For decades, Latter-day Saint scholars have argued that “the place . . . called Nahom” in the Book of Mormon (1 Ne. 16:34) is the Nihm region1 in Yemen, located northeast of Sanaʿa, west of Maʾrib, and south of the Wadi Jawf.2 The location fits well both with the directions provided for getting to and from Nahom in the Book of Mormon (1 Ne. 16:13–14, 33; 17:1) and with inscriptions dated to Lehi’s time referring to a person called a nhmyn, translated as “Nihmite,” confirming that the name goes back to the right time period.3 Publications by Princeton, Oxford, and Brill have talked about the connection,4 with some hailing the inscriptions as “the first actual archaeological evidence for the historicity of the Book of Mormon.”5
In recent years, however, skeptics of the Book of Mormon’s historicity have raised objections to this connection.6 One common argument insists that the South Arabian inscriptions referring to nhmyn are identifying members of a tribe and thus cannot be used as evidence for a place called Nahom. One writer, for instance, maintains that in the Book of Mormon, “Nahom is inaccurately portrayed as a place rather than a tribal people,” and claims that “within an ancient south Arabian context, it does not make sense to speak of Nihm as though it were a regular place name.”7
Nihm has been the name of both a tribe and an administrative district in the Sanaʿa governate since the formation of the Republic of Yemen in 1990 (see fig. 1),8 but some believe “it is doubtful that this later use of tribal names to refer to geographical entities can be retrojected onto much earlier periods.”9 Such skepticism is based, at least in part, on the belief that “careful examination of South Arabian inscriptions indicates that the names of tribes were essentially social-political in orientation,” and therefore carried no geographic meaning.10
This paper aims to address this issue by (1) reviewing the historical use of the name Nihm for both a tribe and place, documented back to the early Islamic period; (2) examining the historical relationship between tribes and their territories in northern Yemen, going back to antiquity; (3) assessing the use of nhmyn in the ancient inscriptions, as interpreted by scholars of ancient South Arabia. As will be shown, the use of Nihm as a toponym (the name of a place or region) does indeed go back to significantly earlier times, and general use of tribal names as toponyms in Yemen goes back earlier still. This is a natural consequence of the strong connection between tribe and territory in northern Yemen that has existed since pre-Islamic times. When understood in this context, the inscriptions referring to nhmyn can reasonably be understood as evidence for both a tribe and place called NHM going back to the early first millennium BC.
Nihm: A Tribe and a Place
The use of Nihm as a geographic name predates its relatively recent adoption as the name of an official administrative district in the northeast corner of the Sanaʿa governate (see fig. 1).11 As Warren Aston notes, shortly before the Yemen Arab Republic and South Yemen united to become the Republic of Yemen, “Nehem [was] a fairly large and somewhat loosely defined district.”12 According to Hiroshi Matsumoto, at this time the Nihm was considered a nāḥiyah, “district,” a third-order administrative level in the Yemen Arab Republic (YAR). In the YAR’s administrative structure, “the nāḥiyah level correspond[ed] to the tribe.”13 In 1986, Christian Robin reconstructed the boundaries of this “loosely defined district” or tribal territory, sketching out a five-thousand-square-kilometer region that differed in some ways from what later became the Nihm district as it is constituted in the Republic of Yemen (see fig. 2).14
Various sources that predate the establishment of the official Nihm administrative district make formal and informal reference to this region as Nihm (or one of its variant spellings). For example, in 1947, when Egyptian archaeologist Ahmed Fakhry traveled through what was then called the Kingdom of Yemen, he mentioned passing through “the land of the bedouins of Nahm” just south of the Wadi Jawf.15 In 1936, British explorer Harry St. John Philby also visited the region and later spoke of a “tribal area . . . known as Bilad [Ar., country, land] Nahm.”16 Nihm (or one of its variant spellings) is also plotted on several mid-twentieth-century maps predating the rise of the Republic of Yemen.17
Sources from before the twentieth century paint a similar picture to the present-day situation, using the name Nihm (or one of its variant spellings) as both a tribal and geographic name. For instance, Ḥayyim Ḥabshūsh, a Yemeni Jew who acted as a travel guide to Joseph Halévy when Halévy explored southern Arabia in 1869–1870, provides accounts of traveling through the “the land of Nihm” among “Nihmī tribesmen.”18 A map based on his account shows the “Land of Nihm” roughly thirty miles northeast of Sanaʿa.19 Halévy’s own account also refers to Nihm variously as “the inhabited country of Nehm” (pays habité de Nehm), “the canton of Nehm” (canton de Nehm), and “the territory of Nehm” (territoire de Nehm). Halévy also mentions the Nehm among the tribes of Bakīl and includes Nehm on the map published with his report.20
Earlier still are the various maps from the mid-eighteenth to the early-nineteenth centuries plotting the Nihm region, usually spelled Nehem or Nehhm.21 These maps generally do not provide precise borders, but they consistently show Nehem or Nehhm to the north or northeast of Sanaʿa, in the same general area as the Nihm region today. The use of the Nihm name on these maps is prima facie evidence of its use as a geographic name more than 250 years ago. Most of these maps are based either on Jean Baptiste D’Anville’s 1751 map of Asia (including Arabia) or on Carsten Niebuhr’s 1771 map of Yemen.22
Niebuhr was the only survivor of the first European expedition to southern Arabia, which lasted from 1761 to 1767, and thus his map of Yemen was based on the firsthand knowledge he gained of the land.23 He showed Nehhm to the north-northeast of Sanaʿa. Unlike most other mapmakers, Niebuhr provided an outline of Nehhm’s borders, which encompassed approximately 2,394 square miles.24 If this is accurate, it means that at that time the Nihm region was slightly larger than the present-day tribal territory as estimated by Robin.25 In his writings, Niebuhr characterizes Nehhm as a “principality” or “small district” and listed it as one of the “independent states of Yemen.”26 He never uses the Nehhm name to refer to a tribe. Thus, the earliest references to Nihm from modern times frame it primarily as a geographic term rather than a tribal name.
D’Anville’s map is the earliest known modern map of Arabia that includes Nehem as the name of a region nearly due north of Sanaʿa.27 Since D’Anville already knew about Nihm and included it on his 1751 map before Niebuhr’s expedition, he must have gleaned that information from an earlier source. The specific source has not presently been identified, but D’Anville is known to have drawn from Arab sources from the twelfth to seventeenth centuries. D’Anville’s map thus hints that Nihm was known as a geographic region in sources much earlier than 1751.28
Warren Aston has identified references to the Nihm in Arabic sources from the seventh to thirteenth centuries.29 Among these, Abu Muhammad al-Hasan al-Hamdānī (ca. AD 893–945) was the most prolific and detailed. Historians of Yemen have long drawn on Hamdānī’s writings to reconstruct the tribal geography of early Islamic times and assess the continuity and stability of Yemen’s tribal structure over the centuries.30 Based on analysis of Hamdānī’s writings, Christian Robin found that in the tenth century AD, the Nihm controlled both the core regions of their traditional tribal lands on the south side of the Wadi Jawf and territory on the north side of the Wadi Jawf, from Jabal al-Lawd to the Khabb oasis (see fig. 3).31 More to the point, the Nihm name is used as both a tribal name and a geographic term in Hamdānī’s writings and is applied to both parts of the Nihm tribal territory.32
Hamdānī thus provides evidence that the use of Nihm as a geographic name for the same general geographic region (along with additional territory to the north) goes back more than a thousand years. Other early Islamic histories make only passing reference to the Nihm, but they indicate that the Nihm had been in this same territory for several centuries by Hamdānī’s time. Hisham ibn al-Kalbī (ca. AD 737–819) and Abū ʿAbdallah Muḥammad ibn Saʿd (ca. AD 784–845) reported that the Nihm were part of the delegation from Hamdan that converted to Islam and made a covenant with the prophet Muhammed around AD 630.33 This is corroborated by a letter from Mohammed himself, addressed to the Hamdan tribes and mentioning the Nihm.34 This places the Nihm in the region north of Sanaʿa going back to before the rise of Islam.35
In light of these facts, the use of the Nihm name as a toponym very likely predates its earliest attestation in Hamdānī. After all, the Nihm tribe was established in the same region for centuries before Hamdānī’s time (and likely earlier still), and the use of tribal names as toponyms was already common practice at that point, as I will discuss next. As such, the origins of the Nihm as both a tribe and place are most likely to be found in the pre-Islamic period.
Tribe and Territory in Northern Yemen
This tendency to use tribal names to refer to the lands the tribes occupy is a superficial manifestation of a more deeply rooted conceptual connection between tribes and territory in northern Yemen. According to social anthropologist Marieke Brandt, one of the basic characteristics of Yemeni tribes is that “they are usually associated with a territory, homeland, or tribal area.”36 Dr. Barak A. Salmoni and his co-authors, all experts in Middle Eastern history and politics, likewise explain:
[One] characteristic relatively unique to Yemeni tribalism is the strong identification of tribe with place. Unlike tribes in parts of Africa or other areas in the Middle East, north Yemeni tribes do not have a tradition of transhumance [seasonal movement], nor is a Bedouin nomadism a social value in tribal collective memories. As sedentary agriculturalists, therefore, Yemeni qaba’il [tribes] exhibit a particularly strong attachment to and identification with “their” territories. . . . Place names and tribe names become nearly identical.37
Paul Dresch further elaborates on the relationship between tribe and territory, explaining, “The tribes themselves are territorial entities. Usually the territory of each is contiguous, each has known borders with its neighbors, and there are very few points within ‘the land of the tribes’ which do not belong clearly to one tribe or another.”38 Dresch adds that “the tribes are taken to be geographically fixed, . . . while men and families [who are part of the tribe] need not be.” The tribes “are usually taken ‘always’ to have been where they now are.”39 This association is so strong that “the honour of the tribe,” Dresch explains, “depends on maintaining the ‘inviolability’ of its territory.”40 As such, defending the honor of the tribe and defending its territorial borders tend to be conceptually and linguistically conflated, “so that ‘defence of the borders’ (zabn al-ḥudūd) is an expression of care for the tribe’s good name.”41
Thus, in northern Yemen, tribes are not just people, but in a sense, they are also places, with definable borders that are part of the region’s geography. The tribe is identified with its homeland—the territory is the tribe, in a certain sense, just as much as the tribesmen are.42 Thus, to violate that territory in any way is to dishonor and commit offence against the tribe. While the tribal system and ideology in Yemen have not been stagnant over the millennia, this is by no means a new or recent development within the tribal ideology in Yemen—it goes back well into antiquity.43
In the writings of Hamdānī and other medieval Islamic sources, tribal relationships are described in terms of lineage, a practice that seems to have begun in the late pre-Islamic period (ca. fifth century AD) and continues to this day. Each tribe is represented as being named after an eponymous ancestor, from whom the tribesmen descend, and tribes and subtribes are understood in a father-son relationship.44 Thus the Nihm were taken to be descendants of an eponymous ancestor who was a descendant of Bakīl, the larger tribal confederation of which Nihm is a part.45 Anthropologists and historians, however, recognize these tribal genealogies as fictitious constructs primarily meant to represent political and territorial relationships among the tribes.46 As such, the genealogies shift and change as old tribal alliances deteriorate and new ones form. Furthermore, tribes can move up and down in the lineage as they rise or fall in power.47 Underneath this superficial idiom of lineage, the organization of tribes in the Yemeni highlands was based primarily on territory,48 with toponyms and ethnonyms (names of tribes and other ethnic groups) conflated together and both linked to eponymous ancestors.49 As Brandt notes, “In many regions of Yemen territoriality remained a basic principle since large parts of Yemen’s tribal system . . . remained characterized by an apparent longevity of toponyms and territorial boundaries as opposed to the respective resident population.”50
The conceptualization of tribes in genealogical terms was an innovation of the early Islamic period, perhaps with its roots in the practices of Yemeni Jews in the late pre-Islamic period (ca. fifth century AD).51 For centuries prior, in the pre-Islamic period, tribes were organized and conceptualized in terms of territory and geography. Brandt explains:
The society of the South Arabian kingdoms of the ESA [Early South Arabian] period differs in important respects from that of the tenth century. The evidence from the inscriptions of the pre-Islamic South Arabian societies suggests that descent and lineage were of little importance to the bearers of the ESA cultures: its communities were first and foremost territorial units and farming populations in which long elaborate pedigrees were unknown.52
The basic social structure of ancient South Arabia was the shaʿab (s2ʿb), typically translated as “tribe” but also sometimes translated as “community.”53 Throughout much of the pre-Islamic period, there was a complex, multitiered structure of tribes and subtribes (or tribal “fractions”), all referred to as shaʿab in Sabaic.54 Specifically speaking of the tribal structure of the Yemeni highlands, Jean-Francois Breton explains:
Each tribe (shaʾab) took its name from the territory in which it was located; it belonged to a larger tribe (also called a shaʾab) which in turn belonged to a larger shaʾab. Thus, the most solid and durable level of the pyramid was that of the tribe, rather than the clan affiliation. . . . This form of tribal organization is very ancient and has been remarkably stable through the ages; indeed, some of the most ancient of these tribes, including the Bakîl, the Hashîd, and the Sinhân, still exist today.55
As alluded to here by Breton, the different tribal levels “were all defined by territorial associations rather than strictly through kinship.”56 Indeed, the Sabaic term shaʾab refers specifically to a “tribal group organized on a political and territorial (not genealogical) basis.”57
According to Alessandra Avanzini, “the name of a tribe . . . was exclusively territorial and did not refer to a common ancestor.”58 Avanzini further explains that in the highlands, using the tribal name in the onomastic formula (which was often done using the nisba-form) indicated that a “relationship with the tribal group and its territory is . . . a privileged identification element.”59 Thus, tribal names in South Arabian inscriptions are not only sociopolitical but also geopolitical, establishing a connection to both the tribe and its territory.
Unsurprisingly, given this strong connection between tribes and territory, tribal names are often used as toponyms in ancient South Arabian inscriptions. “When naming regions and territories,” Christian Robin explains, “South Arabians normally refer to political-tribal organization, that is, kingdoms and tribal groups.”60 Robert G. Hoyland likewise notes, “In the highlands of south Arabia, . . . to specify an area one would habitually refer to the territory of a tribal group.”61 Often this is done by prefacing the tribal name with ʾrḍ, “land,” but this is not always the case. As Robin says, in order “to designate a territory,” inscriptions “usually use the names of the šʿb [shaʾab, ‘tribe’] preceded or not by the word ʾrḍ (‘land, country’).”62 Numerous examples could be cited.63 For instance, some inscriptions speak of “the land (ʾrḍ) of Ḥaḍramawt,”64 but others simply use Ḥaḍramawt in a toponymic way without explicitly calling it a “land” (ʾrḍ).65 Likewise, several inscriptions mention “the land (ʾrḍ) of Ḥimyar,”66 while one inscription speaks of people being “on their guard in Ḥimyar” without referring to Ḥimyar specifically as a “land” (ʾrḍ).67
Other tribal names are referred to as a “territory” (bḍʿ), such as “the territory (bḍʿ) of Maʿīn.”68 Yet, once again, Maʿīn is also used in toponymic ways without being explicitly designated a “territory” (bḍʿ). For example, one inscription talks about traveling “on the route between Maʿīn and Rgmtm.”69 Another talks about using “the road of Maʿīn” as a geographical boundary,70 and two others speak of “the boundary (s³nn) of Maʿīn.”71
Tribal names are also used in toponymic ways while also being explicitly identified as a “tribe” (shaʿab). Thus one inscription speaks of “the borders (ʾwṯn) of the tribe (s²ʿbn) of Ḥashīd” and continues to use similar phrases, such as “the borders (ʾwṯn) of the Ḥashīd” and “in the west (mʿrb) of Ḥashīd,” without ever explicitly calling Ḥashīd a “land” (ʾrḍ) or a “territory” (bḍʿ).72 While several more examples could be cited, these are sufficient to illustrate that tribal names are regularly used as toponyms in the ancient South Arabian inscriptions, sometimes explicitly (prefaced with ʾrḍ or bḍʿ) and other times implicitly.
Thus, as various sources make clear, using tribal names as toponyms is a practice that goes back to pre-Islamic antiquity. In the case of the Nihm name specifically, its toponymic use can be documented back to the early Islamic period, and given the strong link between tribal names and territory in ancient South Arabia, it very likely goes back earlier still. In fact, scholars commenting on inscriptions referring to nhmyn, which is the nisba form of the NHM name,73 have interpreted it as referring to both a tribe and a region.
Nhmyn in Ancient South Arabian Inscriptions
There are several ancient South Arabian inscriptions that refer to nhmyn and other forms of the NHM name (see fig. 4), not all of which have received significant attention from Latter-day Saints.74 A funerary inscription from the third century AD refers to the “Image of Muthawibum the Nihmite.”75 A list of clans and tribes found among a collection of administrative texts from Nashān, dated to between the first and third centuries AD, includes the Nihmite tribe (nhmyn).76 There are two relevant inscriptions found near the ancient city of Ṣirwāḥ: the first, generally dated to the early first millennium BC, refers to two pairs of “Nihmites” (nhmynhn);77 the other identifies a man named ʿAzizum as both a “Nihmite” (nhmyn) and a “Maydaʿite” (mydʿyn).78 Finally, there are the three altars well-known to Latter-day Saint scholars that refer to “Biʿathtar son of Sawdum, lineage of Nawʿum, the Nihmite (nhmyn),” found in the foundation of temple 3 at the Barʾān temple site near Maʾrib and dated to around the seventh century BC.79
In addition, four inscriptions, all dated to the seventh century BC, refer to persons identified as the “chief” or “tribal leader” (kbr) of the nhmt or nhmtn, which are potentially references to Nihm.80 A pre-Islamic graffiti text from north of Najran near Ḥimā may also refer to “Madid, son of Saʿdum, the Nihmite (nhmyn).”81
Some scholars have interpreted these references as identifying members of the NHM tribe. Joseph M. Solá Solé, for instance, considered nhmyn an attestation of the “well-known tribal name NHM.”82 Jacques Ryckmans likewise interpreted the nhmyn of the various inscriptions as references to the Nihm tribe south of the Wadi Jawf.83 Norbert Nebes considered nhmyn as referring to the Nihm tribe but indicated that the tribe was “undoubtedly north of the Jawf,” a location that would partially overlap with the Nihm territory documented in Hamdānī’s writings (see fig. 3) but differs somewhat from its present-day location south of the Jawf.84
Others have specifically interpreted these references as identifying people from the NHM region. Mounir Arbach, for example, identified nhmyn as an ethnic name, which he defined as “those [names] designating the inhabitants of a territory or a country.”85 Based on this definition, nhmyn would, of course, refer specifically to an inhabitant of the NHM territory or country. Likewise, Burkhard Vogt, followed by others, defined nhmyn as someone who “comes from the Nihm region, west of Mārib,”86 thus identifying it as the present-day Nihm region.
Finally, consistent with the close connection between tribe and territory discussed above, some have interpreted these references as indicating both a tribe and a region. Hermann von Wissmann, one of the early pioneers of the pre-Islamic tribal geography of Yemen, used references to nhmyn and nhmt as evidence for both a tribe and a land or region of NHM, which he believed was in the same general areas as the Nihm of Hamdānī’s time (see fig. 3).87 More recently, Peter Stein considered nhmyn an attestation of the tribal name NHM but classified tribal names under the rubric of “toponyms.” He thus included NHM—identified as present-day Nihm—on a map showing an “overview of places . . . as well as other identifiable toponyms, which are mentioned in the well-known minuscule inscriptions.”88 Thus Stein essentially treated nhmyn as evidence of both a tribe and a region.
Given this range of interpretation among scholars of ancient South Arabia, it is unnecessarily reductive when talking about the Book of Mormon to insist that nhmyn can only be considered evidence for a tribe and therefore does not support the Book of Mormon’s reference to a place called Nahom (NHM).
Conclusion
As is clear from the above evidence, the name Nihm (and its variant spellings) has deep roots far into the past as both a tribal name and a toponym and is part of a long-standing, ancient tradition in Yemen, where tribes have been strongly linked to their territories for millennia. The use of Nihm as a place name, specifically, is documented back more than a thousand years into the early Islamic period and is very likely older still. This situates the origins of Nihm as a geographic name back into the pre-Islamic era, when several inscriptions referring to nhmyn indicate there was a tribal entity—and by extension, likely a region—known by the NHM name.
Among the ancient South Arabian inscriptions, tribal names are regularly used as toponyms, sometimes by specifically being called the “land” (ʾrḍ) or “territory” (bḍʿ) of the tribe. On other occasions, the tribe’s name could simply be used in toponymic ways without any geographic qualifiers. Furthermore, tribal names in the South Arabian inscriptions are understood to link a person to both a tribe and its territory. Looking specifically at occurrences of nhmyn in several ancient South Arabian inscriptions, scholars have interpreted these references as indicating affiliation with both the tribe and region of Nihm.
In biblical studies, scholars have debated over the meaning of the name “Israel” in the Merneptah stela (ca. 1209 BC). The Egyptian text “uses the determinative (semantic indicator) for an ethnic group, and not for a geographic region or city.”89 Yet some have debated whether the name Israel “referred originally to a geographical region and was subsequently appropriated by or applied to the mixed population of the central hill country.”90 While the reference to Israel is indeed to a people and not a geographic name, some scholars have pointed out that given the fact that the names of regions and the tribes that occupy them are typically one and the same, the whole debate seems to be unnecessarily splitting hairs. As J. Maxwell Miller and John H. Hays put it, “We should probably not make too much either of the determinative that identifies Israel as a foreign people rather than a foreign land. As is the case with the name ‘Moab,’ which also makes its first appearance in Egyptian texts about this time, ‘Israel’ may have referred loosely to both a subregion of Palestine and the people who lived there.”91
In light of the evidence presented here, I suggest we likewise “should probably not make too much” of whether the nhmyn of ancient South Arabian texts refers to members of a tribe or to the inhabitants of a specific region. There is far more ambiguity in this case (in comparison with Israel in the Merneptah stela), and when considered in the context of the conceptual relationship between tribe and place, it hardly seems worth trying to split hairs over which interpretation is preferable. Given the proper understanding of tribes and their territory in ancient Yemen, there is little difficulty in linking a tribe in ancient inscriptions with what is called a “place” in the Book of Mormon.