118 | CHAPTER 4
and the snows so deep that men sink in up to their knees.”^95 On its West the
arena is bounded by the mountains flanking the Red Sea and backing the
eastern Mediterranean littoral. The coherence of some, at least, of these
ranges was perceived by the early Arabic geographers. For example, Ibn
Khurradādhbih (d. c. 911) linked the mountains of Hijāz to Lebanon, Ama-
nus, the Taurus, and the Caucasus, making the Holy Cities of Mecca and
Medina, in pious conceit, the root of the whole system.^96 Later, Ibn Hawqal
gave a more detailed description of the mountains bordering the Fertile
Crescent, though conceived of as part of a far vaster chain stretching from
China to the Atlantic.^97
The mountains which rim our Arena are often of such extent that they
constitute subregions independently interacting with as well as defining the
edges of the immense expanse of Mesopotamian, Syrian and Arabian plain
and desert (not without incident, of course) which forms the region’s heart.
Only in the northern hemicycle does a Fertile Crescent mediate between the
mountains and the desert. In the South the transition is abrupt, and civiliza-
tion is confined to the highlands (yemen for example) and the valleys and
oases bordering the desert: Najrān, Mārib, Hadramawt, and many others.
The great Mārib dam nourished extensive agriculture and a markedly civi-
lized urban society on runoff from the yemen uplands until, in the lifetime
of the Prophet Muhammad, it finally broke without hope of repair, and the
area reverted to wilderness.^98 As for the Nile Valley, strictly speaking it lies
just beyond the great mountain rim. yet it is pushed by the Sahara into the
closest interaction with the whole Arena.
It is easy to raise objections to such a schematic geography. In the first
place there are alternative, equally convincing—or not—schematic geogra-
phies available. Gibbon hints at one when he calls the North- South axis
more “real and intelligible” than the East- West one. It was widely felt—the
idea is attested in the early Arabic geographers for example—that the North
stood for the barbarism of Gog and Magog, the South for civilization. The
Huns had indisputably been much more of a threat to Iran and Rome than
these were to each other. Like the Mountain Arena, the North- South divide
could be articulated in terms of a vast mountain chain, this time the East-
West range of Caucasus, Carpathians, Alps, and Pyrenees.^99 One might also
see the North- South axis more interactively, and closer to the spirit of our
present investigation, by emphasizing for instance how the Mountain Arena’s
95 Cosmas Indicopleustes, Christian topography [ed. and tr. (French) W. Wolska- Conus (Paris
1968–73)] 2.60, quoting an Aksumite inscription probably of the late second or early third century.
96 Ibn Khurradādhbih, The book of itineraries and kingdoms (Kitāb al- masālik wa- ’l- mamālik) [ed.
and tr. (French) M. J. de Goeje (Leiden 1889)] 172–73.
97 Ibn Hawqal, Form of the earth [4:93] 168–70.
98 Gajda, Royaume de Himyar [3:76] 128, 130–35, 200–203.
99 Bosworth, EIs^2 4.341–42 [4:94].