Hobyot

The Hobyot are the speakers of Hobyot (Hobyót, Hewbyót, Habyot, Hobi), a Modern South Arabian language of the mountains on the Oman-Yemen border, from Jadib and Hawf in Yemen's al-Mahra to Dhalkut and Sarfait in Oman's Dhofar, with Habarut at its northern edge. T. M. Johnstone first noted it in 1981 and took it for a blend of Mehri and Jibbali; Marie-Claude Simeone-Senelle showed in 1985 that it is a language of its own. Its speakers call themselves Mahra, and the language belongs to a place more than to a tribe: people in the mountains north of Hawf grow up speaking both Hobyot and Mehri. Ethnologue classes it as moribund, with fluent speakers only among older adults; estimates range from a few hundred to about 1,000 speakers in Oman and from 40 to about 400 in Yemen. A 2023 grammar (Manoubi) distinguishes three dialects: Sarfait-Hawf, spoken continuously across the border; Jadib Khattet, on a mountain north of Jadib in Yemen; and the coastal quarter of Rehen, whose Black inhabitants mix Hobyot and Mehri. No tribe bears the name, whose origin is unknown; one proposal reads it as 'the language of the ancestors'. Within one family the mother may speak Mehri or Jibbali and the father Hobyot, and speakers, though proud of their speech, regard Mehri as the more prestigious.

Hobyot speakers live in mountain settlements, on the desert edge and in coastal fishing hamlets at the western end of the Dhofar mountains, keeping livestock in the monsoon-watered hills and fishing the coast. Their star calendar, recorded at Sarfait in 2025, divides the year into four seasons (summer, khareef, sarb and winter), each opened by named stars such as the Pleiades and Aldebaran ('al-Burkan'), and timed planting and harvest, the closing of the sea in the monsoon, and trading voyages. Most also speak Mehri and Arabic, and their daily life is close to that of the Mahra around them. On both sides of the border Hobyot speakers include Sada families, who claim descent from the Prophet, tribal families and Black families descended from former slaves; at Hawf in Yemen they live in separate quarters of the same village. Linguists describe the speakers as cattle herders of the mountains on either side of the border.

The Hobyot are Sunni Muslims like their Mahra and Jibbali neighbours. Star lore once tied seasonal work to religious observance. No study of folk religion specific to them exists.

No Scripture, JESUS Film or audio exists in Hobyot. Speakers also know Mehri, which has only Scripture portions from 1902, and Arabic. No believers or outreach are known.