Qedarites

Qedarite (also Kedarite and Kedar or Qedar) refers to a largely nomadic Arab people that lived in an area extending eastward from the western boundary of Babylon in the 8th century BC. Described as "the most organized of the Northern Arabian tribes," at the peak of their power in the 6th century BC they controlled a large region between the Persian Gulf and the Sinai.

The Qedarites are named for Qedar, the second son of Ishmael, mentioned in the Bible's books of Genesis (25:13) and Chronicles (1:29), where there are also frequent references to the Qedar as a tribe as well. The first extrabiblical inscriptions mentioning the Qedarites are from the Assyrian empire. Spanning the 8th and 7th centuries BC, they list the names of Qedarite queens and kings who paid Assyrian monarchs tributes, as well as those who revolted and were defeated in battle. There are also Aramaic and Old South Arabian inscriptions recalling the Qedarites, who also appear briefly in the writings of Herodotus, Pliny the Elder and Diodorus.

It is unclear when the Qedarites ceased to exist as a separately defined confederation or people. Allies with the Nabataens, it is likely that they were subsumed into the Nabataen state beginning in the 2nd century BC. Arab geneaological scholars widely consider Ishmael to be an ancestral forefather and assign great importance in their accounts to his first two sons (Nebaoith and Qedar) with the geneaology of Mohammed alternately assigned to one or the other, depending on the scholar.

Geographical scope

The Oxford Encyclopedia of Archaeology in the Near East (2006) describes the Qedarites as an "Arab tribal confederation" and Philip J. King describes them as "an alliance of nomadic Arab tribes living in the northwest Arabian desert" that were "an influential force" from the 8th to 4th centuries BC.

Eighth century BC Assyrian inscriptions place the Qedarites as living in the area extending eastward from the western boundary of Babylon. Moving into areas of the Transjordan and southern Syria in the 7th century BC, by the 5th century BC they had spread into the Sinai and as far as the Nile Delta. Qedarite domination of northwest Arabia involved alliances between the kings of Qedar and the kings of Dedan (Al-`Ula). Israel Eph'al writes that, "Such breadth of Qedarite distribution suggests a federation of tribes with various sub-divisions."

Herodotus (c. 484 BC – c. 425 BC) places the Qedarites as living in northern Sinai near the Egyptian border where they may have been engaged by the Achaemenid authorities to keep that border secure. During the rule of the Persian empire in the region, the Qedarites ruled over the desert areas bordering Egypt and Palestine and controlled the traffic related to the incense trade upon which Gaza depended.

Historical references

Extrabiblical

Assyrian inscriptions

The first documented mention of the Qedarites is from an 8th century BC stele (c. 737 BC) of Tiglath-Pileser III that lists leaders from the western part of Mesopatamia that pay him tribute. To the Assyrians, the Qedarites were known as Qidri or qi-id-ri with other cuneiform inscriptions also using Qadri, Qidarri, Qidari and Qudari (Neo-Babylonian). Zabibe, who ruled queen of Qedar between 738 and 733 BC, is listed among those paying tribute, under the title "queen of the Qidri and the Aribi". Her successor, Yatie (c. 730), sent forces headed by her brother Baasqanu to aid Merodach-Baladan in his bid to hold onto Babylon. Together with an army from Elam, they faced Sennacherib's forces on his first campaign in 703 BC. The events of the battle are recorded in the annals of Sennacherib and mention Yatie as "queen of the Arabs" and the capture of her brother Baasqanu in battle. Israel Eph'al writes that this is the first mention in Assyrian documents of Arabs as an ethnic element in Babylonia.

Statements about the Qedarites in the annals of the Assyrian kings of Ashurbanipal and his son Esarhaddon indicate that the term "Kedar" was almost synonymous with "Arabia". Hazael, who ruled c. 690-676 BC, is described as a Qedarite king by Ashurbanipal and "king of the Arabs" by Esarhaddon. After Sennacherib's invasion of Babylonia in 691-689 BC, Hazael fled to Dumah, a remote desert city to the west later known as Dumat Al-Jandal. Referred to as Adummatu by the Assyrians, the city is described by them as the seat of the confederation of Qedar and the base of their cult. Support for this description is found in other inscriptions discovered in Dumah; one asks of three deities known to the Assyrians as gods of Qedar (Ruda, Nuha and Atarsamain) for "help in the matter of my love."

Another entry from the annals of the two Assyrian monarchs on Hazael's father, Yauta (Yautha), also a king of the Qedarites, records that he paid tribute to them in the form of 10 minas of gold, 1,000 precious stones, 50 camels, and 1,000 leather pouches of aromatics of all kinds. Yauta later "fled to the Nabataeans". Also mentioned as kings of Qedar are Ammuladi and 'Iauta (also Iata' or Uaite), son of Hazael, whose defeat after they marched against the kings of the Amurru are recorded by Ashurbanipal. 'Iauta, the grand-nephew of Yauta, is said to have "roused the people of Arabia to revolt with him." His wife Adiya is the only woman mentioned in Assyrian inscriptions as both a Qedarite queen and the wife of a Qedarite king and is thus the only woman who was not a ruler in her own right. Sent by Iauta' to accompany Ammuladi and the Qedarite forces, they were defeated and captured by the forces of Kamushaltu, king of Moab and a loyal vassal of the Assyrian empire in 604 BC. Iauta was also captured and taken to Nineveh where Ashurbanipal records, "I put a dog chain upon him and made him guard a kennel." Appointed king in his place was Abiyate who soon joined with the Nabataeans to revolt against Assyria again, prompting Ashurbanipal to launch a three-month campaign to quash it, beginning in Palmyra, continung on to Damascus and ending in the southern part of al-Leja.

Old South Arabic and Aramaic inscriptions

Old South Arabic inscriptions mention qdrn ("Qadirān" or "Qadrān") as a person or people. The "king of Qedar" is also mentioned in a late 5th century BC Aramaic inscription on a silver vessel found at Tell Maskhuta in the eastern Nile Delta in lower Egypt. The inscription names the Qedarite king as "Qainū son of Gashmu" with the vessel described as an "offering han-'Ilāt".

Classical Greek and Roman texts

Herodotus notes of the Qedarites that they were called upon to assist Cambyses II of the Persian empire in his invasion of Egypt in 525 BC. Pliny the Elder (23 - 79 AD), who refers to them as the Cedrei, mentions them in the context of other Arabian tribes, placing their domain to the south of the Conchlei and adjacent to that of the Nabataei. Citing some the many historical references, Geoffrey Bromiley writes, "A conclusion that Kedar was a prominent Arabian tribe living SE of Damascus and E of the Transjordan is thus reasonable."

Biblical

The descendants of Abraham and Hagar are called Ishmaelites, after Ishmael, their firstborn, and the Qedarites are named for his second son, Qedar. The Bible refers to both the Qedarites and Qedar frequently. Old Testament references include Genesis (25:13), Isaiah (21:16-17, 42:11, 60:7), Jeremiah (2:10, 49:28-33), Ezekiel (27:21), and Chronicles (1:29). Twice, Qedar is used to refer to the actual son of Ishmael, as in the books of Genesis and Chronicles, while remaining references are to his descendants, referring either to his most prominent North Arabian sons, or to the Arabs and Bedouins as a more general collective. The "tents of Kedar" equated with "the peace-hating Meshech" mentioned in the Book of Psalms (120:5) were likely a Qedarite sub-group. In Canticles (1:5), the Qedarites are described as dark-skinned.

Biblical descriptions indicate there were two major types of Qedarites: nomads (Arabic: warbariya) living in tents and sedentary people (Arabic:ḥaḍariya) living in villages. Jeremiah describes them as "a nation at ease, that dwells securely." (49:31). Isaiah recalls their warrior activities and skill with the bow. (21:16f) Ezekiel associates "Arabia and all the princes of Kedar", and indicates that they engaged in sheep/goat trading with the Phoenicians. The three books list the flocks of the Qedarites as including lambs, rams, goats and camels.

Jeremiah also tells of a campaign by Nebuchadnezzar (630 - 562 BC) against the Qedarites during the Babylonian period. Gashmu, the king of the Qedarites mentioned in the 5th century BC Aramaic inscription described above, is also referred to as "Geshem the Arab" or "Geshem the Arabian" by Nehemiah who lists him as one of his adversaries, since Gashmu stands opposed to Nehemiah's governorship over Judea in 447 BC.

Cultural legacy

The Qedarites are among a number of North Arabian tribes whose interactions with Arameaen tribes beginning in the 8th century BC resulted in cultural exchanges between these two large Semitic groups. Arab tribal groups like the Qedarites used the Aramaic alphabet to write before the development of the Arabic alphabet. There were also Qedarite kings that had Aramaic personal names (one example being Hazael or Haza-el). Aramaic civilization and its peoples were gradually absorbed by the Arabs with Arabic dialects in Palestine, Syria, and Iraq in particular exhibiting the huge influence of Aramaic.

Geneaology

Historical tradition among the Arabs holds that they are descended from Ishmael, Abraham's first son, According to Irfan Shahîd,

"Geneaological Ishmaelism was viewed with suspicion as a late Islamic fabrication beause of the confusion in Islamic times which made it such a capacious term as to include the inhabitants of the south as well as the north of the Arabian Peninsula. But shorn of this extravagance, the concept is much more modest in its denotation, and in the sober sources it applies only to certain groups among the Arabs of pre-Islamic times. Some important statements to this effect were made by the Prophet Mohammed when he identified some Arabs as Ishmaelites and others as not."

Ishmaelism thus holds that Ishmael was both an important religious figure and eponymous ancestor for some of the Arabs of western Arabia. Prominence is given in Arab geneaological accounts to two of Ishamel's twelve sons, Nebaioth (Nabīt) and Kedar (Qāydar), who are also prominently featured in the account in Genesis. It is likely that these two sons lived in northwestern Arabia and that their tribes were historically the most important of the 12 Ishamelite tribes.

The Kedarites and Nabataens were known to enjoy close relations, even engaging as wartime allies against the Assyrians. It is possible that the Kedarites were eventually incorporated into the Nabataen state which emerged as the strongest Ishmaelite presence in northwestern Arabia circa the 2nd century AD. In The Cambridge Ancient History, some of the '(Arab) Nabataens' mentioned by Diodorus in the year 312 are said to be Qedarites.

In accounts tracing the ancestry of the prophet Mohammed back to Ma'ad (and from there to Adam), Arab scholars alternate, with some citing the line as through Nebaioth, others Qedar. Many Muslim scholars see Isaiah 42 (21:13-17) as predicting the coming of a servant of God who is associated with Qedar and interpret this as a reference to Mohammed.

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