Israel in Arabia File, Kamal Salibi's thesis that the original Israel was in Asir
Israel in Arabia?
The Promised Land was Asir According to Kamal Salibi
[
and the land of the towers of Babel?
]
Historian Kamal Salibi claims that Asir near Yemen was the original Israel and the
original Judah. And that the Jordan was not a river, but the escarpment between the highlands of Asir and
the coastal plain below.
After looking through a gazetteer of Arabia given to him as a gift, Kamal Salibi was struck by the number of
biblical place names found in the province of Asir. To satisfy his curiosity he correlated the names of
places to the distances travelled according various Old Testament books of the Bible, and found that there
was a close correspondence in the distances between all places in Asir and those in the Old Testament, not the
discrepancies found between such places in Palestine.
His research led to the publishing of his first book on Asir, The Bible Came From Arabia and to some
scholarly resistance but mostly to his ideas being completely ignored by the academic world.
In looking at the photograph in the background, I am struck for the first time how appropriate the story
of the Tower of Babel is for this area -- an area whose domestic architecture has always involved the use
of towers.
Also, the presence of the large Yemenite Jewish community nearby, and the closeness of the Kingdom of Sheba
both lend more credence to Salibi's theories.
Moreover, when one remembers that Jerusalem in Palestinian Israel is often referred to as "the daughter of
Jerusalem", one feels there may indeed be an original Jerusalem here in Asir.
Unfortunately, to date there has been little archeological research in Asir, though the state is replete with ruins.
How fascinating it would be if the Promised Land did turn out to be Asir.
Salibi's book The Bible Came From Arabia is out of print, but his second book, Secrets of the Bible
People, is still available. They make interesting reading -- although, personally, I would be more interested
in some credible scholastic criticism of his theories; there has been little to date.