The Arab cultural area — ancient Arabia and its
cultural development
The Arabian Peninsula has a long tradition of settlement, although research into the subject has only just begun, since archeologists have excavated relatively few sites. Ancient Arabian culture is best documented in the Hadramawt and the rbst of the Yemen, and in the south Arabian Peninsula, where mighty buildings or their ruins and the sites of fortresses testif’ to the splendor of the ancient Arabian Mina kingdom (4th—ist centuries B.C.) with its center of Qatnawu, Qatabanian kingdom (5th—lat centuries B.C.), and Sabaean kingdom (10th century B.C.—3td century AD.). Traces of early civilizations can also be found in the Arabian Peninsula that reveal influences from the Fertile Crescent.
The Arabian Peninsula comprises an area of 1.2 million square miles (3 million square kilometers), but it was, and still is, only sparsely populated because of its vast areas of desert. In the north, ancient Arabia shared a border with Mesopotamia (modern Iraq), and in the south it met the Indian Ocean. Monsoon rain from the sea fell on the mountain ranges in the south of the peninsula, making the Yemen and Oman fertile regions which have been permanently settled since very early times: the mountain slopes here were tercaced and supplied with water by highly developed irrigation systems, and as a result extensive arable farming could develop. In the desert, on the other hand, there arc only a few isolated fertile oases with date palms and sparse grazing for the nomads’ herds. Rainfall is also very irregular above the mountains in the south, and there are prolonged periods of drought.
From early times, consequently, there was a great gulf between the sedentary, prosperous Arabs of the south and the impoverished seminomsds of the desert, although the latter profited by the through traffic of caravans. The pcosperous southern Arabs fitted out merchant ships, made good use of the monsoon winds, and engaged in flourishing foreign trade, particularly with the Malabar coast of India, the Mesopotamian kingdoms to the northeast, and the kingdom of Egypt in the northwest (fitsc mentioned in the records in 2100 B.c.). The goods tcaded wete chiefly spices and incense. The camel catavans of the “Incense Road,” as it is called, which had ttading intersections distributed over the entice Arabian Peninsula, also brought a certain prosperity to the semi- nomadic caravan traders, certain desert cities and oases, and so to the northern regions. Arabia thus became the hub of trade between east and west at an early period, and exerted significant influence on the cultural development of the Mediterranean area.
In the 6th centory B.C., Arabia was regarded as part of the Persian kingdom of the Achaemenid dynasty, which founded the province of Arabiya in 539 B.C. Thereafter, southern Arabia saw the rise of a great number of kingdoms, most of them on the western coast. On the border with Palestine lay the kingdom of the Nabaraeans of Petra, whose cultural wealth was founded on trade; art was in its prime there between the 4th century B.C. and the 1st century AD. When the region was annexed by the Roman Empire in 106, it achieved great prosperity under the relatively mild rule of its Roman overlords. The best-known example is probably the semi-independent kingdom of Palmyra, although it overestimated its power when in the 3rd century, under Queen Zenobia, it challenged Rome and was crushed by the emperor Aurelian. After profiting from the extension and improvement of the trade routes carried our by the Roman administration, Arabia found itself increassngly positioned between two hostile fronts, as the great powers of Rome, and later Byzantium, opposed their adversaries, the newly strengthened Persian kingdoms of the Sassanians and Parthians.
After the 4th and 5th centuries AD, a certain military stalemate set in. Both great powers — Byzantium and the Sassasian Persians — were anxious to create buffer states ruled by Arab vassals, who w’ to perform military service for their overlords, in exchange for cultural independence under their protection. On the Persian side, those involved were the Lakhmida, with Hira, their capital, near Kufa, and on the Byzantine side, the Christian Ghassanids, with their capital Basra. The Arab tribes on both sides learned a great deal about the techniques of warfare and fortification from these great powers, and acquired knowledge that would be of significance later on for the military successes of Muhammad and early Islam.
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