History of the Romans in Arabia
The Roman presence in the Arabian Peninsula had its foundations in the expansion of the empire under Augustus, and continued until the Arab conquests of Eastern Roman territory from the 620s onward.
Initial contacts
The volume of commerce between Rome and India via
Gallus' expedition
Then part of the
Gallus besieged Ma'rib unsuccessfully for a week, before being forced to withdraw. Mommsen ascribes this to a combination of disease, over-extended
Trajan and the Arabia Petraea province
The Nabateans maintained close relations with the Romans since their arrival in the southeastern Mediterranean area. Under Augustus they were a Roman
When the emperor
The Roman Empire gained what became the province of Arabia Petraea (modern southern Jordan and north west Saudi Arabia).[11]
The Hedjaz region was integrated into the Roman province of Arabia in 106 CE. A monumental Roman epigraph of 175-177 was recently discovered at Al-Hijr (then called "Hegra"). The region then formed part of Roman history, and then Byzantine history, until the 7th century. In 356, the city of Hegra is again mentioned, as being led by a mayor of local origin, but it seems to have been very little...[12]
The conquest of Arabia was not officially exulted until the completion of the Via Traiana Nova in 120s. This road extended down the center of the province from Bostra to Aqaba. It wasn't until the project was finished that coins, featuring Trajan's bust on the obverse and a camel on the reverse, appeared commemorating the acquisition of Arabia. These coins were minted until 115, at which time the Roman imperial focus was turning farther eastward. The road links not only Bostra and Aqaba, but also Petra and was continued by a "caravan road" south the coast of western Arabia until the port of Leuce Kome.
Recently further evidence has been discovered that Roman legions occupied
Hadrian probably restructured the province after the Trajan expansion, reducing the area to nearly half the original size (at the west of what was called the Limes Arabicus) in order to better defend Arabia Petraea from raiders and enemies. The same process occurred in Caledonia, when he abandoned the Roman forts around Inchtuthil and the Gask Ridge and created Hadrian's Wall in Roman Britain (reducing the Roman-controlled area of Scotland).
Under emperor Septimius Severus Arabia Petraea was expanded to include the Leja' and Jabal al-Druze, rough terrain south of Damascus, and also the birthplace of M. Julius Phillipus (Philip the Arab).
Indeed, the Romans found a powerful ally in the Arabs called Ghassanids, who moved from the area of Marib to southern Syria mainly in the 2nd century. The Ghassanids were the buffer zone against the other Bedouins penetrating Roman territory in those years. More accurately their kings can be described as phylarchs, native rulers of subject frontier states. Their capital was at Jabiyah in the Golan Heights. Geographically, the Ghassanid kingdom occupied much of Syria, Mount Hermon (Lebanon), Jordan and Palestine, and its authority extended via tribal alliances with other "Azdi" tribes all the way to the northern Hejaz as far south as Yathrib (Medina).
Furthermore, precise Arab ancestry of the Roman emperor Philip the Arab is not known, since all sources give only the Latin names of him and his family members. However, having originated from the general area in which the Ghassanids settled, many historians consider he may have been of that origin. His being mentioned either as a Christian himself or at least tolerant of Christians would fit with his originating from a people which was in the process of Christianization at the time of his rule.
Septimius Severus enlarged a province that was already huge. He then proceeded to enlarge the empire, through the conquest of Mesopotamia. The transfer of the Leja' and Jebel Drūz seemed to have been part of a shrewd series of political acts on the emperor's part to consolidate control of the area before this conquest. Arabia became the ideological power base for Septemius Severus in the Roman Near East.
Arabia became such a symbol of loyalty to Severus and the empire, according to Bowersock,[15] that during his war against Clodius Albinus, in Gaul, Syrian opponents propagated a rumour that the Third Cyrenaica legion controlling Arabia Petraea had defected. That it would matter to an issue in Gaul that a single legion in a backwater province on the other side of the empire would rebel indicates the political sway that Arabia had amassed. Not a land of significant population, resources, or even strategic position, it had become a bedrock of Roman culture. That it was an Eastern Roman culture didn't seem to dilute its effectiveness in matters in the west. It is precisely because Arabia Petraea had so little that it was able to define itself as Roman and that spurred its loyalty to Imperial Rome.
Another example of the loyalty to Rome of the Arab tribes of northern Arabia was Lucius Septimius Odaenathus. He was "the son of Lucius Septimius Herod (Hairān), the senator and chief of Tadmor, the son of Vaballathus (Wahballath), the son of Nasor"[16] and was the romanized Arab ruler of Palmyra and later his wife Zenobia and son Vaballathus ruled the short lived Palmyrene Empire. Odenatus, in the second half of the 3rd century, succeeded in recovering the Roman East from the Sassanids and restoring it to the Empire.
With Emperor Diocletian's restructuring of the empire in 284–305, Arabia Petraea province was enlarged to include parts of modern-day Palestine. Arabia after Diocletian was a part of the Diocese of the East, which was part of the Praetorian prefecture of the East and was largely Christian.
The province was conquered by the Arab Muslims under the
See also
- Pre-Islamic Arabia
- Roman trade with India
- Spice Route
- Limes (Roman Empire)
References
- ^ The Geography of Strabo published in Vol. I of the Loeb Classical Library edition, 1917
- ^ Theodor Mommsen. The Provinces of the Roman Empire. Chapter X (Syria and the land of the Nabataeans)
- ^ Strabo, xvi. p. 780-783.
- ^ a b Cassius Dio liii, 29
- ^ Pliny, Natural History vi. 32.
- ^ Strabo, xvi. p. 780–782; xvii. pp. 806, 816, 819.
- ^ Strabo, ii. p. 118.
- ^ G.W. Bowersock, Roman Arabia (Harvard: University Press, 1983), pp. 47f
- ^ Pliny, Natural History, vi. 32; vii. 28.
- ^ Josephus, Jewish Antiquities, xv. 9. §3.
- ^ Map showing the Roman Arabia province under Trajan emperor
- ^ Roman presence in Hegra (present-day Mada'in Saleh)
- ^ "Romans at Madain Salih, in northwestern Arabian peninsula". Archived from the original on 2014-10-23. Retrieved 2010-03-17.
- ^ New inscriptions from Saudi Arabia and the extent of Roman rule along the Red Sea.2014.[1]. Retrieved on May 6, 2017
- S2CID 163742980.
- S2CID 191439279.
- ^ L. Gatier, "La Legio III Cyrenaica et l'Arabie", in Les légions de Rome sous le Haut-Empire, vol. I (Lyon, 2000), pp. 341-344
Bibliography
- Bowersock, G. Roman Arabia Harvard University Press. Harvard, 1983
- Fisher, G. Rome, Persia, and Arabia. Shaping the Middle East from Pompey to Muhammad. Routledge, 2020. ISBN 9780415728812
- De Maigret, Alessandro. Arabia Felix. Stacey International. London, 2002. ISBN 1-900988-07-0
- Miller, James Innes (1969). The Spice Trade of the Roman Empire. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-814264-5.
- Mommsen, Theodor. Römische Geschichte 8 Volumes. dtv, München 2001. ISBN 3-423-59055-6
- ISBN 0-415-23188-4.
- Von Wissmann, H. "Die Geschichte des Säbaerreichs und der Felzug des Æelius Gallus". Haase ed. Munchen, 1976
- Young, Gary Keith. Rome's Eastern Trade: International Commerce and Imperial Policy, 31 BC-AD 305. Routledge. London, 2001 ISBN 0-415-24219-3
External links
- Romans explored Arabia in Augustus times
- Arabia and the Roman Empire (in Italian)
- Roman Forts in Limes Arabicus
- A map of the VIA NOVA TRAIANA showing the outposts that made up Hadrian's limes
- Romans and Arabia (google book)