Nabataeans of Iraq

Muslim Arabs seem to have called 'Nabataeans of the Levant' (نبط الشام, Nabaṭ al-Shām).^[2]

nomadic lifestyle of the conquering Arabs.^[3] The Arabic term Nabaṭī (also Nabīṭ, plural Anbāṭ)^[4] was often used as a derogatory term, identifying anyone who did not speak Arabic and who maintained a rural lifestyle as lacking education and culture, or as being akin to farm animals.^[5] Thus conceived of as a kind of 'other' to the noble way of life maintained by the nomadic Arabs, the term also came to be used for the non-Arab rural inhabitants of other places, such as for example for 'Nabataean' Kurds (al-Nabaṭ al-Akrād) or 'Nabataean' Armenians (al-Nabaṭ al-Armāniyyūn).^[6]

Sassanids in the 3rd century CE.^[12]

astrology, and various subjects related to religion and myth.^[16] Ibn Wahshiyya claimed to have translated this work from a c. 20,000 old original written in "ancient Syriac" (al-Suryānī al-qadīm),^[17] believing it to contain the first seeds of all human knowledge.^[18] Syriac, a language that originated in the 1st century CE, was commonly believed in Ibn Wahshiyya's time to have been the language spoken in Paradise and used at the time of creation.^[19] Thus, the whole of Mesopotamian history was imagined to have been a product of Aramaic (i.e., 'Syrian' or 'Nabataean') culture.^[20] In reality, the Nabataean Agriculture was likely translated from a Syriac work that was first composed on the basis of Greek and Latin agricultural writings and then gradually augmented with local material during the last few centuries before Ibn Wahshiyya's time.^[21] Together with al-Mas'udi's historical works, and like the latter written in the context of the Shu'ubiyya movement which sought to preserve and promote the heritage of non-Arab peoples, the Nabataean Agriculture is the product of a conscious attempt to write down what was known at the time about pre-Islamic Mesopotamian, 'Nabataean' culture, a subject for which it remains a valuable source today.^[22]