History of Arabia

The Arabian Peninsula has been home to Semitic people for thousands of years. These people include the Arabs, but not all Arabs live in Arabia. People from the Arabian Desert, known as Bedouins, herded animals as nomads.They were grouped into extended families and tribes. People in other parts the peninsula lived in villages and towns.

## Before Muslim era

Around 3000 BC, people near the Persian Gulf traded with Mesopotamia. Dilmun which is now Bahrain, was the center of trade. By 2000 BC, parts of southern Arabia traded with Ancient Egypt. During the peaks of their empires, Assyria and Babylonia controlled northern and western Arabia.

Sometime around 1000 BC, the kingdom of Saba' appeared in southern Arabia. There were also other kingdoms in the region, including Ma'in and Hadhramaut. In the 3rd and the 2nd centuries BC, Parthia expanded into southern and eastern Arabia. Saba' and Parthia became richer because of trade between Egypt and India. In the 1st century BC, Saba' conquered Ma'in. Near Saba', around 115 BC, the kingdom of Himyar appeared. In northern Arabia, Nabat was a trading kingdom in the 5th century BC. In 106 AD, the Roman Empire took control of Nabat. Parthia lost some wars to Rome and then left eastern Arabia. The Bedouins expanded their area, and some of them moved to the east and the north.

In northern and central Arabia, two kingdoms appeared in the 3rd and the 4th centuries AD: the Lakhmids and the Ghassanids. The Sassanid Empire from Persia supported the Lakhmids and Himyar, and the Roman Empire supported the Ghassanids. Both empires often fought each other.

By the 4th century AD, Himyar had conquered all of the peninsula's other kingdoms. Christianity came from Abyssinia (now Ethiopia) and Syria. Some people in Himyar followed Judaism. A Jewish king of Himyar killed Christians. Both Abyssinia and the Roman Empire, which was ruled by Justinian I, were Christian countries and in 525 attacked Himyar.

In the 6th century, the Bedouins fought one another in wars called the Jahiliyyah.

## Muslim era

In 610, Muhammad, an Arab from Mecca, claimed that God was speaking to him. The people of Mecca, mostly from the Quraysh tribe, worshipped many gods. Muhammad said that there is only one God. The religion of Islam was then founded, and his followers, called Muslims, conquered the Arabian Peninsula by war. After Muhammad died in 632, men called caliphs ruled the Muslims in his place in empires called caliphates, which included the Rashidun, Umayyad, and Abbasid Caliphates. Some parts of Arabian Peninsula, including Oman, were not always part of the caliphates. Rulers from the 900s to the 1200s included the Fatimid Caliphate, the Seljuk Empire, and the Ayyubid Sultantate. Islam was divided into two main forms, the Sunnis and Shi'ites, who fought many wars against each other. Yemen and Oman were ruled by different people at times, which included the Rasulid dynasty in Yemen.

The Hashemite Sherifs of Mecca ruled the Hejaz (the west of Arabia) region starting in the 900s. The Mamluks, based in Egypt, gaained control over the Sherifs in the 1300s. In 1517, the Ottoman Empire, based in Turkey, conquered the Mamluks. The Ottomans took control in the Hejaz, Yemen, and other parts of Arabian Peninsula. European countries wanted to control more of Arabian Peninsula and so they fought wars against the Ottomans. The Europeans, mainly the Portuguese, won some cities on the coast in the 1500s and 1600s. Iran won control in Oman, which also built its own Omani Empire. In the 1700s, a new form of Islam, Wahhabism, spread to the nomads. In the 1800s, the Wahhabis, led by the House of al-Saud, went to war against the Ottoman Empire. The British Empire helped the Wahhabis and gave them countries along the Persian Gulf. Britain also added part of Yemen into its empire. During World War I, the Allied Powers fought against the Ottomans, who lost the war. The Allied Powers divided the empire into smaller countries. In 1932, Ibn Saud, from the House of al-Saud, founded the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.