The Qedarites ( ar, قيدار, Qaydār) were a largely
nomad
A nomad is a member of a community without fixed habitation who regularly moves to and from the same areas. Such groups include hunter-gatherers, pastoral nomads (owning livestock), tinkers and trader nomads. In the twentieth century, the popu ...
ic ancient
Arab
The Arabs (singular: Arab; singular ar, عَرَبِيٌّ, DIN 31635: , , plural ar, عَرَب, DIN 31635: , Arabic pronunciation: ), also known as the Arab people, are an ethnic group mainly inhabiting the Arab world in Western Asia, ...
tribal confederation centred in the
Wādī Sirḥān in the
Syrian Desert. Attested from the 8th century BC, the Qedarites formed a powerful polity which expanded its territory over the course of the 8th to 5th centuries BC to cover a large area in northern Arabia stretching from the western borders of Babylonia to the eastern borders of Egypt.
[Stearns and Langer, 2001, p. 41.]
The Qedarites played an important role in the history of the
Levant
The Levant () is an approximate historical geographical term referring to a large area in the Eastern Mediterranean region of Western Asia. In its narrowest sense, which is in use today in archaeology and other cultural contexts, it is eq ...
and of North
Arabia
The Arabian Peninsula, (; ar, شِبْهُ الْجَزِيرَةِ الْعَرَبِيَّة, , "Arabian Peninsula" or , , "Island of the Arabs") or Arabia, is a peninsula of Western Asia, situated northeast of Africa on the Arabian Plate. ...
, where they enjoyed close relations with the nearby
Canaanite and
Aramaean
The Arameans ( oar, 𐤀𐤓𐤌𐤉𐤀; arc, 𐡀𐡓𐡌𐡉𐡀; syc, ܐܪ̈ܡܝܐ, Ārāmāyē) were an ancient Semitic-speaking people in the Near East, first recorded in historical sources from the late 12th century BCE. The Aramean ...
states, and became important participants in the trade of spices and aromatics imported into the Fertile Crescent and the Mediterranean world from
South Arabia. Having engaged in both friendly ties and hostilities with the
Mesopotamia
Mesopotamia ''Mesopotamíā''; ar, بِلَاد ٱلرَّافِدَيْن or ; syc, ܐܪܡ ܢܗܪ̈ܝܢ, or , ) is a historical region of Western Asia situated within the Tigris–Euphrates river system, in the northern part of the F ...
n powers such as the
Neo-Assyrian
The Neo-Assyrian Empire was the fourth and penultimate stage of ancient Assyrian history and the final and greatest phase of Assyria as an independent state. Beginning with the accession of Adad-nirari II in 911 BC, the Neo-Assyrian Empire grew t ...
and
Neo-Babylonian
The Neo-Babylonian Empire or Second Babylonian Empire, historically known as the Chaldean Empire, was the last polity ruled by monarchs native to Mesopotamia. Beginning with the coronation of Nabopolassar as the King of Babylon in 626 BC and bein ...
empires, the Qedarites eventually became integrated within the structure of the
Persian
Persian may refer to:
* People and things from Iran, historically called ''Persia'' in the English language
** Persians, the majority ethnic group in Iran, not to be conflated with the Iranic peoples
** Persian language, an Iranian language of the ...
Achaemenid Empire
The Achaemenid Empire or Achaemenian Empire (; peo, 𐎧𐏁𐏂, , ), also called the First Persian Empire, was an ancient Iranian empire founded by Cyrus the Great in 550 BC. Based in Western Asia, it was contemporarily the largest em ...
. Closely associated with the
Nabataeans
The Nabataeans or Nabateans (; Nabataean Aramaic: , , vocalized as ; Arabic language, Arabic: , , singular , ; compare grc, Ναβαταῖος, translit=Nabataîos; la, Nabataeus) were an ancient Arab people who inhabited northern Arabian Pe ...
, the Qedarites might have eventually been absorbed by them.
The Qedarites also feature within the scriptures of
Abrahamic religions
The Abrahamic religions are a group of religions centered around worship of the God of Abraham. Abraham, a Hebrew patriarch, is extensively mentioned throughout Abrahamic religious scriptures such as the Bible and the Quran.
Jewish tradition ...
, where they appear in the Hebrew and Christian
Bible
The Bible (from Koine Greek , , 'the books') is a collection of religious texts or scriptures that are held to be sacred in Christianity, Judaism, Samaritanism, and many other religions. The Bible is an anthologya compilation of texts of a ...
and the
Qurʾān
The Quran (, ; Standard Arabic: , Quranic Arabic: , , 'the recitation'), also romanized Qur'an or Koran, is the central religious text of Islam, believed by Muslims to be a revelation from God in Islam, God. It is organized in 114 surah, cha ...
as the eponymous descendants of /, the second son of
/
, himself the son of
/
. Within Islamic tradition, some scholars claim that the Islamic prophet
Muhammad
Muhammad ( ar, مُحَمَّد; 570 – 8 June 632 Common Era, CE) was an Arab religious, social, and political leader and the founder of Islam. According to Muhammad in Islam, Islamic doctrine, he was a prophet Divine inspiration, di ...
was descended from ʾIsmāʿīl through Qaydār.
Name
Assyrian records have transcribed in Neo-Assyrian
Akkadian Akkadian or Accadian may refer to:
* Akkadians, inhabitants of the Akkadian Empire
* Akkadian language, an extinct Eastern Semitic language
* Akkadian literature, literature in this language
* Akkadian cuneiform
Cuneiform is a logo- syllabi ...
various variants of the name of the Qedar tribe under the forms of , , , , , , , and . In one Neo-Assyrian letter, the Qedarites are referred to as , reflecting the use of a voiced
, similarly to the one used in the present-day
Ḥijāzī dialect of Arabic.
The name of the Qedarites is recorded in
Aramaic
The Aramaic languages, short Aramaic ( syc, ܐܪܡܝܐ, Arāmāyā; oar, 𐤀𐤓𐤌𐤉𐤀; arc, 𐡀𐡓𐡌𐡉𐡀; tmr, אֲרָמִית), are a language family containing many varieties (languages and dialects) that originated in ...
as () in Achaemenid and Hellenistic period ostraca found at
Maresha
Tel Maresha ( he, תל מראשה) is the tell (archaeological mound) of the biblical Iron Age city of Maresha, and of the subsequent, post-586 BCE Idumean city known by its Hellenised name Marisa, Arabised as Marissa (ماريسا). The tell i ...
.
In the
Hebrew Bible
The Hebrew Bible or Tanakh (;["Tanach"](_blank)
''Random House Webster's Unabridged Dictionary''. Hebrew: ''Tān ...
, the Qedarites are referred to in
Hebrew
Hebrew (; ; ) is a Northwest Semitic language of the Afroasiatic language family. Historically, it is one of the spoken languages of the Israelites and their longest-surviving descendants, the Jews and Samaritans. It was largely preserved ...
as (; grc, Κηδάρ, translit=Kēdár), meaning "black" and "swarthy."
The Qedarites were also mentioned on
Old South Arabian
Old South Arabian (or Ṣayhadic or Yemenite) is a group of four closely related extinct languages spoken in the far southern portion of the Arabian Peninsula. They were written in the Ancient South Arabian script.
There were a number of othe ...
inscriptions as the ( or ).
The Roman writer
Pliny the Elder
Gaius Plinius Secundus (AD 23/2479), called Pliny the Elder (), was a Roman author, naturalist and natural philosopher, and naval and army commander of the early Roman Empire, and a friend of the emperor Vespasian. He wrote the encyclopedic '' ...
referred to the Qedarites under the name of .
Geography
![Wadi As-Sirhan Location](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f3/Wadi_As-Sirhan_Location.jpg)
During the second half of the 9th century BC, the Qedarites were living to the east of
Transjordan Transjordan may refer to:
* Transjordan (region), an area to the east of the Jordan River
* Oultrejordain, a Crusader lordship (1118–1187), also called Transjordan
* Emirate of Transjordan, British protectorate (1921–1946)
* Hashemite Kingdom of ...
and to the south-east of
Damascus
)), is an adjective which means "spacious".
, motto =
, image_flag = Flag of Damascus.svg
, image_seal = Emblem of Damascus.svg
, seal_type = Seal
, map_caption =
, ...
, within the southwestern
Syrian Desert in the region of the
Wādī Sirḥān, more specifically in the Jauf depression in its eastern part, where was located the Qedarites' main centre of
Adummatu. Adummatu's location halfway between
Syria
Syria ( ar, سُورِيَا or سُورِيَة, translit=Sūriyā), officially the Syrian Arab Republic ( ar, الجمهورية العربية السورية, al-Jumhūrīyah al-ʻArabīyah as-Sūrīyah), is a Western Asian country loc ...
and
Babylonia
Babylonia (; Akkadian: , ''māt Akkadī'') was an ancient Akkadian-speaking state and cultural area based in the city of Babylon in central-southern Mesopotamia (present-day Iraq and parts of Syria). It emerged as an Amorite-ruled state c. ...
, as well as its richness in water and its orchards, which made it the most important oasis of all North Arabia and gave it the position of being a main stop on the roads which connected
al-Ḥīra
Al-Hirah ( ar, الحيرة, translit=al-Ḥīra Middle Persian: ''Hērt'' ) was an ancient city in Mesopotamia located south of what is now Kufa in south-central Iraq.
History
Kingdom of the Lakhmids
Al-Hirah was a significant city in pre- I ...
,
Damascus
)), is an adjective which means "spacious".
, motto =
, image_flag = Flag of Damascus.svg
, image_seal = Emblem of Damascus.svg
, seal_type = Seal
, map_caption =
, ...
and
Yaṯrib.
At the time of the 7th century BC, the Qedarites had expanded eastwards so that their kingdom adjoined the western border of
Babylonia
Babylonia (; Akkadian: , ''māt Akkadī'') was an ancient Akkadian-speaking state and cultural area based in the city of Babylon in central-southern Mesopotamia (present-day Iraq and parts of Syria). It emerged as an Amorite-ruled state c. ...
, In the western Syrian Desert, the Qedarites adjoined the western section of the
Fertile Crescent
The Fertile Crescent ( ar, الهلال الخصيب) is a crescent-shaped region in the Middle East, spanning modern-day Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Israel, Palestine and Jordan, together with the northern region of Kuwait, southeastern region of ...
on the eastern border of the Levant, and before the conquest of Syria by the
Neo-Assyrian Empire
The Neo-Assyrian Empire was the fourth and penultimate stage of ancient Assyrian history and the final and greatest phase of Assyria as an independent state. Beginning with the accession of Adad-nirari II in 911 BC, the Neo-Assyrian Empire grew t ...
, the neighbours of the Qedarite Arabs to the west were the
Aramaean
The Arameans ( oar, 𐤀𐤓𐤌𐤉𐤀; arc, 𐡀𐡓𐡌𐡉𐡀; syc, ܐܪ̈ܡܝܐ, Ārāmāyē) were an ancient Semitic-speaking people in the Near East, first recorded in historical sources from the late 12th century BCE. The Aramean ...
kingdom of
Damascus
)), is an adjective which means "spacious".
, motto =
, image_flag = Flag of Damascus.svg
, image_seal = Emblem of Damascus.svg
, seal_type = Seal
, map_caption =
, ...
and the
Canaanite kingdoms of
Ammon
Ammon ( Ammonite: 𐤏𐤌𐤍 ''ʻAmān''; he, עַמּוֹן ''ʻAmmōn''; ar, عمّون, ʻAmmūn) was an ancient Semitic-speaking nation occupying the east of the Jordan River, between the torrent valleys of Arnon and Jabbok, in ...
,
Edom
Edom (; Edomite: ; he, אֱדוֹם , lit.: "red"; Akkadian: , ; Ancient Egyptian: ) was an ancient kingdom in Transjordan, located between Moab to the northeast, the Arabah to the west, and the Arabian Desert to the south and east.N ...
,
Israel
Israel (; he, יִשְׂרָאֵל, ; ar, إِسْرَائِيل, ), officially the State of Israel ( he, מְדִינַת יִשְׂרָאֵל, label=none, translit=Medīnat Yīsrāʾēl; ), is a country in Western Asia. It is situated ...
, and
Moab. After the
Neo-Babylonian Empire
The Neo-Babylonian Empire or Second Babylonian Empire, historically known as the Chaldean Empire, was the last polity ruled by monarchs native to Mesopotamia. Beginning with the coronation of Nabopolassar as the List of kings of Babylon, King of B ...
destroyed the Canaanite kingdoms of
Ammon
Ammon ( Ammonite: 𐤏𐤌𐤍 ''ʻAmān''; he, עַמּוֹן ''ʻAmmōn''; ar, عمّون, ʻAmmūn) was an ancient Semitic-speaking nation occupying the east of the Jordan River, between the torrent valleys of Arnon and Jabbok, in ...
,
Judah, and
Moab, followed by the
Persian
Persian may refer to:
* People and things from Iran, historically called ''Persia'' in the English language
** Persians, the majority ethnic group in Iran, not to be conflated with the Iranic peoples
** Persian language, an Iranian language of the ...
Achaemenid
The Achaemenid Empire or Achaemenian Empire (; peo, wikt:𐎧𐏁𐏂𐎶, 𐎧𐏁𐏂, , ), also called the First Persian Empire, was an History of Iran#Classical antiquity, ancient Iranian empire founded by Cyrus the Great in 550 BC. Bas ...
's annexation of Babylonia, the Qedarites expanded westwards into the eastern and southern Levant until their territory included the northern Sinai and they controlled the desert region which bordered
Palestine and the eastern border of
Egypt
Egypt ( ar, مصر , ), officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, is a transcontinental country spanning the northeast corner of Africa and southwest corner of Asia via a land bridge formed by the Sinai Peninsula. It is bordered by the Mediter ...
and of the
Nile Delta.
Identitfication
The Qedarites were an Arab tribal confederation who were closely related to the other ancient Arab populations of North Arabia and the Syrian Desert. Under the reigns of the
Neo-Assyrian
The Neo-Assyrian Empire was the fourth and penultimate stage of ancient Assyrian history and the final and greatest phase of Assyria as an independent state. Beginning with the accession of Adad-nirari II in 911 BC, the Neo-Assyrian Empire grew t ...
kings
Aššur-aḫa-iddina and
Aššur-bāni-apli, Assyrian records referred to the Qedarites as being almost synonymous with the Arabs as a whole.
Although the Assyriologists
Friedrich Delitzsch
Friedrich Delitzsch (; 3 September 1850 – 19 December 1922) was a German Assyriologist. He was the son of Lutheran theologian Franz Delitzsch (1813–1890).
Born in Erlangen, he studied in Leipzig and Berlin, gaining his habilitation in 1874 as ...
,
R.C. Thompson and Julius Lewy had identified the Qedarite tribe of the Šumuʾilu with the Biblical
(Ishmaelites), and considered the Akkadian name as derivative of , the scholar Israel Ephʿal has criticised this identification on several grounds:
* Ephʿal's criticism of the identification on historical grounds rests on three arguments:
** the name only appears in Biblical sources relating to the period before the reign of the reign of the
Israelite
The Israelites (; , , ) were a group of Semitic-speaking tribes in the ancient Near East who, during the Iron Age, inhabited a part of Canaan.
The earliest recorded evidence of a people by the name of Israel appears in the Merneptah Stele o ...
king
David
David (; , "beloved one") (traditional spelling), , ''Dāwūd''; grc-koi, Δαυΐδ, Dauíd; la, Davidus, David; gez , ዳዊት, ''Dawit''; xcl, Դաւիթ, ''Dawitʿ''; cu, Давíдъ, ''Davidŭ''; possibly meaning "beloved one". w ...
;
** the name "Arabs" starts appearing for the first time in Mesopotamian sources the middle of the 9th century BC;
** neither the Assyrian nor the Biblical sources ever identify or even connect the names "Arabs" and .
* Ephʿal's criticism of the identification on phonetic grounds rests on two arguments:
** the name is already attested in early Akkadian under the forms , and and in later Akkadian under the forms and ;
** likewise, the Hebrew form of Akkadian would have been () or () rather than ().
History
Neo-Assyrian period
![Assyrian-Arabian-Battle](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f4/Assyrian-Arabian-Battle.jpg)
During the 9th century BC, the Qedarite confederation was centred around the region of the
Wādī Sirḥān, and it had commercial interests in the trade and border routes of the Syrian desert. To the west, the borderlands of the Qedarites bordered on the powerful kingdoms of
Damascus
)), is an adjective which means "spacious".
, motto =
, image_flag = Flag of Damascus.svg
, image_seal = Emblem of Damascus.svg
, seal_type = Seal
, map_caption =
, ...
and
Israel
Israel (; he, יִשְׂרָאֵל, ; ar, إِسْرَائِيل, ), officially the State of Israel ( he, מְדִינַת יִשְׂרָאֵל, label=none, translit=Medīnat Yīsrāʾēl; ), is a country in Western Asia. It is situated ...
in the west, although the Qedarites themselves were independent of Damascene hegemony. The earliest known activities of the Qedarites date from between 850 and 800 BC, when their king
Gindibuʾ allied with his powerful neighbours, the kings
Hadadezer
Hadadezer (; " he god Hadad is help"); also known as Adad-Idri ( akk, 𒀭𒅎𒀉𒊑, dIM-id-ri), and possibly the same as Bar-Hadad II ( Aram.) or Ben-Hadad II ( Heb.), was the king of Aram Damascus between 865 and 842 BC.
The Hebrew Bible s ...
of Aram-Damascus and
ʾAḥʾāb of Israel, against the rising
Neo-Assyrian Empire
The Neo-Assyrian Empire was the fourth and penultimate stage of ancient Assyrian history and the final and greatest phase of Assyria as an independent state. Beginning with the accession of Adad-nirari II in 911 BC, the Neo-Assyrian Empire grew t ...
. Although Gindibuʾ's kingdom was not in danger of being attacked by the Assyrians, the Qedarite rulers participated in the trade which passed through Damascus and
Tyre, and Damascus and Israel controlled crucial parts of the trade routes as well as the pastures and water sources which were of vital importance to the nomadic Qedarites, especially in drought periods. This meant that the rise of Assyrian power in the 9th century BCE put the desert and border routes where Gindibuʾ had economic interests under threat of Assyrian disruptions, fearing which Gindibuʾ led 1000
camelry
Camel cavalry, or camelry (french: méharistes, ), is a generic designation for armed forces using camels as a means of transportation. Sometimes warriors or soldiers of this type also fought from camel-back with spears, bows or rifles.
Camel ca ...
troops at the battle of
Battle of Qarqar
The Battle of Qarqar (or Ḳarḳar) was fought in 853 BC when the army of the Neo-Assyrian Empire led by Emperor Shalmaneser III encountered an allied army of eleven kings at Qarqar led by Hadadezer, called in Assyrian ''Adad-idir'' and possi ...
in 853 BCE on the side of the alliance led by Aram-Damascus and Israel against
Šulmānu-ašarēdu III of Assyria.
Before the ascent of Assyrian hegemony, the Qedarite confederation was a polity of significant importance in the region of the Syrian Desert, and, beginning in the 8th and lasting until the 5th or 4th centuries BCE, the Qedarites were the hegemons among the Syrian Desert nomads, dominating the northwestern section of the Arabian peninsula in alliance with the local rulers of the kingdom of
Dedan.
The alliance of Qarqar soon fell apart after Hadadezer of Damascus died and was succeeded by his son
Ḥazaʾēl, who declared war on Israel and killed its king
Yehōrām and the Judahite king
ʾAḥazyāhū near
Ramoth-Gilead
Ramoth-Gilead ( he, רָמֹת גִּלְעָד, meaning "Heights of Gilead"), was a Levitical city and city of refuge east of the Jordan River in the Hebrew Bible, also called "Ramoth in Gilead" (; ; ) or "Ramoth Galaad" in the Douay–Rheims Bi ...
in 842 BC; the consequent ascension of
Yēhūʾ to the Israelite throne did not end the hostilities between Damascus and Israel. Despite this significant change, the Qedarites continued enjoying good relations with Damascus.
Šulmānu-ašarēdu III later campaigned to
Damascus
)), is an adjective which means "spacious".
, motto =
, image_flag = Flag of Damascus.svg
, image_seal = Emblem of Damascus.svg
, seal_type = Seal
, map_caption =
, ...
and Mount
Ḥawrān in 841 BCE, but his inscriptions mentioned neither the Qedarite kingdom nor Gindibuʾ himself or any successor of his. The Qedarites were not mentioned either in the list of rulers, including those of distant places such as
Philistia
Philistia (; Koine Greek (LXX): Γῆ τῶν Φυλιστιείμ, romanized: ''gê tôn Phulistieìm''), also known as the Philistine Pentapolis, was a confederation of cities in the Southwest Levant, which included the cities of Ashdod, Ashk ...
,
Edom
Edom (; Edomite: ; he, אֱדוֹם , lit.: "red"; Akkadian: , ; Ancient Egyptian: ) was an ancient kingdom in Transjordan, located between Moab to the northeast, the Arabah to the west, and the Arabian Desert to the south and east.N ...
, and
Israel
Israel (; he, יִשְׂרָאֵל, ; ar, إِسْرَائِيل, ), officially the State of Israel ( he, מְדִינַת יִשְׂרָאֵל, label=none, translit=Medīnat Yīsrāʾēl; ), is a country in Western Asia. It is situated ...
, who paid tribute to
Adad-nirari III
Adad-nirari III (also Adad-narari) was a King of Assyria from 811 to 783 BC. Note that this assumes that the longer version of the Assyrian Eponym List, which has an additional eponym for Adad-nirari III, is the correct one. For the shorter eponym ...
after the latter's defeat of
Bar-Hadad III of Damascus in 796 BCE. This reason for absence the Assyrian records is that the kingdom of Gindibuʾ was far from the campaign routes of the Assyrians during the later 9th century BCE.
Following the rise in the Armenian highlands of the form of the kingdom of
Urartu
Urartu (; Assyrian: ',Eberhard Schrader, ''The Cuneiform inscriptions and the Old Testament'' (1885), p. 65. Babylonian: ''Urashtu'', he, אֲרָרָט ''Ararat'') is a geographical region and Iron Age kingdom also known as the Kingdom of Va ...
, which, just like Assyria, was interested in the rich states of northern
Syria
Syria ( ar, سُورِيَا or سُورِيَة, translit=Sūriyā), officially the Syrian Arab Republic ( ar, الجمهورية العربية السورية, al-Jumhūrīyah al-ʻArabīyah as-Sūrīyah), is a Western Asian country loc ...
, in 743 BC the Assyrian king
Tukultī-apil-Ešarra III started a series of campaigns in Syria which would result in this region's absorption into the Neo-Assyrian Empire, and whose first phase was the defeat in that very year of an alliance consisting of Urartu and the Aramaean states of
Melid
Melid, also known as Arslantepe, was an ancient city on the Tohma River, a tributary of the upper Euphrates rising in the Taurus Mountains. It has been identified with the modern archaeological site of Arslantepe near Malatya, Turkey.
It was ...
,
Gurgum
Gurgum was a Neo-Hittite state in Anatolia, known from the 10th to the 7th century BC. Its name is given as Gurgum in Assyrian sources, while its native name seems to have been Kurkuma for the reason that the capital of Gurgum— Marqas in Assyria ...
,
Kummuḫ,
Bēt-Gūš, and
ʿUmqi, after which he besieged
Arpad, the capital of Bēt-Gūš, which was Urartu's principal ally, for two years before capturing it. While Tukultī-apil-Ešarra III was campaigning against Urartu in 739 BC, the Levantine states formed a new alliance, headed the king
ʿAzriyau of
Ḥamat, and including various Phoenician cities ranging from
Arqa
Arqa ( ar, عرقا; akk, 𒅕𒋡𒋫, translit=Irqata) is a Lebanese village near Miniara in Akkar Governorate, Lebanon, 22 km northeast of Tripoli, near the coast.
The town was a notable city-state during the Iron Age. The city of ' ...
to
Ṣumur and multiple Aramaean states from
Śamʾal in the north to Ḥamat in the south, which was defeated by Tukultī-apil-Ešarra III in 738 BC.
After this triumph of Assyrian hegemony in the western Fertile Crescent, the rulers of Damascus, Tyre and Israel accepted Assyrian overlordship and paid tribute to Tukultī-apil-Ešarra III. Since the Qedarite rulers participated in the trade which passed through Damascus and Tyre, they sought to preserve the Arabian commercial activities and the revenues that they acquired from these, and consequently the Qedarite queen
Zabibe
Zabibe (also transliterated Zabibi, Zabiba, Zabibah; akk, 𒍝𒁉𒁉𒂊 ''Zabibê'') was a queen of Qedar who reigned for five years between 738 and 733 BC. She was a vassal of Tiglath-Pileser III, king of Assyria, and is mentioned in the An ...
joined the kings
Raḍyān of Damascus,
Menaḥēm of Israel,
Ḥirōm II of Tyre, as well as other various rulers from southern Anatolia, Syria and Phoenicia in acknowledging Assyrian hegemony and paying tribute to Tukultī-apil-Ešarra III in 738 BC. The tribute of Zabibe consisted of camels, but did not include frankincense or perfumes as the Qedarites would later offer the Assyrians because they had not yet become participants in the trade of aromatics produced in South Arabia. Tukultī-apil-Ešarra III's inscriptions recording this tribute payment constitutes the first explicit mention of the Qedarites by name.
During the 8th century itself, the North Arabian region acquired increased economic importance, with the northern
Ḥijāz becoming a transit zone for the trade of goods imported from
ʿAsīr and from Africa across the Red Sea. This, in turn, led to increasing interest to control this region by the Assyrians.
Once Tukultī-apil-Ešarra III had returned to Assyria, the king Raḍyān of Damascus organised an anti-Assyrian alliance in Syria which was supported by
Peqaḥ of Israel and Ḥirōm II of Tyre, and which started a revolt against Assyrian hegemony by the cities on the coast of the Levant. Tukultī-apil-Ešarra III retaliated by campaigning in 734 BC against the southern Levantine coast until the
Brook of Egypt and successfully managed to establish control over the commercial activities between the
Phoenicia
Phoenicia () was an ancient thalassocratic civilization originating in the Levant region of the eastern Mediterranean, primarily located in modern Lebanon. The territory of the Phoenician city-states extended and shrank throughout their histor ...
ns, the Egyptians and the
Philistines
The Philistines ( he, פְּלִשְׁתִּים, Pəlīštīm; Koine Greek (LXX): Φυλιστιείμ, romanized: ''Phulistieím'') were an ancient people who lived on the south coast of Canaan from the 12th century BC until 604 BC, when ...
. Among the many rulers in the western Fertile Crescent who pledged allegiance to Tukultī-apil-Ešarra III as result of this campaign in
Palestine was the Qedarite queen
Šamsi.
Tukultī-apil-Ešarra III's campaign had not only disrupted the interests of Tyre, Damascus, Israel and the Qedarites but also resulted in the formation of a pro-Assyrian alliance consisting of
Arwad,
ʾAšqalōna and Gaza, soon joined by Judah, Ammon, Moab, and Edom, who became players in Syrian politics with the goal of countering the anti-Assyrian alliance led by Damascus, Israel, Qedar and Tyre. However, the alliance headed by Damascus continued its anti-Assyrian activities, which caused the pro-Assyrian alliance to disintegrate, with ʾAšqalōna and Edom soon defecting to the pro-Assyrian side. And since the Qedarites were still participating in the trade networks passing through Damascus and Israel, who themselves controlled important parts of the Arabian commercial route as well as pasture and water sources on which the Qedarites depended, especially during periods of drought, Šamsi followed Raḍyān, Peqaḥ, and Ḥirōm II in rebelling against Assyrian authority in 733 BC.
During the reign of Tukultī-apil-Ešarra III itself, the Qedarites invaded
Moab and killed the inhabitants of its capital city of
Qir-Mōʾāb.
When Judah remained loyal to Assyria, Raḍyān and Peqaḥ attacked it, starting the
Syro-Ephraimite War
The Syro-Ephraimite War took place in the 8th century BC, when the Neo-Assyrian Empire was a great regional power.
The tributary nations of Aram-Damascus (often called Aram) and the Kingdom of Israel (often called Ephraim because of the main tr ...
, in retaliation of which Tukultī-apil-Ešarra III in turn attacked Damascus in 733 and 732 BC. As part of his intervention in Syria, Tukultī-apil-Ešarra III also attacked and defeated the Qedarites in the region of Mount Saqurri (the
Jabal ad-Durūz), forcing Šamsi to flee to the Wādī Sirḥān, and taking significant spoils from them, including spices, which are first mentioned in relation with the Qedarites in Tukultī-apil-Ešarra III's records relating to this campaign, and cultic utensils like the resting places of the Qedarite gods as well as their goddess's sceptres. While Peqaḥ was assassinated and Raḍyān would be executed and his kingdom annexed by the Assyrians, Tukultī-apil-Ešarra III allowed Šamsi to retain her position as the ruler of the Qedarites and appointed an Arab as (overseer for the count of Assyria) in Qedar to prevent her from providing aid to Damascus during the campaign in which the Assyrians annexed its territory, and to manage the Qedarites' commercial activities. This mild treatment of Šamsi was due to the fact that the Qedarites by then had become wealthier and more powerful, and the Assyrians were interested in products, such as camels, cattle and spices which they could obtain from the Qedarites, as well as in preserving the administrative and social structures of the peoples of the Assyrian border regions who played an important role in international commerce and thus ensured the stability of the Neo-Assyrian Empire's economy. The arrangement between the Assyrians and the Qedarites established at the end of Tukultī-apil-Ešarra III's Palestinian campaign satisfied both parties enough that Šamsi remained loyal to Assyria and later paid Tukultī-apil-Ešarra III a tribte of 125 white camels. Among the other Arabian populations around the southern Levant who offered tribute to Tukultī-apil-Ešarra III after his Palestinian campaign were the
Masʾaya. the
Tayma
Tayma (Taymanitic: , vocalized as: ; ar, تيماء, translit=Taymāʾ) or Tema Teman/Tyeman (Habakkuk 3:3) is a large oasis with a long history of settlement, located in northwestern Saudi Arabia at the point where the trade route between Me ...
nites, Sabaean traders established in the Ḥijāz, the
Ḫayapaya, the
Badanaya, the
Hatiaya, and the
Idibaʾilaya.
![NabateensRoutes](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/22/NabateensRoutes.png)
The Assyrian annexation of the kingdoms of Damascus and later of Israel would allow the Arabs, including the Qedarites, to expand into the pastures within the settled areas of these states' former territories, which improved their position in the Arabian commercial activities. The Assyrians would allow these nomad groups to graze their camels in the settled areas and integrate them into their control structure of the border regions of Palestine and Syria, which consisted of a network of sentry stations, check posts and fortresses at key positions, and administrative and governmental centres in the cities, and which would ensure that these Arabs would remain loyal to the Assyrians and would prevent the encroachment of other Arab nomads on the settled areas; thus, several letters to Tukultī-apil-Ešarra III by two Assyrian officials stationed in the Levant, respectively named Addu-ḫati and Bēl-liqbi, mention the participation of Arabs in several caravanserais in the region; moreover, one Arab chief from Tukultī-apil-Ešarra III's time, named Badiʾilu, was given a grazing permit and appointed as an official of the Assyrian administration as part of this policy. This in turn allowed the Arabs integrated into the Assyrian administration to further expand into the Levantine settled regions around Damascus and the Anti-Lebanon until the Valley of Lebanon.
In 729 BC, Tukultī-apil-Ešarra III proclaimed himself King of Babylon, thus marking the renewal of the importance of southern Mesopotamia and starting the resurgence of Babylon. This revival was itself related to the formation of new commercial links between Babylonia and the Persian Gulf and its surrounding regions, which would eventually lead to Aramaeans as well as Arabs moving into the region.
After the annexation of the kingdom of Israel to the Neo-Assyrian Empire by the Assyrian king
Šarru-kīn II in , the Assyrians transferred some Arabs to the territory of the former kingdom as well as to the southern border regions of Palestine, and some sedentary Qedarites might have been present among the Arabs resettled by the Assyrians as colonists in the hill country around
Samaria
Samaria (; he, שֹׁמְרוֹן, translit=Šōmrōn, ar, السامرة, translit=as-Sāmirah) is the historic and biblical name used for the central region of Palestine, bordered by Judea to the south and Galilee to the north. The first- ...
to perform economic activities as part of the Assyrian diversion of some of the Arab trade to Tyre through Samaria so as to increase both Assyrian control over it and imperial revenue from this commercial traffic. These Arab colonists introduced the cult of the god
ʾAšīmaʾ in the region of Samaria.
Due to the revival of Babylonia which had started under Tukultī-apil-Ešarra III, Arab nomads had also migrated over the course of the middle 8th century BC to the east into Babylonia, where they settled down and either founded their own settlements or became the majority population in pre-existing local settlements there. These Arabs appear to have moved into Babylonia from the Wādī Sirḥān region, passing through the Jawf depression and along the road near the city of Babylon which went from Yatrib to
Borsippa
Borsippa ( Sumerian: BAD.SI.(A).AB.BAKI; Akkadian: ''Barsip'' and ''Til-Barsip'')The Cambridge Ancient History: Prolegomena & Prehistory': Vol. 1, Part 1. Accessed 15 Dec 2010. or Birs Nimrud (having been identified with Nimrod) is an archeologi ...
, before finally settling into
Bīt-Dakkūri and
Bīt-Amukani, but not
Bīt-Yakīn or the region of the Persian Gulf. These Babylonian Arabs might have been settled in Mesopotamia by the Assyrian kings themselves, especially by Šarru-kīn II and his son and successor Sîn-ahhī-erība, and some of these might have in turn been resettled in
Media
Media may refer to:
Communication
* Media (communication), tools used to deliver information or data
** Advertising media, various media, content, buying and placement for advertising
** Broadcast media, communications delivered over mass e ...
as camel tamers by the Assyrians after they had introduced the use of the
dromedary
The dromedary (''Camelus dromedarius'' or ;), also known as the dromedary camel, Arabian camel, or one-humped camel, is a large even-toed ungulate, of the genus ''Camelus'', with one hump on its back.
It is the tallest of the three species of ...
in this region.
In 716 BC, the Qedarite queen Šamsi joined an Egyptian local kinglet of the Nile Delta and the
Yiṯaʿʾamar Watar I of
Sabaʾ
The Sabaeans or Sabeans ( Sabaean:, ; ar, ٱلسَّبَئِيُّوْن, ''as-Sabaʾiyyūn''; he, סְבָאִים, Səḇāʾīm) were an ancient group of South Arabians. They spoke the Sabaean language, one of the Old South Arabian langua ...
in offering lavish presents consisting of gold, precious stones, ivory, willow seeds, aromatics, horses, and camels to the Assyrian king Šarru-kīn II to normalise relations with Assyria and to preserve and expand their commercial relations with the economic and structures of the newly established western borderlands of the Neo-Assyrian Empire following the Assyrian annexation of Damascus and Israel. Assyrian records referred to these three rulers as the "kings of the seashore and the desert," reflecting their influence in the trade networks which spanned North Arabia, the Syrian desert, and the northern part of the Sinai.
In the late 8th century BC, shortly before 700 BC, the domestication of the camels had made it possible for the Arabs populations to travel further south the Arabian Peninsula, thus competing with the regional maritime trade routes. During the 7th century BC, this ability to travel so far to the south led to the establishment of the import of frankincense from the
kingdom of Sabaʾ, thus forming the
incense trade route
The Incense Trade Route was an ancient network of major land and sea trading routes linking the Mediterranean world with eastern and southern sources of incense, spices and other luxury goods, stretching from Mediterranean ports across the Levan ...
, and further increasing the commercial importance of the northern Ḥijāz and of Palestine and Syria and the adjoining regions. And, under Šarru-kīn II, the Arabs within Syria, who may or may not have included Qedarites, were continuing to participate in the caravan traffic in close cooperation with the Assyrian authorities, especially in the area of the
Ḥomṣ plain, which itself extended eastwards towards Palmyra, and where these Arabs were allowed to graze their camels. As part of this collaboration, the Assyrian official Bēl-liqbi, who was stationed in
Ṣupite, named wrote a letter to Šarru-kīn II demanding the permission to transform an old caravanserai which had since become an archers' camp back into a caravanserai. During this period, the Assyrians imposed prohibition on selling iron, which was important for Assyrian armament, to the Arabs to prevent them from developing more efficient weaponry, and instead permitted only copper to be allowed to be sold to them. Some Arabs, of unclear relation with both those which were then moving into Babylonia and the Qedarites, were at this time also living in
Upper Mesopotamia
Upper Mesopotamia is the name used for the uplands and great outwash plain of northwestern Iraq, northeastern Syria and southeastern Turkey, in the northern Middle East. Since the early Muslim conquests of the mid-7th century, the region has been ...
, where they might have been settled by Šarru-kīn II and Sîn-ahhī-erība, and where their camels used to graze between
Aššur
Aššur (; Sumerian: AN.ŠAR2KI, Assyrian cuneiform: ''Aš-šurKI'', "City of God Aššur"; syr, ܐܫܘܪ ''Āšūr''; Old Persian ''Aθur'', fa, آشور: ''Āšūr''; he, אַשּׁוּר, ', ar, اشور), also known as Ashur and Qal ...
and
Ḫindanu, under the authority of the governor of
Kalḫu. Due to inadequate rainfall, the governor of Kalḫu lost control of these Upper Mesopotamian Arabs, who in 716 BC engaged in raids in the regions around
Suḫu and Ḫindanu and even further south-east till
Sippar
Sippar ( Sumerian: , Zimbir) was an ancient Near Eastern Sumerian and later Babylonian city on the east bank of the Euphrates river. Its '' tell'' is located at the site of modern Tell Abu Habbah near Yusufiyah in Iraq's Baghdad Governorate, som ...
, possibly with the support of Assyrian officials.
The increased importance of Babylonia during this period was reflected by several anti-Assyrian revolts in Babylonia led by
Marduk-apla-iddina II
Marduk-apla-iddina II (Akkadian: ; in the Bible Merodach-Baladan, also called Marduk-Baladan, Baladan and Berodach-Baladan, lit. ''Marduk has given me an heir'') was a Chaldean leader from the Bit-Yakin tribe, originally established in the territo ...
and supported by
Elam
Elam (; Linear Elamite: ''hatamti''; Cuneiform Elamite: ; Sumerian: ; Akkadian: ; he, עֵילָם ''ʿēlām''; peo, 𐎢𐎺𐎩 ''hūja'') was an ancient civilization centered in the far west and southwest of modern-day Iran, stretc ...
, and when he recaptured Babylon and revolted against the Assyrians again in 703 BC with the support of the Elamites, the Qedarites supported him, with this policy of theirs being motivated by the trade relations which existed between Qedar and Babylon. One of the Arab supporters of Marduk-apla-iddina II, a chieftain by the name of Bašqanu, was captured by the Assyrian king
Sîn-ahhī-erība when he suppressed the Babylonian revolt that same year. This Bašqanu was the brother of an Arab queen named
Yaṯiʿe, who appears to have been a Qedarite queen and a successor of Šamsi; the Qedarites had thus adopted the policy of supporting Assyria's enemy once Syria was firmly under Assyrian control after the previous one and half a century of trying to remain on good terms with the powers governing Syria, including Assyria.
![Territorial organization of the Assyrian Empire in times of Ashurbanipal](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/af/Territorial_organization_of_the_Assyrian_Empire_in_times_of_Ashurbanipal.svg)
During his repression of the Babylonian revolt in 702 BC, Sîn-ahhī-erība also attacked several Arab walled towns surrounded by unwalled villages in Babylonia, although it is unclear what relation existed between these Arabs and the Qedarites despite some of these settlements having names including Arabic components which would later be borne by several Qedarite kings, such as Dūr-Uait (from Arabic ) and Dūr-Birdada in
Bīt-Amukani and Dūr-Abiyataʾ (from Arabic ) in Bīt-Dakkūri; the name of one of these settlements, Qidrina, located in the territory of
Bīt-Dakkūri, suggests that these Arab incomers might have been connected with the Qedarites, and the Arab population in Babylonia remained in close contact with the Qedarites in the desert, who by this time had expanded eastwards so that they adjoined the western border of Babylonia.
Through a series of campaigns conducted from 703 to 700 BC, Sîn-ahhī-erība was able to establish control over the settled parts of Babylonia, as well as over the nomads of the desert to the immediate west of it, anaccording to his annals, members of the
Taymanites and of the Qedarite sub-group of the Šumuʾilu, the latter of whom lived in the eastern Syrian Desert bordering on Babylonia, went to offer him tribute in the late 690s at the Assyrian capital of
Nineveh, where they had to pass through a then recently built gate of the city called the (Desert Gate).
Although Sîn-ahhī-erība had regained control of Babylon in 703 BC, the Babylonians revolted against Assyrian rule with Elamite help yet again in 694 BC, and the Qedarites supported them again. As part of Sîn-ahhī-erība's repression of this new rebellion, which would end with the
destruction of the city of Babylon itself in 689 BC, in 691 BC he conducted a campaign against the Qedarites, who by then had grown enough powerful to pose a danger to Assyrian interests. At this time, the Qedarites were ruled by Yaṯiʿe's successor, the queen
Telhunu, who was referrred to in the Assyrian records as the (, cognate with
Old South Arabian
Old South Arabian (or Ṣayhadic or Yemenite) is a group of four closely related extinct languages spoken in the far southern portion of the Arabian Peninsula. They were written in the Ancient South Arabian script.
There were a number of othe ...
, ) of a local goddess, and her husband, the king Ḥazaʾil, and who were attacked by the Assyrians while encamped in an oasis in the western borderlands of Babylonia; Telhunu, who had come with the nomads to invade the settled areas attacked by the Qedarites, stayed behind in a camp behind the frontlines to remain out of danger should the Qedarite forces be defeated. Telhunu and Ḥazaʾil fled deep into the desert, to the Qedarite capital of Adumattu, where the Assyrians overtook and captured Telhunu and her daughter Tabȗa, and took them as hostages to Assyria along with the idols of the Qedarites' gods, and continued pursuing the Qedarites until
Kapanu near the eastern border of the Canaanite kingdom of Ammon, following which Ḥazaʾil surrendered to Sîn-ahhī-erība and paid him tribute. The rich booty captured by the Assyrians at Adumattu included camels as well as luxuries which the Qedarite rulers had acquired from the Arabian trade routes, such as spices, precious stones, and gold.
Telhunu was taken to the Assyrian capital of Nineveh in 689 or 698 BC, where Sîn-ahhī-erība raised her daughter Tabȗa, following the Assyrian practice of controlling vassal populations by raising their rulers at the Assyrian court, while Ḥazaʾil had retained his position, but as an Assyrian vassal, and he sent Sîn-ahhī-erība continuous tribute until the latter's death. Sîn-ahhī-erība also retained the idols of the Arabian gods as a way to ensure that they would remain loyal to Assyrian power, and as a punishment against them in accordance to his heavy handed policy with respect to Babylonia and its surrounding regions. From this period onwards, the Assyrians would attempt to control the North Arabian populations through vassals, although these vassals would themselves often rebel against the Neo-Assyrian Empire.
When Sîn-ahhī-erība's son
Aššur-aḫa-iddina succeeded him in 681 BC, Ḥazaʾil went to Nineveh to request from him that Tabȗa and the idols of the Qedarite gods be returned to him. Aššur-aḫa-iddina, after having had his own name as we as "the might of Aššur" inscribed on the idols, acquiesced to Ḥazaʾil's demand in exchange of an additional tribute of 65 camels, with this light tribute being motivated by Aššur-aḫa-iddina's desire to maintain Ḥazaʾil's loyalty. This was motivated by Aššur-aḫa-iddina's view that the desert populations were required to maintain control of Babylonia, hence why he adopted the same conciliatory attitude towards the Arabs that he had towards Babylonia itself, and Ḥazaʾil in consequence ruled over the Qedarites as an Assyrian vassal, and Aššur-aḫa-iddina soon allowed Tabȗa to return to Adumattu and appointed her as queen of the Qedarites at some point before 678 or 677 BC. Around the same time, Ḥazaʾil died and was succeeded as king by his son Yawṯiʿ ben Ḥazaʾil with the approval of Aššur-aḫa-iddina, who demanded from him a heavier tribute consisting of 10 minas of gold, 1000 gems, 50 camels, and 1000 spice bags. Yawṯiʿ agreed to these conditions due to his dependence on Assyria and to consolidate his precarious position of rulership.
Ḥazaʾil and his son Yawṯiʿ might have been seen as Assyrian agents by the Qedarites, and, some ome time between 676 and 673 BC, one Wahb united the Arab tribes in a revolt against Yawṯaʿ. The Assyrians intervened by suppressing Wahb's rebellion and capturing him and his people and deporting them to Nineveh to be punished as enemies of the king of Assyria.
When the Assyrians invaded Egypt in 671 BC, Yawṯiʿ was one of the Arab kings summoned by Aššur-aḫa-iddina to provide water supplies to his army during the crossing of the desert separating southern Palestine from Egypt. Yawṯiʿ however soon took advantage of Aššur-aḫa-iddina being preoccupied with his operations in Egypt to rebel against Assyria, likely in reaction to the hefty tribute required from him. The Assyrian army intervened against Yawṯiʿ and defeated him, and captured the idols of the Qedarites, including that of their goddess al-Lat (locally referred to as
), while Yawṯiʿ himself fled, leaving the Qedarites king-less for the rest of Aššur-aḫa-iddina's rule.
After Aššur-aḫa-iddina died and was succeeded as king of Assyria by his son
Aššur-bāni-apli in 669 BC, Yawṯiʿ returned, and requested from the Assyrian king the return of the idol of ʿAṯtar-Šamāyīn, which Aššur-bāni-apli granted after Yawṯiʿ swore his allegiance to him.
Yawṯiʿ ben Ḥazaʾil however soon led the Qedarites and the other Arab peoples into rebelling against the Assyrians, although the Nabataean king Nadnu refused when approached by join the revolt by Yawṯaʿ, who, along with the king of another sub-group of Qedarites, ʿAmmu-laddin, attacked the western regions of the Neo-Assyrian Empire in Transjordan and southern Syria, while Yawṯaʿ's wife Aṭiya, who had come with the nomads to invade the settled areas attacked by the Qedarites, stayed behind in a camp behind the frontlines to remain out of danger should the Qedarite forces be defeated. The Assyrian troops stationed in the region, from
Ṣupite to
Edom
Edom (; Edomite: ; he, אֱדוֹם , lit.: "red"; Akkadian: , ; Ancient Egyptian: ) was an ancient kingdom in Transjordan, located between Moab to the northeast, the Arabah to the west, and the Arabian Desert to the south and east.N ...
, and the armies of the local Assyrian vassal kings, especially of
Moab, repelled the Arab attacks, with ʿAmmu-laddin being defeated and captured by the Moabite king
Kamasḥalta. Kamasḥalta and the Assyrian army then carried out counter-attacks against the Arab camps, burning down their tents, capturing ʿAmmu-laddin and Aṭiya, and taking so many people, donkeys, camels, sheep, and goats, that it caused a drastic drop in the prices of slaves and camels in Assyria. The Qedarites were so severely defeated and Assyrian influence had increased so much in the desert that Yawṯiʿ himself was unable returning to his tribe to resume his rule, and he was instead forced to flee to the territory of the
Nabataeans
The Nabataeans or Nabateans (; Nabataean Aramaic: , , vocalized as ; Arabic language, Arabic: , , singular , ; compare grc, Ναβαταῖος, translit=Nabataîos; la, Nabataeus) were an ancient Arab people who inhabited northern Arabian Pe ...
, whose king Nadnu refused to grant him asylum and instead swore allegiance to the Assyrians and handed over Yawṯiʿ to Aššur-bāni-apli, who punished Yawṯiʿ by imprisoning him in a cage.
![Seal of Shamash-shum-ukin BM 77611](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/9a/Seal_of_Shamash-shum-ukin_BM_77611.jpg)
One Abyaṯiʿ ben Teʾri, who appears to have been unrelated to Yawṯaʿ, became king of the Qedarites with Assyrian approval after going to Nineveh to swear his allegiance to Aššur-bāni-apli and pledge to pay him tribute.
When Aššur-aḫa-iddina's elder son,
Šamaš-šuma-ukin, who had succeeded him as king of Babylon, rebelled against his brother Aššur-bāni-apli in 652 BC, Abyaṯiʿ supported the revolt; this Qedarite policy towards the Assyrians was dictated by their interests in the trade routes in the region, which were threatened by Assyrian encroachment. Abyaṯiʿ, along with his brother Ayammu, as well as Yawṯaʿ's cousin, the king Yuhayṯiʿ ben Birdāda of the Šumuʾilu, led a contingent of Arab warriors to Babylon, where they arrived shortly before Aššur-bāni-apli besieged the city. The Qedarite troops were defeated by the Assyrian army and they retreated into Babylon, where they became trapped once the siege had started. Shortly before the Assyrians stormed Babylon and destroyed the city, the Arabs tried to break out of the city, but they were defeated again by the Assyrians.
While the Arab intervention in Babylonia in support of Šamaš-šuma-ukin was happening, Yawṯaʿ, who was still a prisoner in Assyria, went to Nineveh to attempt to request Aššur-bāni-apli to restore him as king of the Qedarites. Aššur-bāni-apli however saw Yawṯiʿ as incapable of regaining his leadership over the Qedarites and instead punished him for his previous disloyalty.
Following the complete suppression of the Babylonian revolt in 648 BC, while the Assyrians were busy until 646 BC conducting operations against the Elamite kings who had supported Šamaš-šuma-ukin, the southern Phoenician cities and the kingdom of
Judah seized the opportunity and rebelled against Assyrian authority. Taking advantage of this situation, the Qedarites, led by Abyaṯiʿ, Ayammu, and Yuhayṯiʿ ben Birdāda, allied with the Nabataeans led by Nadnu, conducted raids against the western borderlands of the Neo-Assyrian Empire ranging from the
Jabal al-Bišrī to the environs of the city of
Damascus
)), is an adjective which means "spacious".
, motto =
, image_flag = Flag of Damascus.svg
, image_seal = Emblem of Damascus.svg
, seal_type = Seal
, map_caption =
, ...
, and were able to intensify their pressure on the areas of the Middle Euphrates and of Palmyrena. The Assyrian general
Nabȗ-šum-lišir, who served in the region of the south-west border of Babylonia at the time of Šamaš-šuma-ukin's rebellion, is known to have led an attack against the Qedarites and to have defeated them around this time.
Once the Assyrian war in Elam was complete, in 645 BC Aššur-bāni-apli attacked the Qedarites and the Nabataeans during a three-months campaign with the goal of subjugating the Arabs permanently. The Assyrian armies first attacked from
Ḫadattā, passing through the desert between
Laribda,
Ḫuraruna and
Yarki before reaching
Azalla after defeating the joint forces of the Qedarites, Nabataeans, and another tribe, the Isammeʾ, in the region between Yarki and Azalla; the Assyrians then proceeded from Azalla to
Quraṣiti, where they attacked Yuhayṯiʿ ben Birdāda, who fled, captured his mother, sister and family, many prisoners, as well as donkeys, camels, sheep, and goats, and seized the tribe's idols, and dispatched them all through the Damascus road; finally, the Assyrians marched out from Damascus till
Ḫulḫuliti, and from there carried out their final attack on the Arabs near the Mount Ḫukkurina, where they captured Abyaṯiʿ and Ayammu, the latter of whom was flayed alive. Due to the Assyrian campaign, the Šumuʾilu rebelled against Yuhayṯiʿ ben Birdāda and handed him over to the Assyrians. After the victory over the Qedarites, the Assyrians campaigned against the Nabataeans.
Neo-Babylonian period
![Neo-Babylonian Empire](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c1/Neo-Babylonian_Empire.png)
After Aššur-bāni-apli's death, the Babylonians led by
Nabû-apla-uṣur and the Medes led by
Cyaxares
Cyaxares (Median: ; Old Persian: ; Akkadian: ; Old Phrygian: ; grc, Κυαξαρης, Kuaxarēs; Latin: ; reigned 625–585 BCE) was the third king of the Medes.
Cyaxares collaborated with the Babylonians to destroy the Assyrian Empire, a ...
rebelled against Assyrian rule again, this time culminating in their destruction of the Neo-Assyrian Empire over the course of 614 to 609 BC. This transitional period saw a resurgent Egypt trying to preserve the Neo-Assyrian Empire and establish its rule on the Levant only for the newly established Neo-Babylonian Empire to gain the upper hand and seize all of Syria and Palestine when Nabû-apla-uṣur's son and successor
Nabû-kudurri-uṣur II defeated the Egyptians in 605 BC. It is unknown what was the role of the Arab populations during these events, although the Qedarites appear to not have pressed against the Transjordanian region during the period which oversaw the collapse of the Neo-Assyrian Empire and its replacement by the
Neo-Babylonian Empire
The Neo-Babylonian Empire or Second Babylonian Empire, historically known as the Chaldean Empire, was the last polity ruled by monarchs native to Mesopotamia. Beginning with the coronation of Nabopolassar as the List of kings of Babylon, King of B ...
, and the Canaanite kingdoms of Palestine were strong enough to resist the Arabs once the region had come under Babylonian hegemony.
![Nebuchadnezzar II crop](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/bb/Nebuchadnezzar_II_crop.png)
Within Palestine itself, the Judahite king
Yahuyaqim was initially an Egyptian ally until the Babylonian triumph of 605 BC forced him to change his alignment and become a Babylonian vassal. After the attempt by Nabû-apla-uṣur's son and successor, Nabû-kudurri-uṣur II, to invade Egypt itself failed in 601 BC, the Babylonian control over Syria became weaker, and Nabû-kudurri-uṣur II had to reorganise his army in Babylon and could not carry out military activities, allowing Jehoiakim to rebel against Babylonian rule and to realign himself with Egypt, thus allowing the southern Canaanite kingdoms of Ammon, Edom, Judah and Moab, as well as the Qedarites, to ally with Egypt while leaving the Babylonian provinces of central and southern Syria which directly depended on the Babylonian military vulnerable to attacks from the Arabs, including the Qedarites.
Nabû-kudurri-uṣur II responded by personally returning to Syria in 599 BC, establishing his base possibly in Damascus, and conducting raids over the course of 599 to 598 BC against the Qedarites from his Syrian provinces with the aim of pacifying the desert, and culminating in the Babylonians capturing the idols of the Qedarites' gods, thus placing them under Babylonian overlordship. This led to Ammon and Moab defecting to the Babylonian side and joining Babylonian subjects in Damascus in attacking Judah. In 597 BC, Nabû-kudurri-uṣur II himself attacked Judah, captured its king, the son and successor
Yekonyah, and turned it into a Babylonian vassal.
Following a domestic revolt in Babylon in 594 BC, the new king of Judah,
Ṣidqiyahu, organised an anti-Babylonian meeting supported by Egypt in Jerusalem in which Ammon, Edom, Moab, Sidon and Tyre participated, and to which the Qedarites were also aligned. Since the Babylonians had important interests in the trade from South Arabia which passed through the Ḥijāz and the Negev, once Nabû-kudurri-uṣur II managed to repress the revolt in Babylon, in 587 BC he attacked and annexed Judah and started the siege of Tyre as part of operations meant to neutralise and control the various Canaanite states which had participated in these anti-Babylonian activities, thus bringing an end to this latest anti-Babylonian endeavour. With the solidification of Babylonian control in Palestine, Edom, which at this time controlled North Arabian territory until as far south as the oasis of Dedan, became a centre of Babylonian influence in Arabia. After Nabû-kudurri-uṣur II annexed the Canaanite kingdoms of Judah in 587 BC and of
Ammon
Ammon ( Ammonite: 𐤏𐤌𐤍 ''ʻAmān''; he, עַמּוֹן ''ʻAmmōn''; ar, عمّون, ʻAmmūn) was an ancient Semitic-speaking nation occupying the east of the Jordan River, between the torrent valleys of Arnon and Jabbok, in ...
and Moab in 582 BC, the resulting power vacuum in Transjordan allowed the Arabs of the Syrian desert, including the Qedarites and the Nabataeans, to expand into these former states' settled territories close to the desert, including across southern Transjordan and Palestine until the Judaean hills, where they remained throughout the existence of the Neo-Babylonian Empire and cohabited with the sedentary Ammonite, Moabite, and Edomite populations, with whom these Arab incomers mingled over several generations.
In the spring of 553 BC, the Babylonian king
Nabû-naʾid went to Syria, from where he campaigned against Edom, captured its capital, and then marched to
Taymāʾ,
Dadān
Lihyan ( ar, لحيان, ''Liḥyān''; Greek language, Greek: Lechienoi), also called Dadān or Dedan was a powerful and highly organized ancient Arabs, Arab kingdom that played a vital cultural and economic role in the
north-western region o ...
(whose king was defeated by Nabû-naʾid),
Fadak,
Ḫaybar,
Yadiʿ, and
Yaṯrib. The Qedarites initially supported the Dedanites against Nabû-naʾid, but the Babylonians soon defeated the Qedarites and reimposed Babylonian rule over them. With Edom destroyed by the Babylonians, the Arab populations, including the Qedarites, filled the power vacuum left in the northern Ḥijāz.
Achaemenid period
![Arabian Tribute-Bearer on the Apadana Staircase 4 (4685919183)](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/4b/Arabian_Tribute-Bearer_on_the_Apadana_Staircase_4_%284685919183%29.jpg)
When
Kūruš II conquered the Neo-Babylonian Empire in 539 BC, the Arab populations of the Syrian desert and of North Arabia, including the Qedarites, as well as the desert routes going into Mesopotamia from these regions, became part of his
Persian
Persian may refer to:
* People and things from Iran, historically called ''Persia'' in the English language
** Persians, the majority ethnic group in Iran, not to be conflated with the Iranic peoples
** Persian language, an Iranian language of the ...
Achaemenid Empire
The Achaemenid Empire or Achaemenian Empire (; peo, 𐎧𐏁𐏂, , ), also called the First Persian Empire, was an ancient Iranian empire founded by Cyrus the Great in 550 BC. Based in Western Asia, it was contemporarily the largest em ...
. Within Achaemenid Syria, the Qedarites and the Nabataeans formed the major Arab groups.
After the Qedarites provided Kūruš II's successor
Kambūjiya with water in the Sinai Desert during his preparations for conquering Egypt, the Achaemenid kings granted the Qedarite king a coastal emporium exempt from taxes ranging from Gaza to Ienysus, within the fifth satrapy inhabited by the Phoenicians which went from the eastern border of
Cilicia
Cilicia (); el, Κιλικία, ''Kilikía''; Middle Persian: ''klkyʾy'' (''Klikiyā''); Parthian: ''kylkyʾ'' (''Kilikiyā''); tr, Kilikya). is a geographical region in southern Anatolia in Turkey, extending inland from the northeastern coa ...
till
Gaza and continuing from
Ienysos till
Lake Serbonis. This emporium allowed the Qedarites to reduce the costs of transporting spices by redirecting the spice trade towards Gaza, where the Qedarite involvement in the spice trade ended once the goods reached the coasts and were shipped out, rather than towards more distant Tyre, which in turn also permitted the Qedarite kings who surpervised the spice trade to sell their products to Phoenician as well as Greek traders. An important economic reason for coastal emporium had been granted to the Qedarite kings so they, rather than the imperial authorities would be allowed to collect customs duties on the trade of spices and other luxuries passing through Transjordan and Elat till Gaza, in return of which the Qedarites had to provide the Achaemenid authorities with annual payments of 1000 talents (30 tons) of frankincense. At this time, the territory of the Qedarites in the east might perhaps have no longer bordered on Babylonia and maybe no longer controlled even the areas of the middle Euphrates region or the desert regions leading from Syria the middle Euphrates, and had become limited to Transjordan.
With Achaemenid approval, the Qedarites and the Nabataeans soon expanded their territory during the 5th century BC to the west into the southern and eastern Levant, which put the Qedarites in control of the
Negev
The Negev or Negeb (; he, הַנֶּגֶב, hanNegév; ar, ٱلنَّقَب, an-Naqab) is a desert and semidesert region of southern Israel. The region's largest city and administrative capital is Beersheba (pop. ), in the north. At its southe ...
and the northern
Sinai
Sinai commonly refers to:
* Sinai Peninsula, Egypt
* Mount Sinai, a mountain in the Sinai Peninsula, Egypt
* Biblical Mount Sinai, the site in the Bible where Moses received the Law of God
Sinai may also refer to:
* Sinai, South Dakota, a place ...
till they were adjoining the eastern borders of Lower Egypt and southern Palestine, more specifically in the region to the immediate south of Judaea and east of the
Nile Delta and the approach of the
Wādī Ṭumīlāt, where they acted as a garrison which protected the local border for the Achaemenids. This expansion allowed the Qedarites to control a large territory stretching from Tall al-Masḫuṭa in the eastern Nile Delta through the Negev till Transjordan, which placed them at the head of the important trade network which existed between
Gaza on the
Mediterranean Sea
The Mediterranean Sea is a sea connected to the Atlantic Ocean, surrounded by the Mediterranean Basin and almost completely enclosed by land: on the north by Western and Southern Europe and Anatolia, on the south by North Africa, and on the ea ...
and
ʾÊláṯ on the
Red Sea
The Red Sea ( ar, البحر الأحمر - بحر القلزم, translit=Modern: al-Baḥr al-ʾAḥmar, Medieval: Baḥr al-Qulzum; or ; Coptic: ⲫⲓⲟⲙ ⲛ̀ϩⲁϩ ''Phiom Enhah'' or ⲫⲓⲟⲙ ⲛ̀ϣⲁⲣⲓ ''Phiom ǹšari''; T ...
, as well as in control of the northern end of the commercial traffic of the
incense trade route
The Incense Trade Route was an ancient network of major land and sea trading routes linking the Mediterranean world with eastern and southern sources of incense, spices and other luxury goods, stretching from Mediterranean ports across the Levan ...
which flowed from South Arabia to Gaza, with Gaza itself being under Qedarite rule. Thanks to the Achaemenid Empire's multinational structure and its policy of tolerance and the end of any independent polities within Transjordan and Palestine, these Arab groups became integrated into the Persian Empire's economic, administrative, and military systems, with this process also being driven by the development of trade in Arabia as well as the military activities of the Achaemenid kings due to which warriors from all the populations ruled by their empire, including those from the Arab peoples, required their enrollment into the Achaemenid army.
![Xerxes I tomb Arab soldier circa 470 BCE cleaned up](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/8d/Xerxes_I_tomb_Arab_soldier_circa_470_BCE_cleaned_up.jpg)
As a result of this Qedarite expansion, the Edomites were pressured out of their traditional homeland and were forced to resettle into the southern parts of the former kingdom of Judah, while the region to the east of the Pelusian branch of the Nile became known as "Arabia," the mountainous areas to the east of Heliopolis as the "Arabian Mountains," and the Gulf of Suez as the "Arabian Gulf," with the border town of
Daphnae
Tahpanhes or Tehaphnehes; he, תַּחְפַּנְחֵס, translit=Taḥpanḥēs or he, תְּחַפְנְחֵס, translit=Tǝḥafnǝḥēs; known by the Ancient Greeks as the ( Pelusian) Daphnae ( grc, Δάφναι αἱ Πηλούσιαι) ...
acting as a garrison against the Arabs and the populations of Syria.
During this period, the Qedarites were ruled by the king Gešem ben Šahr, who enjoyed a prominent status within the Achaemenid administration and controlled the region to the south of Judaea in his role as the governor of Dedan, which is attested in the form of a
Dadanitic
Dadanitic is the script and possibly the language of the oasis of Dadān (modern Al-'Ula) and the kingdom of Liḥyān in northwestern Arabia, spoken probably some time during the second half of the first millennium BCE.
Nomenclature
Dadanitic ...
inscription in which he is mentioned alongside the governor of Dedan (, ; the title , is unattested in Arabian languages and is a loanword from Akkadian , thus implying that the region was under Achaemenid rule), implying that Gešem was not the governor of Dedan but nevertheless held an important position as the oasis. Like the earlier Qedarite rulers, Gešem had important interests in the trade passing through North Arabia into southern Palestine, and his fear of a resurgence of Judah led him to oppose
Nəḥemyāh.
Gešem was succeeded by his son Qainū, who offered in dedication to a shrine of the goddess al-Lat (referred to in Aramaic as ) at the Egyptian town of
Pithom
Pithom ( Ancient Egyptian: ; Hebrew: ; Ancient Greek: or ) was an ancient city of Egypt. Multiple references in ancient Greek, Roman, and Hebrew Bible sources exist for this city, but its exact location remains somewhat uncertain. A number o ...
(presently Tall al-Masḫuṭa) a silver bowl with an Aramaic inscription on it reading (, ).
Thus, in 480 BC, camel-riding Arab units participated in the Achaemenid king
Xšayār̥šā I's invasion of Greece, and Arab units of the Achaemenid army also participated in the empire's overseas and coastal military activities in 410 and 386 BC.
Achaemenid rule over the Transjordanian Arabs lasted until Egypt under
Amyrtaeus
Amyrtaeus ( , a Hellenization of the original Egyptian name Amenirdisu) of Sais, is the only pharaoh of the Twenty-eighth Dynasty of EgyptCimmino 2003, p. 385. and is thought to be related to the royal family of the Twenty-sixth Dynasty (664 ...
rebelled against Persian rule in 404 BC and embarked on anti-Persian activities in Palestine, Phoenicia and Cyprus at the same time that the Persian Empire was itself facing a number of internal crises which greatly weakened it. In this situation, Persian rule broke down in Transjordan, which became independent.
Hellenistic period
The Qedarites remained independent after the
Macedonian conquest of the Achaemenid Empire by
Aléxandros III of Macedon and during the time of the
Hellenistic states established by the
Diádokhoi. Their Nabataean neighbours at this time lived to the south of the
Arnon river.
During the post-Achaemenid period, the whole of the area to the east of the Nile Delta became included in the Qedarite-inhabited territory named "Arabia," although during the 4th century BC, the Nabataeans replaced the Qedarites as the Arab group in control of the Negev, and therefore of the trade route connecting Gaza to ʾÊláṯ, and the Qedarites themselves might have soon been absorbed by the Nabataeans.
Roman period
The Roman Syrian Christian theologian
Theodṓrētos claimed that the Qedarites were still living in the region neighbouring Babylon in the 5th century AD.
Legacy
The practice of local empires using Arab nomads to guard their borders which started with the Assyrians integrating the Arabs of the Syrian Desert into the control system of their Syrian and Palestinian borders would continue throughout Antiquity and the Middle Ages, with the later
Byzantine Empire
The Byzantine Empire, also referred to as the Eastern Roman Empire or Byzantium, was the continuation of the Roman Empire primarily in its eastern provinces during Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages, when its capital city was Constantinopl ...
assigning the role of guarding their Syrian and North Arabian borders to the
Ġasāsina Arabs, up till the modern period, when the
Ottoman Empire
The Ottoman Empire, * ; is an archaic version. The definite article forms and were synonymous * and el, Оθωμανική Αυτοκρατορία, Othōmanikē Avtokratoria, label=none * info page on book at Martin Luther University) ...
placed similar responsibilities of guarding their southern Syrian and Transjordanian borders on the local Bedouin tribes.
Biblical
![Hagar and Ishmael in the Wilderness](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/2b/Hagar_and_Ishmael_in_the_Wilderness.jpg)
The Qedarites appear in the
Hebrew Bible
The Hebrew Bible or Tanakh (;["Tanach"](_blank)
''Random House Webster's Unabridged Dictionary''. Hebrew: ''Tān ...
as a tribe descended from Qēḏār, the second son of
Yīšmāʿēʾl, himself the son of
ʾAḇrāhām and
Hāgār, In the Bible, Yīšmāʿēʾl's eldest son
Nəḇāyōṯ is given prominence due to the rule of primogeniture, with Qēḏār also being given some level of prominence due to being the second-born son, making him the closest of Yīšmāʿēʾl's sons to the one standing for primogeniture.
The name of Qedar is often used in the Hebrew Bible to refer to Arabia and Arabs in general, and in a Biblical prophecy, the Juhadite prophet
Yīrmĭyāhū used the names of
Kittīm (Cyprus) and Qēḏār to refer, respectively, to the western and eastern cardinal points.
Islamic
The tradition of claiming descent from
Ibrāhīm's son
ʾIsmāʿīl, called "genealogical Ishmaelism," was already present among some pre-Islamic Arabs, and, in Islamic sources, ʾIsmāʿīl is the eponymous ancestor of some of the Arab peoples of north-west Arabia, with prominence being accorded to his two eldest sons, Nābit () or Nabīt () (Biblical
Nəḇāyōṯ) and Qaydar () or Qaydār ((; Biblical Qēḏār), who lived in eastern Transjordan,
Sinai
Sinai commonly refers to:
* Sinai Peninsula, Egypt
* Mount Sinai, a mountain in the Sinai Peninsula, Egypt
* Biblical Mount Sinai, the site in the Bible where Moses received the Law of God
Sinai may also refer to:
* Sinai, South Dakota, a place ...
and the
Ḥijāz, and whose descendant tribes were the most prominent ones among the twelve tribes of the
Ishmaelites
The Ishmaelites ( he, ''Yīšməʿēʾlīm,'' ar, بَنِي إِسْمَاعِيل ''Bani Isma'il''; "sons of Ishmael") were a collection of various Arabian tribes, confederations and small kingdoms described in Islamic tradition as being des ...
.
According to Islamic tradition, the Islamic prophet
Muhammad
Muhammad ( ar, مُحَمَّد; 570 – 8 June 632 Common Era, CE) was an Arab religious, social, and political leader and the founder of Islam. According to Muhammad in Islam, Islamic doctrine, he was a prophet Divine inspiration, di ...
is believed to have been a descendant of ʾIsmāʿīl through either Nābit or Qaydār depending on the scholar.
According to the scholar
Irfan Shahîd
Irfan Arif Shahîd ( ar, عرفان عارف شهيد ; Nazareth, Mandatory Palestine, January 15, 1926 – Washington, D.C., November 9, 2016), born as Erfan Arif Qa'war (), was a scholar in the field of Oriental studies. He was from 1982 unti ...
, genealogical Ishmaelism was academically viewed with suspicion due to confusion in the Islamic period which led to ʾIsmāʿīl being considered as the ancestor of all Arabian tribes. According to Shahîd, genealogical Ishamelism in its original variant is instead more limited and applicable to only some Arab tribes.
Culture and society
Qedarite society consisted of both nomads and sedentary villagers who primarily reared sheep, goats, and camels. The nomadic Qedarites lived in black tents made of goat's and camel's hair and unfortified temporary settlements and were constantly on the move along with their flocks, while the sedentary population was concentrated around the oasis centre of
Adumattu, which functioned as their economic, administrative and religious centres, and where was located the permanent houses of thousands of agriculturists and craftsmen.
Because the Qedarites and the Nabataeans were neighbours and often cooperated with each other, the two tribes were often listed together in Assyrian, Biblical and Graeco-Roman sources.
Social organisation
The large size of the area inhabited by the Qedarites, centred around the al-Jauf depression and ranging from the eastern border of Egypt till the western border of Babylonia, suggests that Qedar was a tribal federation made up of multiple sub-groups. The rules of Yawṯiʿ ben Ḥazaʾil and of ʿAmmu-laddin at the same time, and the attempt of Wahb to take over kingship of the Qedarites, as well as the replacement of Yawṯiʿ ben Ḥazaʾil by Abyaṯiʿ ben Teʾri as king of the Qedarites, all suggest that Qedar was a federation with multiple internal divisions, especially since both Wahb and Abyaṯiʿ appear to have been neither related to the family of Yawṯiʿ nor being members of their tribe. Leadership over the whole of the Qedarite federation could instead be transferred from one of its constituent tribes to another.
The Qedarites appear to have been ruled by several queens who resided in the confederation's centre of Adumattu.
One of the tribes which constituted the Qedarites were the Šumuʾilu, who appear to have lived in the eastern desert immediately adjoining the western borderlands of Babylonia, due to which a text from the time of the Assyrian king Sîn-ahhī-erība mentioned them and the Taymanites as passing through the (Desert Gate) of Nineveh together to offer tribute to the king of the Neo-Assyrian Empire. The Šumuʾilu were led by Yuhayṯiʿ ben Birdāda at the time of Aššur-bāni-apli and Šamaš-šuma-ukin.
Language
The Qedarites were an Arab people whose main language was Arabic, as attested by the personal names of several of their rulers:
* (), meaning "locust" (recorded in Akkadian as )
* (), meaning "raisin" (recorded in Akkadian as )
* Abyaṯiʿ and Yaṯiʿe, which contain the Arabic theophoric component
* Yuhayṯiʿ, which contains the Arabic theophoric component
* Birdāda which contains the Arabic theophoric component , which has also been recorded in
Thamudic
Thamudic is a name that refers to ancient Arabic Thamudic tribe language found by nineteenth-century scholars for large numbers of inscriptions in Ancient North Arabian (ANA) alphabets which have not yet been properly studied. These texts are foun ...
and
Dadanitic
Dadanitic is the script and possibly the language of the oasis of Dadān (modern Al-'Ula) and the kingdom of Liḥyān in northwestern Arabia, spoken probably some time during the second half of the first millennium BCE.
Nomenclature
Dadanitic ...
Arabic
* (), recorded in Akkadian as
* Yawṯiʿ, from Arabic
The Qedarites also spoke
Aramaic
The Aramaic languages, short Aramaic ( syc, ܐܪܡܝܐ, Arāmāyā; oar, 𐤀𐤓𐤌𐤉𐤀; arc, 𐡀𐡓𐡌𐡉𐡀; tmr, אֲרָמִית), are a language family containing many varieties (languages and dialects) that originated in ...
, with the names of some their kings being in Aramaic, such as Ḥazaʾil, and ʿAmmu-laddin () They also used the
Ancient South Arabian script
The Ancient South Arabian script (Old South Arabian 𐩣𐩯𐩬𐩵 ''ms3nd''; modern ar, الْمُسْنَد ''musnad'') branched from the Proto-Sinaitic script in about the late 2nd millennium BCE. It was used for writing the Old Sout ...
, which the Arabs had borrowed from the South Semitic peoples of Yemen in the early 1st millennium BC.
Religion
The Qedarites practised the
ancient North Arabian polytheistic religion, including the worship of idols of their six deities, whose names are attested as
ʿAṯtar-Šamāyīn, Dāya,
Nuhā,
Ruḍāw, Abbīr-ʾilu. and Attarqurūmā. In addition, the name of some Qedarite kings contained theophoric elements referencing the deities , , and .
The main religious centre of the Qedarites was their capital of
Adumattu, where was performed the cults of Aṯtar-Samāyīn, Nuhā and Ruḍāw, and where lived the queen of the Qedarites, who was also a priestess.
The celestial goddess ʿAṯtar-Šamāyīn, who was a local iteration of the Arab goddess
al-Lāt
Al-Lat ( ar, اللات, translit=Al-Lāt, ), also spelled Allat, Allatu and Alilat, is a pre-Islamic Arabian goddess worshipped under various associations throughout the entire Arabian Peninsula, including Mecca where she was worshipped alongs ...
, was closely connected to the king of the Qedarites, and the 5th century BC Qedarite king Qainū dedicated a silver bowl in which she is referred to in Aramaic as to a shrine of the goddess located in the Egyptian city of Pithom. Attesting of the significant Aramaean-Canaanite and Mesopotamian cultural impact on the Qedarites is the substantial influence which ʿAṯtar-Šamāyīn had experienced from Mesopotamian religion, especially from the goddess
Ištar
Inanna, also sux, 𒀭𒊩𒌆𒀭𒈾, nin-an-na, label=none is an ancient Mesopotamian goddess of love, war, and fertility. She is also associated with beauty, sex, divine justice, and political power. She was originally worshiped in Su ...
with whom ʿAṯtar was identical. The name of ʿAṯtar-Samāyīn, which means "ʿAṯtar of Heaven," also the reflected the influence on ʿAṯtar of Ištar's form as the Ištar of Heaven, as well as that of the Syro-Canaanite goddess
ʿAštart, who was worshipped as the
Queen of Heaven
Queen of Heaven ( la, Regina Caeli) is a title given to the Virgin Mary, by Christians mainly of the Catholic Church and, to a lesser extent, in Anglicanism, Lutheranism, and Eastern Orthodoxy.
The Catholic teaching on this subject is express ...
and was also identical with and identified with Ištar.
Economy
The Qedarites participated in the extensive trade networks spanning the Syrian desert during the Iron Age. They reared sheep, donkeys, goats, and camels to be traded along these commercial routes, most especially with the Phoenician city of Tyre, and also participated in the trade of spices, aromatics such as
frankincense, precious stones, and gold from
South Arabia. Under the rule of the Achaemenid Empire, the Qedarites controlled the northern end of the Arabian trade routes of the
incense trade route
The Incense Trade Route was an ancient network of major land and sea trading routes linking the Mediterranean world with eastern and southern sources of incense, spices and other luxury goods, stretching from Mediterranean ports across the Levan ...
which flowed from South Arabia to the Mediterranean port of Gaza, which was under Qedarite rule.
The Qedarites also traded gold and precious stones, which they offered annually to the Assyrian Empire as part of their annual tribute.
Warfare
The Qedarites were proficient warriors whose skill in archery were mentioned in Assyrian records as well as in the Hebrew Bible.
List of rulers
* King
Gindibuʾ[Kitchen, 1994, p. 741.] (c. 870–850 BCE; first mention of "Arabs" in Assyrian texts; not explicitly associated with Qedar)
* Queen
Zabibe
Zabibe (also transliterated Zabibi, Zabiba, Zabibah; akk, 𒍝𒁉𒁉𒂊 ''Zabibê'') was a queen of Qedar who reigned for five years between 738 and 733 BC. She was a vassal of Tiglath-Pileser III, king of Assyria, and is mentioned in the An ...
[ (c. 750–735 BCE; first monarch explicitly associated with Qedar in Assyrian texts)
* Queen Šamsi][ (c. 735–710 BCE)
* Queen Yaṯiʿe][ (c. 710–695 BCE)
* Queen Te'elkhunu][ (c. 695–690 BCE)
* King Ḥazaʾil][ (690–676 BCE)
* King Yawṯiʿ ben Ḥazaʾil][ (676–652 BCE)
* Queen ]Tabua
A tabua is a polished tooth of a sperm whale that is an important cultural item in Fijian society. They were traditionally given as gifts for atonement or esteem (called ''sevusevu''), and were important in negotiations between rival chiefs. The ...
[Sudayrī, 2001, p. 29.]
* King Abyaṯiʿ ben Teʾri[ (652–644 BCE)
* King Yuhayṯiʿ ben Birdāda of the Šumuʾilu
* King Mahlay ?][ (c. 510–490 BCE)
* King Iyas ibn Mahlay ? (c. 490–470 BCE)
* King Šahr][ (c. 470–450 BCE)
* King Gešem ben Šahr][ (c. 450–430 BCE)
* King Qainū bar Gešem][ (c. 430–410 BCE)
]
References
Bibliography
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
{{good article
Tribes of Arabia
Tribes of Saudi Arabia
Arab history
History of Saudi Arabia
Arab groups
Arab dynasties
Ishmaelites
Former kingdoms