Draft version uploaded to academia.edu (24.10.2020) 1 of 17 The origin and transmission of the name Laḫīʿa (b.) Yanūf: literary and epigraphic investigations 1 Imar Y. Koutchoukali University of Tartu 2020 Introduction The Islamic-period narratives on the history of late pre-Islamic Yemen tell us the name of the king ruling before the (in)famous Yūsuf Ḏū Nuwās. Although this king is mostly known as Ḏū Šanātīr (literally meaning “he of the fingers”), some accounts provide the personal name of this king as Laḫīya b. Yanūf instead. The first part of this article focuses on the differences in the transmission of this name between the Muslim lexicographers and historians and provides a reason for this apparant variation. In the second part, the focus will shift to the pre-Islamic attestations of the name of the specific ruler, known as Laḥayʿat Yanūf (<LḤYʿT YNF>) and its etymology. Finally, in the third part, the discrepancies between the form of the name in the pre-Islamic epigraphy and the Islamic literature will be discussed. 1. The attestation of the name in the Islamic sources The biography of the Prophet 2 begins by telling the reader about the situation on the Arabian Peninsula before Muḥammad’s birth. One of the first chapters tells the story of the semi-legendary South Arabian ruler Yūsuf ḏū Nuwās, who is generally identified with the historical figure Yūsuf ʾAsʾar ʿYaṯʾar, who led the Ḥimyarite resistance after the Aksumite invasion of the early 6 th 1 I would like to thank Ahmad al-Jallad, Marijn van Putten, Chams Bernard and Benjamin Suchard for their useful comments and suggestions. 2 Usually known as the sīrat al-nabī or al-sira al-nabawiyya. Although there are several biographies of the Prophet, the most famous is without a doubt that of Ibn Isḥāq (d. 767), which is known through the edition of Ibn Hišām.