Gingrich, A.غينغريشأ. (2026). Risk and Hope: Snakes and Humans in Southwest Arabia as Understood by Sociocultural Anthropology [المخاطر والأمل: الثعابين والإنسان في جنوب غرب الجزيرة العربية ضمن مفهوم الأنثروبولوجيا الاجتماعية والثقافية]. Athīrat: Journal of Ancient Arabia, 2(1-2), 85-105. https://doi.org/10.1163/30504880-12340025

Abstract
Within a multi-species anthropological and ethnographic approach, this presentation features a few ethnographic observations on the snake as a guardian of spring water, as being sensitive to upcoming rains, and as a symbol in male puberty rituals. The relevant insights were documented during a joint Saudi-Austrian ethnographic fieldwork project in the early 1980s in the hilly Tihama of Southwest Arabia (southern Hijaz and Asir) and in 1986 in the lower slopes of northwestern Yemen’s remote and isolated Tihama mountains. These selected ethnographic examples concern the values and qualities attributed by local villagers to certain snakes, perceived as being potentially dangerous but also as possible signs of hope for them. A number of additional, unusual features are attributed to the snakes by local people. Some of these are based on experience and some on imagination: hence, they also integrate local value judgements. These local values deviate to some extent from pre-Ottoman Islamic Arabic literary traditions by enhancing a somewhat more positive classification. Villagers’ overall attitudes to the snakes they are referring to may be characterized by a profound ambivalence between fear of risks and respectful hope. In sum, these overall emotional and value-informed attitudes oblige them to pursue a careful and committed attitude that seems to have absorbed certain legacies from possible parallels in the past of Ancient Southwest Arabia.

Schlüsselwörter:Ethnography of snakes; Arabic literary traditions; serpents and snakes in Ancient Southwest Arabia; anthropological interpretation; serpents in human rituals and everyday experience; إثنوجرافيا الثعابين; التقاليد الأدبية العربية; الثعابين والأفاعي في جنوب-غرب شبه الجزيرة العربية القديمة; التفسيرات الأنثروبولوجية; الثعابين في الطقوس والتجارب اليومية

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