Harad

and Mordor Geography of the North African coast. The elves named the land and its people Haradwaith, "South-folk", from the Sindarin harad, meaning "south", and gwaith, meaning "people". The Quenya word Hyarmen similarly means "south" in addition to being the name of the country. The hobbits called the area the Sunlands, and the people Swertings. Aragorn briefly describes his journeys in the land as being in "Harad where the stars are strange". Tolkien confirmed that this meant that Aragorn had travelled "some distance into the southern hemisphere" in Harad. s" (galleys, as in this reconstruction) and deep ships with oars and sails. who provide the Dark Lord Sauron with a sizeable fleet. The ships are different types of galleys, with both oars and sails; some are named as dromunds, others as having a deep draught (requiring a deep channel), many oars, and black sails. Elsewhere in Harad there are "many towns"; one of these is "the inland city", the home of Queen Berúthiel (mentioned by Tolkien in an interview). The Harad Road is the main overland route between Gondor and Harad. Harad possesses jungles with apes, grasslands, and deserts. Gondor described Harad as consisting of Near Harad and Far Harad. Near Harad corresponds loosely with North Africa or the Maghreb, while Far Harad, the vastly larger of the two regions, corresponds loosely with sub-Saharan Africa. Tolkien's own annotated map of Middle-earth, used by the illustrator Pauline Baynes to construct her iconic map, suggests that "Elephants appear in the great battle outside Minas Tirith (as they did in Italy under Pyrrhus) but they would be in place in the blank squares of Harad – also camels." People linked the Haradrim with ancient Aethiopians. Frodo and Sam meet Faramir and his Rangers of Ithilien just before the latter ambush a company of Haradrim on the North Road. Frodo and Sam do not see much of the battle, since they are positioned elsewhere, but they hear the sounds of fighting, and a slain Haradrim warrior crashes at their feet. This warrior is described as having "brown" skin, with black plaits of hair braided with gold. History The Haradrim are independent peoples, but in the Second Age they are caught between the ambitions of Sauron (the Dark Lord) and the Númenóreans, who often kill Haradrim or sell them as slaves, and who become rulers of Harad. Over the centuries many Haradrim fall under Sauron's dominion, and to "them Sauron was both king and god, and they feared him exceedingly". They become mixed with Númenórean settlers, some of whom fall under the sway of Sauron as "Black Númenóreans". Under King Hyarmendacil I "South-victor" of Gondor, Harad becomes a vassal of Gondor. By the time of the War of the Ring, the Haradrim are again under the dominion of Sauron, and the Haradrim Corsairs provide the whole of his Black Fleet; many other Haradrim join his armies, some riding mûmakil. In the Battle of the Pelennor Fields, the leader of the Haradrim army is killed by King Théoden of Rohan. Tolkien did not work out any particular languages for the Haradrim, though mûmak, "elephant", may be in the Harad language. Despite having a meaning in Quenya ("fate"), the name Umbar is adapted from the natives' language and not from Elvish or Adûnaic. == Concept and creation ==

"Sigelwara Land" Tolkien arrived at the idea of Harad, a hot Southern land, through his philological work. The Old English Biblical poem Exodus in the tenth-century Codex Junius 11 includes a passage that caught Tolkien's attention: Tolkien was interested in particular in the Old English word used for "Aethiopians": it was Sigelwara, or in Tolkien's emendation Sigelhearwan. The Tolkien scholar Tom Shippey writes that Tolkien's philological research, described in his essay "Sigelwara Land", began from the assumption that the word could not originally have meant Aethiopian, but must have been co-opted to that usage having once meant something comparable. Tolkien approached the question by analysing the two parts of the word. Sigel meant, according to Tolkien, "both sun and jewel", the former as it was the Old English name of the Sun rune, Proto-Germanic: *sowilō (ᛋ), the latter connotation from Latin sigillum, a seal. Tolkien decided that Hearwa was related to the Old English heorð, meaning "hearth", and ultimately to the Latin carbo, meaning "soot". The resulting meaning for Sigelhearwan, Tolkien decided tentatively, was "rather the sons of Muspell than of Ham", an ancient class of demons in Northern mythology "with red-hot eyes that emitted sparks and faces black as soot". The philologist Elizabeth Solopova similarly notes that the hobbits' name for Harad, Sunland, suggests a similar link. == Analysis ==

Moral geography The Germanic studies scholar Sandra Ballif Straubhaar notes that it is not clear whether Tolkien meant the Haradrim to be grouped with his "Wild Men", though he named them as ancient enemies of Gondor. They are "ethnic others but not as ugly", With his "Southrons" from Harad, Tolkien had – in the view of John Magoun, writing in The J. R. R. Tolkien Encyclopedia – constructed a "fully expressed moral geography", from the hobbits' home in the Northwest, evil in the East, and "imperial sophistication and decadence" in the South. Magoun explains that Gondor is both virtuous, being West, and has problems, being South; Mordor in the Southeast is hellish, while Harad in the extreme South "regresses into hot savagery". Tolkien however mentioned Pyrrhus of Epirus's use of war elephants against Ancient Rome in 280–275 BC in his notes for the illustrator Pauline Baynes.) in Aftonbladet as "stereotypical and reflective of colonial attitudes". She argues instead that Gollum's view, with its "arbitrary and stereotypical assumptions about the 'Other'", is absurd, and that Gollum cannot be taken as an authority on Tolkien's opinion. Straubhaar contrasts this with Sam Gamgee's more humane response to the sight of a dead Harad warrior, which she finds "harder to find fault with": "He was glad that he could not see the dead face. He wondered what the man's name was and where he came from; and if he was really evil of heart, or what lies or threats had led him on the long march from his home." Straubhaar concedes that Shapiro may have had a point with "slant-eyed", but comments that this was milder than that of many of his contemporary novelists such as John Buchan, and notes that Tolkien had in fact made "appalled objection" when people had misapplied his story to current events. She similarly observes that Tjeder had failed to notice Tolkien's "concerted effort" to change the Western European "paradigm" that speakers of supposedly superior languages were "ethnically superior". ==In other media ==

's 2002 film The Two Towers were based on 12th century Saracens. The battle scene in Ithilien between the rangers of Gondor and the men of Harad was shot at the Twelve Mile Delta near Queenstown, New Zealand. The Haradrim and the Corsairs of Umbar appear in merchandise for the film trilogy, such as toys, The Lord of the Rings Trading Card Game, and the computer game The Lord of the Rings: The Battle for Middle-earth II. "Haradrim Slayers" feature in the computer game The Lord of the Rings: War of the Ring, while in the video game Middle-earth: Shadow of War, Baranor, a playable character who is a captain in Gondor's guard, is originally from Harad. Iron Crown Enterprises produced a series of books for their tabletop roleplaying game Middle-earth Role Playing containing information about Harad and content allowing games to be set there. Key publications included the setting books Umbar: Haven of the Corsairs (1982), Far Harad (1988), and Greater Harad (1990), as well as the adventure books Warlords of the Desert (1989), Forest of Tears (1989), and Hazards of the Harad Wood (1990). Games Workshop have produced miniatures and rules relating to Harad for use in the Middle Earth Strategy Battle Game, including for mumakil and Corsairs of Umbar. == See also ==