HSE Creates Centre for South Arabian Studies
The new centre will operate as part of the Institute of Oriental and Classical Studies (IOCS) at the HSE Faculty of Humanities, and its flagship project will focus on the study of the language and oral folklore of Socotra Island. The centre is a trilateral international partnership between HSE University, the Institute of Oriental Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences, and a consortium of leading universities in the UAE. Read on to find out about what South Arabian studies involves and what research HSE scholars do in this field.
Socotra Island is located in the Gulf of Aden in the Arabian Sea, equidistant from the coast of Somalia and southern Oman. It is part of Yemen, and this fact greatly complicates any research.
Throughout its history, Socotra, like the south of Arabia as a whole, was an isolated and understudied region of the Middle East. Although such famous people as the traveller Marco Polo and the founder of the Jesuit Order Ignatius of Loyola visited this island in the late Middle Ages, the first information about the Soqotri language in Western science dates back only to 1835, when the first two hundred Soqotri words were recorded by a naval officer who landed on the island from a British warship.
In 1899, the Austrian Semitist David Heinrich Müller visited Socotra. He was amazed by the islanders’ way of life, language, and authentic folklore tradition. Soon, he managed to invite a local resident (who could neither read nor write) to Vienna as his main informant on the Soqotri language and the oral folk art of the Soqotri people. The apex of Müller's activities was the publication of a large number of records of Soqotri folklore—a book that set a high standard for future generations of scientists.
The next stage in the study of Socotra is associated with Vitaly Naumkin, an Arabi and Asian studies specialist and Member of the Russian Academy of Sciences (RAS). He is currently the Academic Supervisor of the RAS Institute of Oriental Studies and the Head of the Joint Department with the RAS Institute of Oriental Studies at the HSE Faculty of World Economy and International Affairs. Vitaly Naumkin also heads the new HSE Centre for South Arabian Studies.
Ilya Smirnov
‘Vitaly Naumkin first went to Socotra in the 1970s, as a very young scientist, and since then, studying the island has become his life’s work. He led a Soviet-Yemeni expedition and then a Russian one, which has been working on the island during annual field seasons. His works devoted to the history, unwritten language, unique customs, rituals, and tribal organisation of the Soqotri people have received wide recognition both in Russia and abroad,’ says Academic Supervisor of the HSE Institute for Oriental and Classical Studies Ilya Smirnov.
In 2009, Vitaly Naumkin attracted the early-career scholars Leonid Kogan, Maria Bulakh, Ekaterina Vizirova and others to his academic projects. All of them now work at the HSE Institute for Oriental and Classical Studies, participate in research of the Soqotri language and folklore, and will take an active part in the research activities of the newly-created centre. In particular, Maria Bulakh was appointed its Deputy Head.
Leonid Kogan
‘The South Arabian region has been one of the main directions of Middle Eastern studies for more than fifty years. Soviet and Russian scientists, including Vitaly Naumkin, have become pioneers in a number of research aspects. Work in South Arabia remains the preserve of a few, and almost any major publication evokes enthusiastic reactions in the world scientific community,’ notes Deputy Director of the HSE Institute for Oriental and Classical Studies Leonid Kogan.
One of the key achievements of the research group was the creation of a Soqotri writing system based on the Arabic script. The implementation of this writing system among the islanders is one of the most important future tasks of the Centre for South Arabian Studies, and will be implemented within the framework of humanitarian and educational initiatives supported by UNESCO.
Denis Volkov
HSE Institute for Oriental and Classical Studies Director Denis Volkov believes that the potential of the centre's scientists allows them to go far beyond the collection and analysis of field data, placing this data in the broad cultural and historical context of the Middle East region from ancient eras to the present day. ‘In this respect, the working methods of our colleagues and the results they obtain are often really unique,’ he noted.
An important task of the centrе is personnel training. By now, its staff includes four research assistants who are students of the IOCS educational programmes ‘The Arab World: Language, Literature, Culture’ and ‘Ethiopia and the Arab World’. ‘They are all brilliant young specialists, real experts in their field, and some of them already have some experience in field and office work with Soqotri informants. And we are sure that this is just the beginning,’ says Denis Volkov.
The centre is a trilateral international partnership between HSE University, the Institute of Oriental Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences, and a consortium of leading universities in the UAE. The Emirates plays a vital role in humanitarian, educational, and cultural projects to support the Soqotri population, and the research activities of Russian colleagues on the island in recent years have received a constant response from the UAE’s government agencies.
Soqotri research is not the only area of activity of the new centre. Some of its employees and research assistants specialise in other branches of South Arabian studies, namely linguistics, philology, history, and political science. The HSE Institute for Oriental and Classical Studies also has unique achievements in these areas, which are recognised in the world scientific community.
These include the publication and in-depth analysis of unique early modern private law documents from Northern Yemen and the transcription and commentary edition of works from the collection of the Yemeni sultan and encyclopedist al-Afdal al-Abbas (14th century). These are based on field observations and a wide range of Yemeni sources of research in the field of the genesis and current state of the Houthi movement.
Thus, the new HSE Centre for South Arabian Studies has a thematically and chronologically balanced, rich, and original scientific agenda, and its full-scale implementation will begin in the near future.