Una tribù preislamica in Transgiordania. Una nota su Ǧaḏīma, re dei Tanūḫ, in un contesto linguistico e geografico nabateo

Ǧaḏīma was an important figure in the history of the Arabs before Islam. According to Islamic sources, in the 3rd century Ǧaḏīma’s kingdom was in south Mesopotamia, but an inscription, found at Umm al-Jimal, in Jordan, and written in Nabataean and Greek in c. 250 A.D., mentions the tomb of an official of Ǧaḏīma. This inscription is important since it confirms Ǧaḏīma as a historical figure, but its finding at Umm al-Jimal, further west than his kingdom, near the border of the Roman Empire, could be a historical and geographical problem. So, some question arises: why a tomb of an official of Ǧaḏīma was found so far from his kingdom in a Nabataean linguistic environment? Who wrote this inscription? Why Nabataean and Greek texts contain errors? The Arabic tradition reports the marriage of Ǧaḏīma to, and his death by, al-Zabba (Zenobia), the queen of Palmira. Probably the Tanūḫ, under Ǧaḏīma’s kingship, warred with the tribes settled in the west. Therefore, this inscription was probably written by a Tanūḫid soldier speaking Arabic and making grammatical mistakes both in Nabataean and Greek. In addition, the possibility that the Nabataean part of the inscription was written in Arabic by Nabataean characters, like other pre-Islamic Arabic epigraphs, is not excluded.