Concerning the Origin of Peoples
Origin and Identity of the Arabs
Appendix
Response
After this essay was published (see the main page) and reached popularity, some supporters of the "Ishmaelite myth" reacted with displeasure, expressing their opinion not in an educated manner but with insults, without providing any proof to support their theory, nor showing any ability to expose any historically or scientifically valid claim either. Their argument consists mainly in attacking the Jewish people (what has the Jewish people to do with all this matter?...) and in blaming this essay of allegedly promoting biased information. Some have also argued that part of the facts exposed here come from Biblical sources, with the intention of disqualifying such sources, but they do not realize that the whole Ishmaelite issue comes from the very fact that the only ancient document which mentions Ishmael is the Bible, otherwise such name would be completely unknown. All further mentions of Ishmaelites occur in much later accounts, and based on Biblical information. Also the term "Semitic", universally accepted today as an ethnic or cultural definition, comes from the Hebrew Bible. On the other hand, beyond the religious value, the Hebrew Bible is one of the very few historical accounts of the Ancient Age, and coherent with other contemporary records as the Assyrian Chronicles and Egyptian documents, also quoted in this essay as witnesses of the ancient times.
Biased Information?
As it has been already said in this essay, the whole hypothesis regarding the allegedly Semitic Ishmaelite ethnicity of the Arabs is founded on a religious statement and not on scientific or historic evidences. All ancient records agree in classifying the peoples of the Arabian Peninsula within the Kushitic (Hamitic) stock rather than within the Semitic family. In this appendix, we would provide a brief response to the statements they labeled as "biased", and the honest reader would decide if they are such or not.
One of the contested statements is the following: “Wherever Arabs have conquered, the lands became deserted; the Arabian peninsula itself was not so dry, and Yemen had an irrigation network that allowed the land to be fruitful before Northern Arabs invaded and subdued the Sabean kingdom. Spain and Sicily were fertile lands in Roman times; they became dry during the Arab occupation. Only Eretz Yisrael recovered fertility after hard work done by Jews - the pieces of land still occupied by Arabs remain arid”. Is the truth biased? Whoever may attest the veracity of this assertion, just by visiting the Arab countries, Israel, Spain or Sicily. It is very unlikely that anybody may get lost in the Arabian rain forest. The aridity of all Arab countries is an unquestionable fact, not a biased statement. A well-known landscape identifies the Arab lands: the wilderness. On the contrary, Israel produces abundantly the fruit of a fertile soil in the areas in which Jewish population is settled, and every visitor may witness the contrast existing between these areas and those occupied and claimed by Arabs, which are still as arid as they were before the massive Jewish and Arab immigration. The researcher will also find historical sources attesting that the Nile Valley was fertile in such a way that ancient Egyptians lived mainly on agriculture, and that Yemen was fertile before the Arabs destroyed its irrigation system in order to conquer that kingdom (they have never rebuilt it again, leaving the country to become arid as it is today). Roman accounts speak of Hispania and Sicilia as fertile, fruitful countries. The desertification of these lands happened during the Moorish/Saracene domination, according to historical sources. Desertification is primarily a consequence of human activities.
To report the facts as they are cannot be considered as biased information without regarding the documentary evidences as worthless and the truth itself as biased.
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