Category:Nabateans (subject)

The Nabateans were a Semitic population living in Southern Jordan and the northern part of Arabia.

See also Nabatean Kings, and Nabatean Cities.

Overview

In the Greek and Roman Period the Nabateans created a powerful kingdom at the borders of the land of Israel. They had control of the Incense Route, the commercial route connecting the Arabian peninsula to Mesopotamia and the Mediterranean. The Nabatean capital Petra served as a strategic place of reloading, with one route crossing the desert of Negev to the port of Gaza, and another leading through Bosra and Damascus to Mesopotamia in the east and Phoenicia in the west.

The Nabateans supported the Maccabees in their fight against the Seleucids but then resisted to the expansion of the Hasmonean Kings and Herod the Great.

In 106 CE the Nabaten kingdom was absorbed into the Roman Empire. As part of the new province of Arabia Petrae, the Nabatean towns continued to flourished in the centuries to come.

The Nabateans in ancient sources

Diodorus Siculus (1st cent. BCE)

The land (of Arabia) is situated between Syria and Egypt, and is divided among many peoples of diverse characteristics. Now the eastern parts are inhabited by Arabs, who bear the name of Nabateans and range over a country which is partly desert and partly waterless, though a small section of it is fruitful” (Bibliotheca II,48,1-2).

“Consequently the Arabs who inhabit this country, being difficult to overcome in war, remain always unenslaved; furthermore, they never at any time accept a man of another country as their overlord and continue to maintain their liberty unimpaired” (II,48,4).

“They are exceptionally fond of freedom...” (XIX,94,1).

“Some of them raise camels, others sheep, pasturing them in the desert. While there are many Arabian tribes who use the desert as pasture, the Nabateans far surpass the others in wealth although they are not much more than ten thousand in number; for not a few of them are accustomed to bringing down to the sea frankincense and myrrh and the most valuable kind of spices, which they procure from those who convey them from what is called Arabia Eudaemon”, i.e. Arabia, the Blessed (XIX, 94, 4-5).

The Nabateans in Scholarship

The Nabateans in Fiction

External links

• Wikipedia

Major articles

• History of the Nabatean Kings / Schurer/Vermes / 1 (1973) 574-586