APPENDIX I
MA‘ÂN AND MA‘ÔN
Throughout almost the whole of the last millenium before Christ the international trade of Arabia was in the hands of the Šeba’ (Sabaeans) and Ma‘în (Minaeans), the rulers of southwestern Arabia. The Šeba’ and Ma‘în were blood relations and struggled for supremacy, not only in their own country but also in the oases through which the great trade routes passed. In every oasis of any importance there was a southern Arabian colony with a southern Arabian resident, who acted as an overseer over the native kings and chiefs, keeping watch lest they should do anything detrimental to the interests of his master, the Sabaean or Minaean king, accordingly as one or the other of the clans of Šeba’ or Ma‘în happened to be at the head of the feudal states of southern Arabia. We have reliable evidence about this arrangement in the oasis of Dajdân near the present settlement of al-ʻEla’. The remoter rulers of Syria and Assyria did not concern themselves with the political organization of the separate oases on the great trade routes; nor did they negotiate with the native kings and chiefs, but rather with the residents of the southern Arabian kings, whom they designated by the names of the latter. This explains why the Assyrian and Biblical records refer to the Sabaeans as being located southeast of the Dead Sea and either do not mention the large oases in that region at all or else mention them but rarely. In the second half of the eighth century before Christ an Assyrian army penetrated the environs of the oasis of Maʻân and even went far to the south; the Assyrian records, however, do not refer to the oasis at all. We may best explain this circumstance on the supposition that the oasis belonged to the masters of the great transport route, the Sabaeans of southern Arabia, as did the large oasis of Dajdân, to which also no reference has hitherto been found in the Assyrian records; and that both oases were included under the name of Šeba’, because the Sabaean residents administered their affairs.
ME‘ÛN AND MA‘ÔN OF THE BIBLE
In the Bible a number of references to the tribe of Maʻôn have been preserved, as well as to the inhabitants of Me‘ûn, which name we can also easily read in the Hebrew text as Ma‘ôn. These references are apparently derived from detailed and accurate sources, because, although they contain allusions to places mentioned nowhere else in the Bible, they nevertheless are in entire agreement with the topography. I hold the view that both “Ma‘ôn” and “Me‘ûn” designate the inhabitants of the oasis of Ma‘ân and its environs. Whether the name Ma‘ôn arose from Maʻîn or not, I cannot decide, because both are purely Semitic and both are frequently met with in northwestern Arabia.
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