Talk:Nabataeans

message: "They might have long been a bulwark between Rome and the wild hordes of the desert but for the short-sighted cupidity of Trajan..."
This seems a bit opinionated. After all, if neither the Romans or the Sassanids could resist the eventual Arab invasions that destroyed both, what are the chances that an independent Nabataean kingdom could've? Kuralyov 03:35, 2 Mar 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: "Mightabeen" never makes very good history. --Wetman 05:59, 2 Mar 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: On the contrary, speculation makes for interesting reading so long as it is labeled as such. Plus, there were many instances in which the mighty Roman army performed quite a ways below expectation, from the extended defeats by Spartacus to the reversals in Britain. JDG 00:42, 26 Apr 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: POV

message: Petra certainly was built and carved by the Nabataeans. Most of the building took place during the firs century BC and the first century AD. The Romans didn't annex the nabataeans until 106 AD. Petra became the city (that reached up to around 30.000 inhabitants IIRC) due to the Nabataeans. While it's true that there were already some signs of settling from before the nabataeans, this was pretty limited. The real and major mistake in this article is that it mistakes ancient Edomite Sela with early Petra. The famous attacks on the Nabataeans from 312 BC (though more likely actually 311 BC) were in fact on Khirbet es-Sela' which is rather more to the north. Sela and Petra were often mistakenly connected with each other, but they are not. See for example 'Nabataeans in History', WENNING, The world of the Nabataeans : volume 2 of the International Conference The World of the Herods and the Nabataeans held at the British Museum, 17-19 april 2001, Stuttgart, 2007. Online avaible here: http://archiv.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/propylaeumdok/volltexte/2010/628/pdf/Wenning_Nabataeans_in_history_2007.pdf My two cents. Titirius (talk) 14:10, 17 April 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: You are correct about the Nabataeans being the ones to carve Petra in the 1st C BC and AD but the issue of Sela/Petra is still debated in the literature as is that idea that the Antigonid attack on the Nabataeans occurred in 311 BC rather than 312. 311 BC is now the accepted date for Demetrius' attack but as far as I am aware, the earlier attack under Athenaeus is still believed to have been undertaken in the summer of 312BC (Note that Wenning is incorrect to say that, "From here he
sent two expeditions against the Nabataeans, the first under the command of Demetrios, the second under Athenaios," as Diodorus clearly places Athenaeus first). The references can be found in Anson, E. 2006. ‘The Chronology of the Third Diadoch War,’ Phoenix 60(3/4): 226-235. and Errington, R.M. 1977. ‘Diodorus Siculus and the Chronology of the Early Diadochoi, 320-311 B.C.,’ Hermes 105(4): 478-504. I propose that the article should read 312/11 BC as the chronology in Diodorus has not yet been firmly established for the first contact under Athenaeus and that the Sela/Petra dispute can be resolved in a similar way. 130.102.158.15 (talk) 03:26, 20 April 2011 (UTC)

text: I completely agree that several people have currently argued for the rock of the nabataeans in diodorus/hieronymus being sela, rather than petra (perhaps hornblower and or bosworth?) that said, I've not seen an arguement which convinces me one way or another that the location was sela or petra - I will do some checking as well and we can clear it up once we find the relevant references. Nice to work with someone who knows about the nbts - I've also divided this section off from the Josephus one as we're now talking more about date! 130.102.158.15 (talk) 23:45, 20 April 2011 (UTC)

text: That sounds like an excellent idea - I will try to do some further following up too but might suggest at this point that sela should take precedence, with a further sentence or note on petra being a possibility and/or becoming the later nabtaean capital - links could then be made to the articles on the edmoites and on petra as you suggest to bring it all together. I've also noted recently that the kingship article needs plenty of work as it's a little out of date now. 130.102.158.15 (talk) 01:20, 21 April 2011 (UTC)

text: Sorry - should have been more specific. The article is hidden within a few others but can be found at List_of_rulers_of_Nabatea. I am currently trying to track down the most up to date kinglist (at the moment I'm using Meshorer's 1970s one) to then update this list - the problems are in spelling, attribution and dates from what I can see and the list could then be better integrated into the rest of these articles. Vastiel (talk) 00:39, 29 April 2011 (UTC)
thread_title: Dates and Locations in Diodorus

message: " Nabataeans became the Arabic name for Aramaeans, whether in Syria or Iraq, a fact which has been incorrectly held to prove that the Nabataeans were originally Aramaean immigrants from Babylonia."
This statement is not true. Nabataens is not the arabic name from the Aramaen, whose arabic name is the same as in english آرامي / آراميون -آراميين. Nabataens in arabic is exactly that; Nabataen, although "Al Anbat" الأنباط is much more commonly used (both Al Nabataen and Al Anbat are correct plural forms).
* syrian is the arabic name for arameans, nabat is independent jordanian tribe but the name was given also by arab historians to non-traibls arabs and arameans of iraq although they not belong  the nabat tribe  — Preceding unsigned comment added by Hshamalsahra (talk • contribs) 00:06, 30 December 2014 (UTC)
thread_title: Names

message: External link or links have recently been deleted by User:Calton as "horrible Tripod pages which add little information, are full of ads, and fail WP:EL standards." No better external links were substituted. Readers may like to judge these deleted links for themselves, by opening Page history. --Wetman 15:07, 2 March 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Deleted external links

message: Reading through this entire section results in confusion and apparently conflicting statements.  It should be cleared up with better facts & references, which I cannot do myself because I know nothing about the subject :) --216.145.103.90 (talk) 18:28, 13 October 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Confusing Section: The Hellenistic and Roman periods 

message: the nabataeans also had ceramic pipeline irrgation, also mention Jacob Blaustein Institute which also conducts research to nabataeans irrigation techniques
see http://www.hackwriters.com/Nabataeans.htm
http://www.amnh.org/education/resources/rfl/pdf/petra_guide.pdf  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.246.180.114 (talk) 18:30, 29 March 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: irrigation

message: I wanted to ask what do you think about the ancestory of the nabateans. Are they the descendents of Nebajot and Ishmael?  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 188.22.169.155 (talk) 18:47, 19 May 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: Please step forward into the 20th century before attempting to engage the 21st. More reading and less imagining will serve on many similar occasions.--Wetman (talk) 21:00, 19 May 2010 (UTC)

text: Josephus certainly thought so which tells something of Jewish ideas about the Nabataeans in the 1st Century AD, but there is no archaeological, genetic or historical link which can be firmly established. Most scholarly opinion would say that there is no actual link between the descendants of Ishmael and the Nabataeans and trying to make sense of these biblical geneaologies isn't really worth it as they have little real world application. 124.171.209.51 (talk) 07:29, 2 January 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: They do have a real-world application. They tell us how people at the various times they were compiled saw the geopolitical interrelations among the peoples, tribes, nations, states and empires with which they were familiar. The names in them are really of such entities, not individual persons though usually presented as eponymous ancestors. An example is Canaan being a "son" of Egypt and hence Hamitic. The Canaanites were in fact (mostly) Semites. But Canaan was for centuries under Egyptian control and, as such, a "son" of Egypt. So these genealogies do tell us about the real world  or at least how people saw it. 82.1.16.152 (talk) 11:08, 25 April 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  Nabateans=Ishmaelites? 

message: Why is Wikipedia extremely biased against Arabs? Nabataeans are one of the groups the form ancient arabs... even the names of the kings are still used among Arabs and have an Arabic meaning.... Aretas حارثة malichus مالك Obodas عبادة Gamilath جميلة
It is funny how the www.Jewishvirtuallibrary.com has a monopoly over editing or writing anything about the Arabs.... Jews are by their very nature anti-arabs, and should not be allowed to play and mess with our history.... we have a lot of sources in Arabic that most people in Wikipedia consider un-reliable simply for the fact that they come from Arabs.... I can believe how a small group of people from the middle east decide and revise the history of this part of the world.....
213.210.238.186 (talk) 14:54, 20 November 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: why should jews want to "mess with our history"? that article just mention iudea and that alone contradict the propaganda about the "palestinians" without even reading from that other history parts like the byzantine and the creation of the name "palestine" years befor the caliphates conquer the whole area.so no jew need to edit the history that already destroy the propaganda we fight against.
--79.181.124.38 (talk) 08:46, 16 June 2013 (UTC)
replies: text:  we are discussin history here, there's no place for propaganda and conjectural theories, please keep the Arab-Israeli conflict out of it, or take it somewhere else Omar amross (talk) 03:01, 3 August 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Nabataeans one of the groups that form ancient Arabs 

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thread_title: File:MdSaleh1.JPG Nominated for Deletion

message: Mamshit (Israel) is yet another big and important city, somehow missing in the list  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 77.126.112.12 (talk) 04:11, 25 November 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Need to add Mamshit (Memphis) as an important archeological site 

message: Why can't you just make a map of the Nabataean distribution? Why the whole ancient world as a map?  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2003:6B:52D:A801:5DC3:F4C8:114E:CACA (talk) 10:26, 15 August 2015 (UTC)
replies: text: Feel free to make one. Pinkbeast (talk) 15:09, 15 August 2015 (UTC)
thread_title: Map

message: There is a site called (Mada'in Saleh) it's on Saudi Arabia?
And it not added to this page, hopefully we should add every country has monuments about Nabataeans  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 188.50.243.219 (talk) 13:12, 13 February 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  Mada'in Saleh 

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thread_title:  External links modified 

message: The Nabataeans, as nomads controlling the trade routes from Petra, must have been reasonably astute, because unlike their successors further south about a thousand years later they did not conquer other countries, or aim to, in the name of religion, an extremely potent form of ideology. They were ultimately defeated by shifting trade routes and a devastating earthquake in 363. It seems understandable enough that the popular writer should make the claim that she made. What is less understandable is that this banality should be cited here as some sort of 'authority'.Pamour (talk) 21:57, 12 January 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  gifted people 

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thread_title:  External links modified (February 2018) 

message: Their name transliterated into modern Arabic script in the first sentence of the article is irrelevant. It should rather be in the Nabataean alphabet.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2605:E000:2748:6F00:FCC3:7E55:6CE5:581E (talk) 17:33, 18 September 2019 (UTC)
thread_title:  Modern Arabic script versus Nabataean script 

message: The current article does not take the debate between an Aramaean and Arabic identity as seriously as it should be. The Maalouf source is not a credible source. This article needs to be flagged for Arabist propaganda and cultural bias. There is plenty of reason to believe that the Nabataeans were not merely ancestors of the modern Arabs as this article currently portrays but really a genuine mixture of Aramaean and Arabic culture and origins. I would like to start changing the article but I want to have this discussion first. The distinction between Aramaeans and Arabs early on was not that huge linguistically, so why is it so obvious that a culture with heavy Aramaean influences has no Aramaean roots. I would suggest that Aramaean and Arabic tribes easily could intermix in this period and this could have happened with the Nabataeans. The erasure of Aramaeans is an important problem to deal with in the Middle East, from Arabists, to Assyrianists, et cetera.
:There is scholarly consensus that they're Arabs, across sources from top publications and universities. Wikipedia's job isn't to ponder but to transmit what is said in the sources. See: W:NOR. And the sources are overwhelmingly pointing to one direction. I don't care about Maalouf, but I can list dozens of publications from Routledge, Harvard, Cambridge, Oxford, etc, where this is clearly laid out. You're the one talking propaganda. I can argue with the points you made and the misunderstandings you show on what an Arab is and what an "Aramaean" is, but this is useless, we're here to transmit academia not make up conclusions. Julia Domna Ba'al (talk) 04:49, 5 August 2020 (UTC)
replies: text: I just read the article again and it shows too much Aramaean and Assyrian bias. For example it states Nabataeans used "Syriac" script, but syriac was not created until the 1st-2nd c. AD, so it's inaccurate, it should be generic "Aramaic" script. Arabs used it since it was the lingua franca and not just here but also Arabs in Hatra, Characene, and other ethnic Arabs across the Near East, as did non Arabs like Parthians who also used an Aramaic script. Meanwhile Jews spoke an Aramaic dialect, different from Syriac, and no one calls them anything else. Note here that Aramaic is simply an umbrella term for numerous, mutually unintelligible, regional dialects. The Aramaean label has no historical record after the Assyrian period and is used by historians as a placeholder, and the Aramaean identity is a modern invention. Julia Domna Ba'al (talk) 05:11, 5 August 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  Aramaean vs Arabic 

message: I propose to merge Nabataean Kingdom into Nabataeans. Not a lot of point in having two different but strongly overlapping articles. Almost all information in Nabataean Kingdom is already present in this article. ImTheIP (talk) 12:14, 7 January 2021 (UTC)
replies: text:  Can you elaborate? The proposal is to merge Nabataean Kingdom into Nabataeans. That would broaden the scope. ImTheIP (talk) 15:40, 9 January 2021 (UTC)
replies: text: I think that Dimadick was looking at it the other way around—narrowing the scope of "Nabataeans" to match that of "Nabataean Kingdom".  Either way, I think we agree that "Nabataean Kingdom" is a narrower topic, and one that could be elaborated on considerably.  But it's fine to merge most of what can be merged about the Nabataeans in general into that article, leaving "Nabataean Kingdom" to focus primarily on the Nabataean state, rather than their culture.  The similar section already at "Nabataeans" doesn't seem excessive, even though it's about as long as "Nabataean Kingdom" would be if most of the general information were merged into "Nabataeans", leaving only a brief summary.  As I said, it still has a lot of potential for expansion.  P Aculeius (talk) 17:14, 10 January 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  Merger proposal 

message: See this edit . Jane Taylor is a no-name "photographer and writer", not a comparative historian or anthropologist. I don't think it makes sense including her quote calling the Nabateans "one of the most gifted peoples of the ancient world", considering. User:Makeandtoss claims its "peer reviewed and widely acclaimed nevertheless". First of all, I seriously doubt what appears to amount to a coffee table book with some text accompanying (surely very nice photos) has been peer reviewed. Secondly, even if the book is widely acclaimed, which might be true if you believe the blurbs on the book's Amazon.com page, that does not lend the author the academic weight needed to make such a statement qualify as "reliable scholarship". Specifically, it's problematic because she's not only making a comment on the Nabataeans but on ALL of the antique world, by comparing them. I think the quote needs to go. Thisisarealusername (talk) 09:48, 29 December 2022 (UTC)
replies: text: Jane taylor and her book are very much reliable peer-reviewed sources, here book “Petra and the Lost Kingdom of the Nabataeans” is published by Harvard University Press (2002), Chafique (talk) 03:37, 27 March 2023 (UTC)
replies: text: That said the reference could be reinforced with another reference. Sfar13 (talk) 13:21, 2 December 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  Jane Taylor quote 

message: One article talks about king Alexander Jannaeus invading and occupying Nabataean and then in the next sentence immediately jumps into what seems like a completely unrelated subject of  Obodas I knowing that Alaxander would attack. There is no prior mention of Obadas I or any conflicts with Alexander that would explain why Alexander would attack. 
Later in the article it says "Herod the Great, with the support of Cleopatra, started a war against Nabataea." but almost immediately after states that "Cleopatra's general, Athenion, sent Canathans to the aid of the Nabataeans, and this force crushed Herod's army, which then fled to Ormiza." Why would Cleopatra send troops to aid the Nabataeans if she is at war with them? It is hardly considered supportive to send troops against your allies, especially when those troops end up defeating said ally. Unless Athenion is acting in opposition to his Queen (Cleopatra) in which case the article should clarify his action as such. Gaheim (talk) 22:26, 2 July 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  Article is disjointed and confusing.