Rhûn, Khand and Harad

[Beregond]

Having only read LOTR and The Hobbit out of Tolkien's works (digging my way through The Simarillion), I was wondering if Rhûn, Khand and Harad are ever properly explored or explained in other stories?

The only thing I can decypher from LOTR is that Harad is a sort of Arab-like country filled with harsh Sauron-"worshippers".

 

[Lantarion]

Hm, well those are rather vague terms, but you are close!
Actually, these three countries are never really explained: not in the Sil, LotR or UT. Perhaps (actually I'm quite certain that) the HoME have an extensive coverage of these places..
Just to be clear, I will try to define the boundaries of the three countries: Harad is a very vast (supposedly forested) area, being over twice the size of Mordor, which begins at the southern egdes of the Ephel Dúath and ends in Far Harad, almost 600 miles southwards.
Khand, I believe, is a small strip of land at the southeast of Mordor.
Rhûn itself is almost 500 miles northwards, which probably 'begins' from the Sea of Rhûn and continues into the northeast and east (the name 'Rhûn' means 'East'). It ends at the Orocarni, the Mountains of the East, which do not even come into play in any of Tolkien's works I have read.
A very informative book is Karen Wynn-Fonstad's revised edition of 'An Atlas of Middle-Earth'. Check it out.

 

[Anamatar IV]

i have a question. Whats east, east, east, past the iron hills, so far east. Whats out over there? To the west oer the sea is the undying land. so whats to the east?

 

[Beregond]

Often wondered that myself, Anamatar.

Cheers Lantarion, I'll maybe give that a try.

 

[Lord Aragorn]

Ack... I can't find the map. It had all those countries marked on it, and showed all the lands of Middle Earth outside of those meantioned in LoTR. It was really good, I'll have to keep looking for it.

 

[Lantarion]

There is no "equivalent" of Aman in the East. Of course, if you were to go far enough East you would come to Aman anyway (if it was still a part of Arda..)!
But, as I said, Rhûn ends in the Orocarni, and so does the continent itself called Middle-Earth. Well, the 'continent' of M-E is connected to another continent (curiously shaped like Africa, fyi) called the Hither Lands..
Argh, just get the book I recommened..

 

[Arthur_Vandelay]

Having only read LOTR and The Hobbit out of Tolkien's works (digging my way through The Simarillion), I was wondering if Rhûn, Khand and Harad are ever properly explored or explained in other stories?

The only thing I can decypher from LOTR is that Harad is a sort of Arab-like country filled with harsh Sauron-"worshippers".

Just curious to know on what grounds you would describe Harad/the Haradrim as "Arab-like"?

 

[Ithrynluin]

The Battle of the Pelennor Fields
and the drawing of the scimitars of the Southrons was like a glitter of stars.

Aren't/weren't scimitars a rather typical weapon for the Arab world?

Also, the men of Harad are described as being 'swarthy'.

Lantarion, I don't think Harad would be a forested area, but resembling a steppe, savannah or even desert.

 

[Snaga]

i have a question. Whats east, east, east, past the iron hills, so far east. Whats out over there? To the west oer the sea is the undying land. so whats to the east?

In the Hobbit, Bilbo says

Tell me what you want done, and I will try it, if I have to walk from here to the East of East and fight the wild Were-worms in the Last Desert.

Whether Bilbo can be considered reliable on this point is of course slightly dubious.

 

[Dáin Ironfoot I]

I know I asked this before, but wasnt that map that showed the Far East a load of crap? The one that had the land of 'Ja' in it and other bogus things...

 

[Khôr’nagan]

Well, for one thing I can say with near-certainty that the term "Hither-Lands" applies to Middle-Earth, not just the south of Middle-Earth. For indeed in the Lord of the Rings we only see the North-Western part of Middle-Earth, when in fact it continues far to the south and east. As has been noted, Harad (Sindarin for "South") is very similar in appearance to Africa, and indeed the North-Western part of Middle-Earth can be likened to Europe and the East to Asia. Also, the way that the Haradrim are described is very similar to the way one might describe Ancient Africans, and the Easterlings were said to possess an "Oriental quality." The entire land-mass of Middle-Earth is quite extensive beyond that which is described in The Lord of the Rings, though I am afraid that there is little more that I can say, as I myself have not read the HoME books, only the first three.

 

[Arthur_Vandelay]

Aren't/weren't scimitars a rather typical weapon for the Arab world?

Also, the men of Harad are described as being 'swarthy'.

Isn't that something of a stereotype?

 

[Khôr’nagan]

So what if it is?

Stereotypes are often based in fact, and therefore can show us some light upon a subject we know too little about. Of course it's essential to keep oneself from believing in that stereotpye, but still it can lead us to conclusions that we would otherwise be unable to reach. And also, who's to say that Tolkien hadn't worked off of stereotypes when writing the Lord of the Rings? You must try to keep an open mind about things Tolkien might have used in writing his world when you're discussing the finer-points of his creation. Surely you can understand this?

But what's more, Arabs did use scimitars, did they not? And were they not also typically somewhat 'swarthy' in those days, or seen as being so by others? Wouldn't that justify the use of a stereotype in this situation?

 

[Arthur_Vandelay]

So what if it is?

Stereotypes are often based in fact, and therefore can show us some light upon a subject we know too little about. Of course it's essential to keep oneself from believing in that stereotpye, but still it can lead us to conclusions that we would otherwise be unable to reach. And also, who's to say that Tolkien hadn't worked off of stereotypes when writing the Lord of the Rings? You must try to keep an open mind about things Tolkien might have used in writing his world when you're discussing the finer-points of his creation. Surely you can understand this?

But what's more, Arabs did use scimitars, did they not? And were they not also typically somewhat 'swarthy' in those days, or seen as being so by others? Wouldn't that justify the use of a stereotype in this situation?

Stereotypes may sometimes be based in fact, but more often than not they are based on myths, generalisations and assumptions, and therefore can yield a distorted, unfair or biased picture of a subject we know little about. Arabs did use scimitars, but so did Turks, Persians and Indians, as well as the Japanese. A form of the scimitar was introduced into Europe, where it became known as a "cavalry saber." As for "swarthiness", you might apply this description to any number of sun-kissed Southern Europeans (I'm of such stock myself).

I'm not trying to turn this into a thread which belongs more properly in the Forsaken Inn Forum. I'm just interested to know how "scimitar" and "swarthy" automatically become shorthand for "Arab". And if "Arabs" were the inspiration for Tolkien's Haradrim, where in his writings is this mentioned?

 

[Khôr’nagan]

All I meant was that the specific stereotype was a common generalization of Arabs and other people similar to them in location and culture, and therefore it could imply that those people in LotR were modelled after such people intentionally.

 

[Snaga]

The thing about categorising the Haradrim as arabs is that it is actually misleading. It is misleading because we know little about the Haradrim, and a lot about arabs, so by connecting the two we import a lot of knowledge (or prejudice) about arabs and connect it in an unjustified manner to the Haradrim. Secondly, by so doing we are inclined to overlook what Tolkien actually did tell us about the Haradrim. Such as:

1) They were not all the same - definite distinctions made between the Umbarian corsairs, the Haradrim assailed by Faramir, and the men of Far Harad

2) The 'standard' Haradrim culture involved wearing a lot of scarlet, gold jewelry, riding Oliphaunts and the use of the emblem of the snake.

These things never made me think of the arabs at all.

 

[Flame of Udûn]

I have generally pictured the Haradrim as an African race, similar to the Zulu. Giant African elephants would support this more easily than it supporting an Arabian culture. The only thing that could indicate the Middle East would be the scimitars, which are not a weapon of African origin, but the scimitars are only mentioned once.

 

[reem]

Did Tolkien mean to base his races on existing cultures? I think we would be grossly abusive of his material if we began labeling his creation in this way. I highly doubt that Tolkien was so lacking in imagination that he would need to resort to this form of 'copying'.
reem

 

[pgt]

Don't we know a little about the East based on the wainriders and wasn't one of the rulers of ancient Gondor living up in the far northeast for a while around the time of the kin strife? That's all from the appendices but I don't recall all that much.

There's also some mention of battles around Umbar and such which sort of gets you close to the direction of Harad etc...

Not much but I think there are some teases here and there in those regions in the ROTK appendices.

Oh and one of the named Nazgul was a king from somewhere out there no?

----------------------------------------------

The pan-Arabic culture of the era that made use of scimitars up thru the European Renaissance was easily the or one of the most advanced enlightened civilizations up to that point in history. What's wrong w/ being associated w/ that?

I've also somewhat stereotyped many aspects of Hobbits as 'English' and Rohirrim as 'Northern European'. Should I be cast upon the pillar of shame?

All descriptions have to be relative to a common base so even if JRRT meant to create a purely new fantasy world - it's reasonable to expect such inferences among readers. I don't think there is any right or wrong here - readers are free to read and interpret the descriptive images in their own minds based on their own experiences, knowledge, prejudices etc... that we all have.

As for descriptive words like swarthy I simply don't know what swarthy means - the dictionary tells me it means dark skinned or dark complected but I've always drawn a blank on that word.

 

[Arthur_Vandelay]

The pan-Arabic culture of the era that made use of scimitars up thru the European Renaissance was easily the or one of the most advanced enlightened civilizations up to that point in history. What's wrong w/ being associated w/ that?

I've also somewhat stereotyped many aspects of Hobbits as 'English' and Rohirrim as 'Northern European'. Should I be cast upon the pillar of shame?

All descriptions have to be relative to a common base so even if JRRT meant to create a purely new fantasy world - it's reasonable to expect such inferences among readers. I don't think there is any right or wrong here - readers are free to read and interpret the descriptive images in their own minds based on their own experiences, knowledge, prejudices etc... that we all have.

As for descriptive words like swarthy I simply don't know what swarthy means - the dictionary tells me it means dark skinned or dark complected but I've always drawn a blank on that word.

From my own experiences as a reader of Tolkien there is just enough alterity and strangeness injected into the characters and peoples of Middle-earth to prevent me from fitting them into the contemporary geopolitical landscape. I find it hard to think of Hobbits as English and the Rohirrim as Nordic--although I believe Tolkien himself asserted such connections (I could be wrong about this, though). I don't know that Tolkien himself ever claimed that the Haradrim were based upon or represent Arabs, whether of the era in which he was writing (not too many decades after Winston Churchill was calling for the RAF to use poison gas against "recalcitrant Arabs", but I digress), or of the "pre-Renaissance" era.

The image of the scimitar-wielding Arab in a context in which the "Arabic" characters are cast as the "bad guys" has the unfortunate consequence of re-casting LOTR as a Christian-vs-Muslim Crusades narrative. That, I think, is the negative connotation that would enter most people's minds if they interpret the Haradrim as "Arabs".