Lonely Planet Oman, UAE & Arabian Peninsula (Travel Guide) by Lonely Planet & Walker Jenny & Butler Stuart & Ham Anthony & Schulte-Peevers Andrea

Author:Lonely Planet & Walker, Jenny & Butler, Stuart & Ham, Anthony & Schulte-Peevers, Andrea [Walker, Jenny]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Lonely Planet Publications
Published: 2013-07-31T21:00:00+00:00

WHO WERE THE NABATAEANS?

There are many theories about where the Nabataeans came from, although most scholars agree that they were early Bedouins who lived a nomadic life before settling as farmers in the area in the 6th century BC. They developed a specialised knowledge of desert water resources (using water channels known as qanats ) as well as the intricacies of the lucrative trade caravan routes. These two skills would form the foundations of the Nabataean empire.

The Nabataean merchant families grew incredibly wealthy from 200 BC, organising caravans of frankincense and feeding the insatiable markets of the ancient world. Nabataean wealth, which had derived initially from plundering trade caravans, shifted to exacting tolls (up to 25% of the commodities’ value) upon these same caravans as a means of securing Nabataean protection and guiding the caravans to water. The Nabataean capital was at Petra (Jordan) and Madain Saleh was their second city.

Through a mixture of shrewd diplomacy and military force, the Nabataeans kept at bay the Seleucids, Egyptians, Persians and later, for a time, the Romans. The Nabataeans never really possessed an ‘empire’ in the common military and administrative sense of the word. Instead, from about 200 BC they had established a ‘zone of influence’ that stretched to Syria and Rome and south into the Hadramaut. But it was all undone when the Romans cleverly cut out the middlemen by building fleets on the Red Sea and importing frankincense directly. An impoverished Nabataean Kingdom staggered on for a few years but was formally absorbed as a province of the Roman Empire in AD 106.

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