2015-05-23T12:37:00-07:00
Niebuhr’s name is somewhat well known in Yemen. He was known in Yemen after the printing of part of his book (A Journey to Arabia), in the part in which he talks about his trip to Yemen, which was printed under the name (From Copenhagen to Sana’a).
When I used to listen to Niebuhr’s stories in the past from people who had read his book, and before I read his book… I felt that Yemen when Niebuhr visited was different from Yemen today. I felt that the people of Yemen did not know a city called (Mecca) at that time. And I didn’t know the reason.
There is an important note that combines Niebuhr and Al-Hassan Al-Hamdani
Al-Hassan Al-Hamdani, for those who do not know him, is a Yemeni historian who lived in the third century AH, that is, approximately 1000 years ago. This man is known as the historian of Yemen and the Peninsula, and he has many books, including a geographical description of Yemen, including the book The Characteristics of the Arabian Peninsula, the book on which he based it. The Arab thinker Fadel Al-Rubaie presented his theory that the geography of the Jewish book took place in Yemen.
The truth is, after reading the biography of this man and some of Al-Hamdani’s writings, I found Al-Hassan Al-Hamdani to be a strange personality.
He was born in a remote area near Sana’a, but the strange thing is that he was very adept at identifying geographical locations, as he identified locations in Yemen in his book on the Ptolemaic system.
And here I was really surprised……..Where did Al-Hamdani learn the science of geolocation, even though he lived in a remote area and there were no schools in the past that taught such sciences, but rather, according to history, there were schools of jurisprudence and hadith..
I was also surprised by the information that Al-Hamdani provides in his book. He talks about information that is still present in Yemen despite the passage of 1,100 years since the talk about it, even though it is supposed that it has become extinct in Yemen. This information does not fit with the history that was presented to us. The history that was presented To us, he speaks of a world in which there is no longer any connection with today in terms of its language, customs, food, or the names of its inhabitants, while Al-Hamdani talks about a type of bread that still exists today and has the same name.
Al-Hamdani was a man who lived in a modern period, not an ancient one.
I believe that this novelty of his information is the reason that led Fadel al-Rubaie into the trap, because the novelty of that information is the same as the modernity of Judaism and its book on earth, and that modernity made him find clear names in writing when he matched them with the names of the Jewish book.
There is also a strangeness that he finds specifically about the residents of Medina. Al-Hamdani neglected to mention the name of Medina in his book, even though he talks about a city close to it, 5 km away, and they are the same age.
But I believe that Niebuhr is the only one capable of explaining the secret of the strangeness of Al-Hamdani’s personality and the secret of the strangeness of the information he included in his book.
Al-Hamdani’s ingenuity in determining geographical locations in Yemen is nothing but the ingenuity of Niebuhr, who entered a long course to learn the geographical positioning system in Europe, and the modernity of the information that Al-Hamdani speaks in his writing is nothing but the report and modern information that Niebuhr wrote a relatively recent period ago during His visit to Yemen.
Also, the strangeness about the reasons why Al-Hamdani did not mention the name of my city, even though he mentioned the name of the city near it, which is 5 km away from it, is nothing but Nippur, because Nippur in his journey did not mention the name of my city, even though he mentioned the name of the city near it.
The thing that Fadel Al-Rubaie did not think about before publishing his theory, is the question: Where are the manuscripts of Al-Hamdani’s books from which he printed his books?!
The confirmed information is that after the printing of his book, The Characteristics of the Arabian Peninsula, the manuscript was lost and disappeared.
Imagine this coincidence… After the book was printed, the manuscript was lost, but the manuscript was not lost and did not disappear before the printer appeared.
Therefore, Al-Hamdani is not a real person. Only reports by Niebuhr were translated into Arabic and attributed to a fictitious character named Al-Hamdani.