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  • 16 - The Arabs and the desert peoples

  • from PART V - THE NON-ROMAN WORLD
    • By Maurice Sartre, Professeur d’Histoire Ancienne à l’Université François-Rabelais
  • Edited by Alan Bowman, Brasenose College, Oxford, Averil Cameron, Keble College, Oxford, Peter Garnsey, University of Cambridge
  • Book:
    The Cambridge Ancient History
    Published online:
    28 March 2008
    Print publication:
    08 September 2005, pp 498-520

  • Summary

    At the end of the second century the majority of the groups inhabiting the desert between the Antitaurus and the Red Sea were in fact Arabs in the modern sense. South of the Euphrates they were almost the only inhabitants, though some of the population of the oases may have been Aramaic, at Palmyra. On the other hand, north of the Euphrates at Edessa, Hatra or Assur, the Arabs were in a minority. The Arab principality of Edessa was one of the most ancient of those on the far side of the Euphrates, originating when an Arab dynasty took control of the Greek city of Edessa and the surrounding area. The disappearance of the sedentary Arab states and dynasties which had controlled the nomadic Arabs of the Syro-Mesopotamian desert forced Rome to find new means to guarantee the safety of Roman Empire along the frontiers.