Bir Ali

Biʾr ʿAlī is a village in eastern Yemen. It is located in the Shabwah Governorate. The name means "Ali's Well" in Arabic. In pre-Islamic times, the port was called Qanīʾ.

Ancient history

Literature

In antiquity, Qanīʾ was mainly a trading port for spices from India and Eastern coast of Africa. Describing the part of his voyage after leaving the Red Sea and Aden, the author of the Periplus of the Erythraean Sea wrote in 50 CE:

Archaeological finds

Wine jars dating back to the 1st century CE were discovered in Biʾr ʿAlī in 1988, in an underwater excavation along the shores of the Indian Ocean. On one of the jars is inscribed a word in the Palmyrene alphabet and a word in Syriac script. The conclusion drawn by researchers, B. Davidde and R. Petriaggi, is that from the mid-1st century CE wine was imported from Italy and Syria upon camels that disembarked from Coptos which lies along the banks of the Nile River in Egypt, thence unto ports Myos Hormos – a place that later became known as al-Quṣayr – and Berenike situated on the western shore of the Red Sea, and from there transported by ship to trade centers in Arabia, Ethiopia and India.
The alleged ruins of a Jewish synagogue were also discovered in Biʾr ʿAlī, dating back to at least the 3rd century CE. It is presumed that Jewish merchants from Hellenistic communities outside of Yemen may have eventually chosen to settle in that place, where they would have been occupied in the trade of aromatics. This assumption is based on the five-lined Greek inscription that was preserved in the synagogue of ancient Qanīʻ, the content of which being a petition by a man named Kosmās unto the One God that he will protect his caravan while traversing the vast wastelands.
However, the identification of the site has been strongly questioned by some scholars: "The mirage of Qanīʾ’s Jews serves as a cautionary tale.... What we don’t know is this: almost anything about the function of the buildings excavated in Sector Three at Qanīʾ"