Juwāthā

Overview

Juwāthā is entered in the place-books as a fortified place in al-Baḥrayn, the eastern country whose seat is Hajar, and the geographers attach it to ʿAbd al-Qays — it is written as a *ḥiṣn* of that tribe, in the ground behind the al-Khaṭṭ coast, on the side of the oasis country of al-Aḥsāʾ. It is written جُواثا and also جُواثى, and both spellings are met.

What the sources record

Two things are recorded of it plainly, and this page records no more than they do. The first is the mosque: the early reports name a *masjid ʿAbd al-Qays* at Juwāthā, and it is cited in the tradition literature as one of the earliest places outside Medina where the Friday prayer was held. The second is that Juwāthā appears in verse from the years just after the Prophet's death, quoted by Yāqūt, in which its people are described as shut up in the place and calling for help. Yāqūt gives the lines; the events behind them belong to the historians, and this reference does not narrate them.

That is the whole of what the permitted works give, and it is enough to fix the place: a stronghold of the ʿAbd al-Qays country, standing early, and known by name to writers far from it.

The name

The name has no derivation that the lexicon supplies for it, and the reference invents none. It is written جُواثا, vowelled Juwāthā, on a pattern common in the old names of this coast; where the lexicographers do not derive a name, they leave it, and so does this page.