of themovement and disintegration of the ligaments inthe neck after death. This explanation may alsoaccount for the lack of necks on the camelsrecorded by Vogt at the South Arabian sites towhich he refers.

The orientation of the man and camel balıya burialat al-Buh@ ays 12 was determined by the existingBronze Age tomb, with the body lying south-east–north-west, and thus showing no concern whatever

for the qibla towards Makka al-Mukarrima, which aconventional Islamic grave should have observed10.Given the lack of attention to the qibla displayed inthe burial at al-Buh@ ays 12 and the presence of thebalıya and arrowheads accompanying the individualin the grave, there is nothing whatsoever to indicatethat those who organised the burial were cognisantof Islamic burial practices as we understand themnow. If indeed those involved in the inhumationwere Muslims, they knew little or nothing oforthodox Islamic interment practices as we knowthem in later times.

As to grave reuse, this seems to be a feature ofsouth-east Arabian funerary practice from the IronAge onwards, as the excavations by Dr J. Benton atJabal al-cImala also demonstrate. Other excavationsshow the reuse of graves in a later period in pre-Islamic times in south-eastern Arabia. HusseinQandil has excavated at al-Qus@ays@, Dubai (U.A.E.),Bronze Age burial sites reused in the Iron Age(personal communication, April 1993). Beatrice deCardi has cited a female burial of the late pre-Islamicperiod in a second-millennium BCE grave in south-ern Ra’s al-Khaimah, excavated by Carl Phillips (deCardi 1996: 83).

The al-Buh@ ays 12 balıya raises a number of issuesfor future research. How long did balıya burialscontinue into early Islamic times at sites other thanal-Buh@ ays 12? This is an issue that has yet to beaddressed for the lack of a broad span of archae-ological evidence of similar date. The matter canprobably never be answered methodically since, indeference to Muslims’ reluctance to disturb Islamicburials, archaeologists routinely avoid disturbinggraves where their orientation and design suggeststhat they appear to be Islamic. This greatly limits ourknowledge of burial practices in the early period ofIslam. The only reason that the early Islamic periodbalıya at al-Buh@ ays 12 was discovered is that theBronze Age tomb, one of several at the site, hadattracted the attention of archaeologists working onthe pre-Islamic period.

Dr J. Benton has reported two male warriorburials at Jabal al-cImala (Jebel Al Emala) in Sharjah,U.A.E., at Tombs I and III which she associates witha camel burial (1994). She took the burials to be ofHellenistic-Sasanian date but as Professor D.T. Pottshas demonstrated on the basis of C14 evidence, the

10 The orientation is the same as that noted by P. Yule andCharlotte Bank in a Samad-culture grave at Amlah in al-Dhahirah in the Sultanate of Oman. See Yule & Bank 2001.


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likelihood is that they are of Sasanian date orpossibly of very early Islamic date.

The burials are located in reused Bronze Agetombs dated to c. 3000–2500 BCE. One of the interredmales held an iron spear and an iron pike lay closeby. The second male was buried with a long ironsword. The presence of these weapons and the camelburial implies that these individuals were of statusand were warriors, although any man of standingcan be assumed to have had weapons in his grave,whether inclined to war or not. The camel burialmust be taken to have been a balıya (Potts 1997 andpersonal communication, November 2007).

Potts subsequently published C14 dates fromGraves I and III at Jabal al-cImala. The datesestablished for Grave I are as follows, based onanalysis of the organic and the inorganic fractionsretrieved from human bone: OZA942 1450 ± 90 (2r),i.e. 423 CE–727 CE (.96 relative contribution toprobabilities). This date is based on analysis of theorganic fraction (collagen) from human bone. Thesecond date recorded from the same human bonewas 1440 ± 60, to 2r, i.e. 530 CE–697 CE (.95 relativecontribution to probabilities). This was based on theinorganic fraction (apatite) from the bone sample.

The results recorded from Grave III are verysimilar: OZA941 1470 ± 60 (2r), i.e. 492 CE–667 CE(.93 relative contribution to probabilities). Thisdating was based on the organic fraction. Thesecond date was 1550 ± 100 (2r), i.e. 323 CE–668CE (.98 relative contribution to probability).

Professor Potts has informed me that he hadconsidered these two graves to be Late Sasanian butas he writes, they could be early Islamic if oneemphasises the later frame of dating derived fromthe C14 results.

The Jabal al-cImala case is not clear-cut in terms ofdating in the same way as al-Buh@ ays 12, because theC14 results reported by Professor Potts straddle theSasanian ⁄ late jahilıya period and the early years ofIslam. Therefore, they cannot with confidence beregarded as secure evidence that the Jabal al-cImalabalıya is of early Islamic date, although the possibi-lity obviously exists, given the C14 results fromGraves I and III.

Beyond the United Arab Emirates, a camel burial,apparently a balıya, has been recorded at Bat in theinterior of Oman, but the dating is imprecise. KarenFrifelt attributed it to the first half of the first

millennium CE and she recorded green-glazedpottery and a glass vessel, which she foundaccompanying a human interment (1985: 101–103),finds that she regarded as consonant stylisticallywith such a date. There were two camel burials atBat along with the human interment and one of theexcavated camels was in a kneeling position, whichsuggests hamstringing. The second camel wasprobably also buried in the same manner. However,while Frifelt noted early Islamic graves nearby, shedrew no connection between them and the camelburials. The most that can be said is that the earlyfirst-millennium CE graveyard at Bat continued inuse into Islamic times, but this does not prove thepersistence of the balıya custom. In this respect, theBat site corresponds to Raybun XVII in Yemendescribed by Vogt with the same uncertainties as towhether the camel burials and the Islamic humaninterments should be associated with each other.

Other evidence of camel burial in south-easternArabia is recorded by Paul Yule and Caroline Bankwho have drawn attention to a site attributed to theso-called ‘Samad Culture’ at Amlah ⁄ al-Fuwaydah inal-Dhahira in the Sultanate of Oman. They found atthe al-Dhahira site a camel balıya accompanying amale human burial that was accompanied by ironarrowheads and two swords, dated to the thirdcentury–second century BCE. The Amlah ⁄ Fuwaidahinhumation is oriented south-east–north-west, in thesame way as the al-Buh@ ays 12 burial. Yule has alsorecorded bronze bowls from the Amlah ⁄ al-Fuway-dah cemetery, whose decoration suggests Iranianand Mesopotamian antecedents. These he alsoassociates with the Samad culture and he suggeststhat the cemetery was in use between c. 250 BCE and1000 CE (Yule 2001; 2003; Yule & Weisgerber 2001;Yule & Bank 2001).

Other cases of camel burials that may be balıya arecited elsewhere. Thus in Wadı Rumm in southernJordan, a camel burial has been noted, seeminglyassociated with an interment of a human in awooden coffin. It was accompanied by a Nabataeaninscription (Lecomte, Boucharlat & Culas 1989: 56).Camel burial was known at Petra under theNabataeans according to Benton (1994: 12–13, with-out citing a source).

A rather different association of a camel with thedead is provided by an inscription from JabalGhunaym near Tayma’, in north-west Saudi Arabia

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(Winnett & Reed 1970: 96, 167–171, pls 18 and 21).Jabal Ghunaym seems to have been a sacred highplace before Islam, perhaps associated with the pre-Islamic deity Salm. Its use as a place of worship maybe dated as early as the sixth century BCE. ATaymanite inscription (1970: 96) at the site reads:Nasr b. cIgl has passed away. This is KRFTY, the [sc.his?] riding camel. Beside it is a crude drawing of acamel, presumably KRFTY. Whether the camel wasactually buried with or near Nasr b. cIgl is unknown,but this inscription and sketch could be regarded asconstituting a variation on the balıya theme ofassociating the dead person with his personal camelthat we probably see elsewhere in archaeologicallyretrieved balıyas.

A non-camel, balıya-like burial has been recordedat Shakhura in al-Bah@ rayn involving the inhumationof a donkey associated with a human interment(Daems & Haerinck 2001: 93–94). It has been datedto c. 150 BCE–first ⁄ second century CE, the so-calledMiddle Tylos period. In this case, a human burial,which seems to have been placed in a wooden coffin,was accompanied by fifteen iron arrowheads. To thenorth-east of the human grave was a partiallyburned donkey whose trunk was intact althoughthe forelegs and the hind legs were missing. Theexcavators express the view that the absence of thelegs was intentional and that the donkey hadbelonged to the individual in the grave. This is abalıya in most of its essential elements and reflectsthe importance of the donkey in the economy of theeastern Arabian oases. I am unaware of otherexamples of formal donkey burials in associationwith human interments in Arabia.

Literary evidence of balıyaThe published archaeological evidence points to amarked preference for riding animals in balıyaimmolations. The preference for a camel as a balıyais obvious enough in the Arabian context, given itshigh status and value in cultural terms and itsimmolation in a balıya was a reflection of the statusof an interred individual.

The archaeological evidence for the balıya inArabia provides elaboration on the limited literaryevidence for such immolations. The pre-Islamicbalıyas are described in textual sources as invol-ving either the burial of the animal alongside its

dead owner or its tethering at the owner’s grave.In the latter case, it was given neither water norfood so that it eventually died of starvation ordehydration. Such a form of balıya is described byal-Jah@ iz@ and by Ibn Manz@ur, writing of pre-Islamicpractice.

Al-Jah@ iz@ (c. 160 ⁄ 776–255 ⁄ 868–869) records that acamel, usually a female, would be left tied at thegrave of its owner and allowed to starve to death (al-Jah@ iz@ n.d., iii: 50). Ibn Manz@ur, writing in 689 ⁄ 1290,cites cAbd al-Razaq as stating that acceptable balıyasacrificial animals included cows, female camels andewes, which would be tethered at a person’s grave.This sacrifice was termed al-caqira al-balıya (IbnManz@ur 1956, xiv: 85–86).

The fact that the female of each species isspecified for the balıya deserves comment. Thechoice of the female camel for a balıya to providethe dead with a riding animal in the hereaftercorresponds with practice in life. The female ispreferred to the male camel for riding because ofits more benign temperament and anyone who hasseen the violence of a male camel can readilyunderstand why (Dickson 1949: 410; Thesiger 1959:42–43). The bull camel can be of great ferocity. SirWilfred Thesiger described how a bull camel killedtwo people and bit off the kneecap of anotherperson in his presence, and speaks in general ofthe terrible injuries the male camel can inflict(1959: 261). A rutting male, kept from the females,is extremely violent, as I have seen on a number ofoccasions in Abu Dhabi, Qatar and Saudi Arabiaand for very good reason the male will be kepttethered to restrain it.

Appreciation of the virtues of the camel and itsacceptability for sacrifice, whether as balıya or dhibh@ ,is wholly Arabian and has not always been sharedamong all Muslims in the past beyond ArabianPeninsula society. Outside Arabia, in places wherethe camel has lacked such a key role in society,there was a reluctance to accept it as an appropriateanimal of sacrifice as the dhibh@ of h@ ajj or thanks-giving in an Islamic sense because it had been usedfor the pre-Islamic balıya. This view is expressedclearly by Abu Bakr al-Turtusı (died 520 ⁄ 1126), whomakes a general connection of the sacrifice ofcamels with the customs of the jahilıya andconcludes that their slaughter is therefore unaccep-table in Islamic terms:


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‘No se debe hacer el sacrificio o desjarrete decamellos (caqr), pues es una costumbrede laYahiliyya con la que se querıa dar las graciaspor la generosidad que el muerto habıa mostradoen vida, al tiempo que se creıa que de esa manerase aseguraba que el muerto aparecerıa montado eldıa de la Resurreccıon’ (al-Turtusı 1993: 166).

Al-Turtusı’s opinion certainly does not hold inArabia, and in Islamic times, despite the abandon-ment of the camel balıya, the camel remains anacceptable dhibh@ sacrifice at cId al-cAdha’. Al-Turtu-sı’s nisba and his attitude suggest that his originswere far removed from the camel culture of Arabiaand he simply did not comprehend the importanceof the camel in Arabian society.

However, contrary to al-Turtusı, in religiouscircles today — both Arab and non-Arab — thereis no reluctance to accept the camel as h@ ilal and ananimal appropriate to dhibh@ immolation because ofits acceptability for sacrifice in the eyes of theProphet Muh@ ammad (S.)11. Yet al-Turtusı’s viewswere reasonable enough and were clearly felt andhis testimony accurately reflects consciousness of theun-Islamic nature of the pre-Islamic caqr, and inextenso, the balıya in general.

However, other non-Arabs appear not to haveshared al-Turtusı’s attitudes towards the cameldhibh@ on the occasion of cId al-cAdha’. A mostunusual representation of the dhibh@ of camels at thiscId is shown without any sign of aversion in anillustrated manuscript entitled Anis al-H@ ujjaj by Safıb. Vali and dated to 1087 ⁄ 1676–1677. It is a workfunded by Zib al-Nisa’a, a daughter of the lastpowerful and austere Mughal emperor Awrangzib(Rogers 2008: 285, cat. 334). It shows in detail theslaughter and butchering of four camels at the cId atthe completion of the pilgrimage, a scene rare in h@ ajjguides, the Dala’il al-H@ ajj. The Anis illustration onlyshows camels and no lesser animals of dhibh@ , likesheep or goats, and it reflects the high prestige of thecamel dhibh@ . Given the association of the Anis

illustration with the family of the extremely ortho-dox Mughal emperor Awrangzib, it is worth notingthat there was clearly no scruple at the Mughal courtabout the legitimacy of the camel dhibh@ .

An example of a female camel that was neither abalıya nor a dhibh@ immolation but involves itsdedication to a deity is recorded by Ibn al-Kalbı (d.206 ⁄ 821–822). He describes the dedication of a stolenmilch camel to the shrine of the pagan deity Fals inthe land of al-T@ ayyi’ in north Arabia, some timebefore the appearance of Islam (Ibn al-Kalbı 1952:51–52). The camel had been stolen from a woman ofBanı Kalb by the shrine guardian of the deity Fals,one Sayfı. The camel was tethered on the sacred landaround the shrine. The camel was subsequentlyreleased and returned to its owner.

Inasmuch as this was an animal made holy injahilıya perceptions by dedication and reserved forthe pagan deity al-Fals, there seems some degree ofparallel in this account of the concept of the naqatAllah, the female camel of Allah, described in theHoly Qur’an in Surat al-Acraf 7.73–77 (‘Abdal-Haleem 2004: 99–101). This camel was sent tothe tribe of Thamud at al-H@ ijr (Mada’in Salih@ ) tograze on Allah’s land but the Thamud hamstrungher (fa-’aqaru al-naqah; see Surat al-Acraf 77). Theirslaughter of the sacred camel led to the strikingdown of the Thamud by an earthquake (Suratal-Acraf 78: ‘So the earthquake took them(fa-akhadhu-humu al-rajf ca) ⁄ Unawares, and they lay ⁄Prostate in their homes ⁄ In the morning’).

Other animals are cited as beasts of sacrifice in abalıya. Ibn al-Manz@ur writing in 689 ⁄ 1290 refers tocattle, i.e. baqara, as a suitable balıya in pre-Islamictimes (Ryckmans 1951: 32–33). This has not beencorroborated archaeologically but this may bemerely because of the insufficiency of fieldwork.

Ibn al-Manz@ur’s account of such a balıya cattlesacrifice has a parallel with pre-Temple destruction(70 CE) korban cattle sacrifice among the Jews,although in the Jewish tradition, the korban beastwas ritually consumed (cf. Deuteronomy 14.7):

1Torah ⁄ Old Testament, Leviticus 11.4:11 Dr S.G. Safavi assures me that a camel is both h@ ilal and anacceptable dhibh@ at h@ ajj (personal communication, Mash-had, 10th August 2007). However, a very different viewwas expressed to me by a senior Sudanese colleague atKing Sacud University in al-Riyad, who told me in No-vember 1985, that eating camel among his community inSudan was tantamount to eating pig.

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Nevertheless these shall ye not eat of them thatonly chew the cud, or of them that only part thehoof: the camel, because he cheweth the cud butparteth not the hoof, he is unclean unto you.

The concept of cattle in a balıya context does not fitwell with the assumption that the balıya animal wasintended for riding in the afterlife and instead itsuggests a marker of wealth for its owner in thehereafter.

There is evidence that cattle were sacred beforeIslam and Ibn Manzur’s reference to cattle asanimals of balıya may reflect this. G. Ryckmansgives a number of epigraphic references to theranking of cattle, the baqar, as sacred beasts in pre-Islamic Arabia, which may account for their accept-ability as animals of balıya.

Miscellaneous archaeological evidence of camelsacrifice: dhibh@ and farac dedicationOther archaeological evidence of immolation fromArabia is harder to assess as balıya and may be theresult of the dhibh@ immolation of dedication,propitiation or thanksgiving instead. The fact thatthe skeletons involved in cases cited here have notgenerally been fully disarticulated suggests that theywere neither dietary nor dhibh@ immolations, butwere all buried whole for some ritual reason. All ofthe cases cited here relate to camels.

A camel burial was excavated by the Danishexpedition in al-Bah@ rayn in 1954, led by GeoffreyBibby. The camel was young and its legs had beenremoved (Bibby 1954: 140–141, fig. 10). The burialwas taken to be of Parthian date, i.e. first centuryBCE–first century CE. It is unclear whether it was abalıya but given the completeness of the trunk of theskeleton it may not have been dietary.

In south-western Saudi Arabia, a camel burialidentified by J. Zarins, A.J. Murad and K.S. al-Yish atBi’r H@ ima, north-east of Najran is dated to the firstmillennium BCE–first millennium CE (Zarins, Mur-ad & al-Yish, 1981: 28–29). This appears to have beena sacrificial burial but insufficient material has beenpublished to draw a conclusion.

At Qaryat al-Faw, on the edge of the Rubac al-Khalı, to the north-east of Najran, Dr Sacd Ayoub, aformer member of the King Sacud University teamexcavating at the site, has reported that camel

burials were found there. Unfortunately, they havenot yet been published and it is unclear whether thecamels were alone or were accompanied by a humaninterment (Potts 1990: 279, n. 57).

There is a great deal of archaeological andcontemporary evidence of a camel culture at al-Rabadha in Saudi Arabia. It lies on the border ofNajd and al-H@ ijaz and it was once a major h@ ajj halton the Darb Zubayda route from al-Kufa in al-cIraqto the H@ aramayn. It was a significant settlement inthe pre-Islamic period and in early Islamic timeswhen it was closely associated with camel herding.The landscape around al-Rabadha is especiallysuitable for camels and to the present day, they areherded there in large numbers, especially in springwhen there is hamd @ (salt-bush) for grazing.

There is a considerable body of archaeologicalevidence from excavations at the site indicating therole of the camel in al-Rabadha’s economy, bothbefore Islam and in the early Islamic period. Thepasturage around al-Rabadha was dedicated as ah@ ima or mah@ amma’, a protected state pasturage, bythe second caliph, cUmar b. al-Khat@t@ab, at some timebetween 13–23 ⁄ 634–644, reflecting its establishedrole in pre-Islamic times as a grazing area (al-Rashid1986: 2–4). It seems to be the only early Islamic himathat has been examined in archaeological terms.

Al-Rabadha’s use as a major camel pasturagebefore Islam is readily demonstrable archaeologi-cally. The present author, working with the KingSacud University excavations directed by ProfessorSacd al-Rashid, found a very large number ofdisarticulated camel bones that were sealed underan Umayyad or early cAbbasid occupation level in amidden on the north side of the site. The middenwhich was extremely large and extended at least 30x 10 m and probably more, contained disarticulatedcamel bones that reached to a depth of some 2 m,packed in ash from copper smelting. The lowestlevel of the midden, where the camel bones lay onbedrock, was dateable by Byzantine ceramics oftypes known in Jordan to as early as the fourthcentury CE. Camel bones continued to be dumpedthere until at least the Umayyad period and perhapsdown to the early cAbbasid period.

Such an amount of camel slaughter as theRabadha camel bones represent, produced over along period of time, suggests that these camels weredietary as they were consistently disarticulated. The


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midden only ceased to be used with the constructionof a building on its summit in the early cAbbasidperiod.

It is against this background of al-Rabadha’sstrong connection with camel herding that a formalneonate camel burial found there should be seen.From its context, it was neither a balıya nor dietary.It involved the ritual slaughter of a newly borncamel and it was found by the King SacudUniversity team working at the site in 1986 in ancAbbasid context12. The slaughter was associatedwith the laying down of a threshold stone for theexternal doorway of a large courtyard house andthe neonate cadaver was carefully positioned beforethe threshold stone was laid. The intact skeleton ofthe neonate was aligned with the threshold stoneon an east–west alignment, with the head to thewest and the feet facing south.

The building was in an area of the site that coulddate from the late eighth century CE or c. ninth–tenth century CE, on the basis of ceramics found.This al-Rabadha neonate camel burial appears to beunique among Islamic period sites so far recordedin Arabia. In Islamic terms, the sacrifice of ananimal to be laid down in such a manner under adoor threshold in dedication of a house is notacceptable. Indeed, the discovery caused surpriseamong some of the Muslim archaeological teamexcavating the threshold neonate that such a thingwould be done in the Islamic period at a h@ ajj haltlike al-Rabadha, yet the context was indisputably ofIslamic date. The neonate burial at al-Rabadha waspresumably intended to bring good luck, butwhether the sacrifice was the intention of the ownerof the house or simply represented the buildingworkers’ adherence to folk custom, is impossible todetermine until more excavations of early Islamicsites of a similar date and character are undertaken.

This burial at al-Rabadha seems to representcontinuation into the cAbbasid period of the pre-Islamic practice of farac — the sacrifice of a first-borncamel to a deity, which was expressly forbidden by ah@ adıth of the Prophet Muh@ ammad (S.) — recordedby Abu H@ urayra (Muslim n.d.: 1092). While cautionmust be expressed over h@ adıths attributed to Abu

H@ urayra, sacrifice to any but Allah is equallystrongly forbidden by other h@ adıth including oneattributed to Imam cAlı b. Abı Talib (Muslim n.d.:1093–1094). Yet in a society like that at early Islamical-Rabadha, so involved with camel pasturage,conservatism may have ensured the persistence ofcamel sacrifices that contravened strictly Islamicforms as late as the cAbbasid period.

Elsewhere in Saudi Arabia, camel bones have beenexcavated at Dhahran, Saudi Arabia by J. Zarins,A.S. Mughannum and M. Kamal in a stone-linedburning pit with sherds related to the Seleucid ⁄ Ro-man period (c. fourth century BCE–third centuryCE), but this find seems to indicate the disposal ofdietary material rather than a formal inhumationand a camel sacrifice (Zarins, Mughannum & Kamal,1984: 42). It differs from all the other cases cited hereand it is probably related to the other examples ofdietary middens.

ConclusionGiven the limited information on the nature of thebalıya and other immolations that can be gleanedfrom textual sources, archaeology is by far the bestmeans for understanding the precise nature of theseanimal sacrifices. This point is demonstrated by theinformation provided by fortuitous discoveries likethose of the donkey at Shakhura, the early Islamicperiod burial at al-Buh@ ays 12 and the evidence fromal-Rabadha.

Our understanding of immolations based onarchaeology in Arabia is very region-specific. Theevidence for hamstringing at al-Buh@ ays 12 andelsewhere may relate only to eastern and southernArabia. Did similar methods of ritual sacrifice alsoprevail in the H@ ijaz? Or was there a different methodof slaughter there, reflected in the method used bythe Prophets, and described in a h@ adıth recorded bythe third ⁄ ninth-century traditionist, al-Bukharı?

‘It was related that Ibn cUmar [the son of thesecond caliph, cUmar b. al-Khattab] passed a manwho made his sacrificial camel sit down in orderto slaughter it. Ibn cUmar said ‘‘Slaughter it whileit is standing with one leg tied up according to thetradition of Muhammad’’‘. (al-Bukharı 1999: 422,v. 810).

12 I am indebted for this information to a personal commu-nication by Professor Sacd al-Rashid and Professor YusufMukhtar al-Amin at al-Rabadha, November 1986.

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This h@ adith indicates a specific method of slaughterthat was to be avoided in Islam and one that wasacceptable. It is hard to resist the suspicion that thetype of slaughter recorded in the h@ adıth of IbncUmar, may have been intended to distance Islamfrom jahilıya sacrificial rituals and methods withrespect to the camel. Alternatively, the Prophet’s (S @)view recorded by Ibn cUmar may reflect a specifi-cally Makkan or Madınan tradition of camelslaughter. Either way, it became the basis of theIslamic form of the dhibh, including the immolationof h@ ajj.

Without further archaeological research in wes-tern and central Arabia, the nature of the tradition ofanimal sacrifice there in pre-Islamic times and theearly Islamic period cannot be properly assessed.Furthermore, without more material informationfrom other parts of Arabia on other traditions ofcamel sacrifice, we cannot assume that what weknow archaeologically from southern and easternArabia coincided with practice in the rest of thepeninsula. The circumstances of Arabia before Islamwere hardly conducive to a universal form of camelsacrifice or a uniform social pattern of any type. Incommunities isolated by Arabia’s vast distances,local customs doubtless prevailed and the customsof sacrifice in the south-east and southern Arabiawere not necessarily the same as those used in thewest, the centre and the north.

There is evidence of the continuation of localisedcustoms of slaughter down to the present, as DrSabah al-Jasim has noted in the case of the camelslaughter method with the head pulled sharply backthat occurs at al-Milayh@ a in the first centuryBCE ⁄ first century CE and which is still encounteredin the U.A.E. today. It is an important observationfor it demonstrates the persistence of such regionalcustoms over a very long period of time in oneregion (Jasim 1999: 96).

The donkey burial at Shakhura in al-Bah@ raynextends the typology of balıya animals in the pre-Islamic period beyond that which is recorded else-where in archaeological terms or in the literarysources. The lack of archaeological evidence of thecattle balıya is frustrating as the cow is specificallycited as a balıya animal in the h@ adıth of cAbd al-Razaqpreserved by Ibn al-Manz@ur.

What archaeology has provided to the discussionof the transition of Arabia from the jahilıya to Islam

with respect to balıya and dhibh@ is a perspective onthe persistence of social customs and their eventualdisappearance as Islamic practice prevailed. Theal-Buh@ ays 12 balıya is of great importance as itdemonstrates the slow spread of the type of Islamicburial practice that we now regard as orthodox anduniversal. Human society is laggardly in adoptingnew customs, especially in fundamental issuesregarding funerary practice. The progress of Islami-cisation away from the more intense and religiouslywell-informed atmosphere of first century ⁄ seventhcentury al-Madına al-Munuwarra must have beenslow. This is implied by the continuity of oldercamel sacrifice practices that are described here, atearly Islamic period al-Buh@ ays and at early cAbbasidal-Rabadha, and perhaps at Jabal al-cImala. Funerarycustoms run deep in any society and in this respect adeep conservatism is to be expected. The Islamicpractice of burial that the new religion broughtabout in Arabia may well have been accepted bymany converts, but attachment to older customs inmatters as profound as the interment of the deadmay have also persisted, being abandoned far moreslowly among some elements of a society in theirtransition to Islamic belief.

As this paper indicates, the discovery of camel-related archaeological finds in Arabia have beenfortuitous and they have occurred in relativelylimited territories in the Arabian Peninsula. Practicesof camel breeding, hybridisation, usage in transport,farming, diet and sacrifice — balıya or dhibh@ — haveall been greatly informed through archaeologicalmaterial evidence retrieved in recent years. Otherdiscussions, especially by M.C.A. Macdonald, havequestioned our understanding of rock art related tocamels and to the use or not of the camel in battle13

Only a small part of Arabia has been studiedarchaeologically with any intensity with respect tocamels and their economic and social significance.This point is pressed home hard as I conclude thispaper, as Dr Mark Beech and Dr Marjan Mashkourreport the discovery of a major deposit of wild camelbones in Abu Dhabi. The concentration of thesebones in one limited area is a matter of great interest

13 For a discussion of the misinterpretation of illustrations ofthe camel in rock art in Arabia, see Macdonald 1990. For arefutation of the arguments that the camel was used in thepast in battle, see Macdonald 1996: 72–83, pl. 222–225.


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and their publication of their conclusions is awaited.The bones seem to be a midden of some sort buttheir concentration, let alone their very great anti-quity, is extraordinary. I quote the abstract (Beech,personal communication; Beech & Mashkour, inpress) of the paper presented by Beech andMashkour at the 2008 Seminar for Arabian Studies:

‘A remarkable new site consisting of a concentra-tion of as many as 60 + camel skeletons has beendiscovered in Abu Dhabi’s Western Region in theUnited Arab Emirates. Three camel bone samplesfrom the site have been AMS radiocarbon datedby the Kiel Radiocarbon Dating Laboratory inGermany revealing that they date from betweenthe late sixth millennium BC to the early thirdmillennium BC. The site is located in an inter-dunal area located to the south-east of theBaynunah Plantation, not far from the Ruwais-Habshan pipeline. The spread of camel bonesextends over an area of about 100 m2. Preliminaryanalysis of the bones suggests that they are fromwild camels. Other archaeological finds asso-ciated with the camel bones include a finely madeflint arrowhead. This important newly discovered

site will provide a valuable opportunity toexamine a large sample of wild camel bonesduring the later prehistory of south-easternArabia. Future detailed investigations at the sitewill throw fresh light on the early interactionsbetween the communities inhabiting late prehis-toric Arabia and the camel’.

The issues raised by this new and unpublishedevidence from Abu Dhabi of a major camel slaughtersite of great antiquity is a matter of intrinsicimportance in itself and goes far beyond issuesraised in the present paper. However, the discoveryof an archaeological site of the extent that Beech andMashkour have reported underlines the complexbody of information that exists in the arid areas ofArabia and the potential for future archaeologicalresearch on the Arabian camel.

AcknowledgementsI am indebted for the comments made by Michael Macdonald,

Sara Kuehn, Laila al-Mossawi and Daniel Potts on an earlier

version of this paper.

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