Qedarite
Encyclopedia
The Qedarites were a largely nomad
ic, ancient Arab tribal confederation. Described as "the most organized of the Northern Arabian
tribes", at the peak of its power in the 6th century BC it controlled a large region between the Persian Gulf
and the Sinai Peninsula
.
Biblical tradition holds that the Qedarites are named for Qedar, the second son of Ishmael
, mentioned in the Bible
's books of Genesis (25:13) and 1 Chronicles (1:29), where there are also frequent references to Qedar as a tribe. The earliest extrabiblical inscriptions discovered by archaeologists
that mention the Qedarites are from the Neo-Assyrian Empire. Spanning the 8th and 7th centuries BC, they list the names of Qedarite kings who revolted and were defeated in battle, as well as those who paid Assyrian monarchs tribute, including Zabibe
, queen of the Arabs (šar-rat KUR.a-ri-bi). There are also Aramaic
and Old South Arabian
inscriptions recalling the Qedarites, who further appear briefly in the writings of Classical Greek
and Roman
historians, such as 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 Nabataeans
, it is likely that they were subsumed into the Nabataean state around the 2nd century AD. Arab genealogical scholars widely consider Ishmael to be an ancestral forefather of the Arab people, and assign great importance in their accounts to his first two sons (Nebaioth
and Qedar), with the genealogy of Mohammed
, the founder of Islam
, alternately assigned to one or the other son, depending on the scholar.
, it was first transcribed in Assyrian
(8th century BC) and Aramaic
(6th century BC), as the Arabic alphabet
had not yet been developed. In the Mareshah onomasticon, the Qedarites are listed as an ethnic group whose name in Aramaic transliteration is QDRYN.
The Arabic triliteral root q-d-r means, "to measure, compute, estimate"; "to decree, appoint, ordain"; and "to have power, or ability." Qidr, a noun derived from the same root, means "cauldron, kettle," and also gives the verbal derviation, "to cook." Ernst Axel Knauf, a biblical scholar who undertook a historical study of the Ishmaelites
and determined that they were known in Assyrian inscriptions as the Šumu'il, surmises that the name of the Qedarites was derived from the verb qadara, with its meaning of "to ordain, "to have power." As this etymology is a deduction based solely on the prominence of the Qedar among the Šumu'il tribes, it is viewed as inconclusive by other scholars.
." According to Philip J. King, theologian and historian, they lived in the northwest Arabian desert
and were "an influential force from the 8th to 4th centuries BC." Geoffrey Bromiley, historical theologist and translator, transcribes their name as Kedar and states they lived in an area southeast of Damascus and east of the Transjordan
.
8th century BC Assyrian inscriptions place the Qedarites as living in the area to the east of the western border of Babylon. Moving further east 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
). Historian Israel Eph'al writes that the "breadth of Qedarite distribution suggests a federation of tribes with various sub-divisions."
Oases in the largely desert region ruled by the Qedarites - such as Dedan, Tayma
, and Dumah - played an important role as sites of settlement, trade, and watering-places. Dumah
, a remote desert city to the west, known later as Dumat Al-Jandal
and today as al-Jawf, was the most important of these, sitting as it did between the empires of Babylonia
and Assyria
. Serving as the base for Qedarite religious ceremonies, Dumah's strategic position on the north-south trade route in the area meant that relations with its inhabitants were sought after by both empires, though Dumah and the Qedarites were closer in both geographical and political terms to Babylonia. Those coming from the south and wishing to access Mesopotamia
were obliged to pass through Dumah, which also lay on an alternate route to the northwest, leading to the city of Damascus
, and from there, on to Assyria and Anatolia.
During the period of Persian imperial rule in the region (c. 550–330 BCE), the Qedarites exercised control over the desert areas bordering Egypt
and Palestine
and the traffic related to Arabian incense trade upon which Gaza
depended. Herodotus
(c.
484–425 BC) writes of their presence in the northern Sinai near the Egyptian
border where they may have been engaged by the Achaemenids, the Persian imperial authorities, to keep that border secure as well as their control of the city of Gaza.
(c. 737 BC) of Tiglath-Pileser III
, a king of the Neo-Assyrian Empire, that lists leaders from the western part of Mesopotamia
that pay him tribute
. To the Assyria
ns, the Qedarites were known as Qidri or qi-id-ri with other cuneiform
inscriptions also using Qadri, Qidarri, Qidari and Qudari (Neo-Babylonian). Zabibe
(c. 738 BC) is listed among those paying tribute under the title "queen of the Qidri and the Aribi" (Aribi meaning "Arabs").
Also mentioned in Assyrian royal inscriptions is Zabibe's successor Yatie
(c. 730 BC), who sent forces headed by her brother Baasqanu to aid Merodach-Baladan in his bid to hold onto power in Babylon
. Together with an army from Elam
, this alliance faced the forces of Sennacherib
, on the Assyrian king's first campaign in 703 BC. The events of the battle are recorded in the annals of Sennacherib which describe Yatie as "queen of the Arabs," and tell of 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. Dumah is referred to as Adummatu by the Assyrians, and the city is described by them as the seat of the Qedar confederation and the base of their cult.
Te'elkhunu and Tabua, both referred to as both "queens of Qidri" and "queens of Aribi," have Adummatu explicitly denoted as their seat and capital city in the inscriptions. While the capital city for the three other queens referred to as "queens of Aribi" (Samsi
, Zabibe and Yatie) is not explicitly mentioned, it is thought to have been Adummatu as well. Numerous inscriptions discovered in Dumah itself are further indications for a strong Qedarite presence, one of which asks of three deities known to the Assyrians as gods of Qedar (Ruda
, Nuha
and Atarsamain
) for "help in the matter of my love."
The conquest of Adummatu by Sennacherib in 690 BC and the capture of a Qedarite queen, Te'elkhunu, who was brought back to Assyria with other loot, including divine images, is also mentioned in the annals of the Assyrian monarchs. Esarhaddon eventually returned the "renewed" images of the Arab gods to Adummatu with Tabua, "who grew up in the palace of Sennacherib," and was appointed Qedarite queen by Esarhaddon to replace Te'elkhunu. However, strained relations between the Assyrians and the Qedarites meant that she ruled for only a brief period, with Esarhaddon recognizing Hazael as the king of Qedar after he increased his tribute to the Assyrian monarch by 65 camels. Esarhaddon then appointed Yauta, son of Hazael, as a Qedarite king, following Hazael's death. That Yauta paid a tribute in the form of 10 minas of gold, 1,000 precious stones, 50 camels, and 1,000 leather pouches of aromatics is also recorded.
The defeat of Ammuladi and Yauta after they mounted Qedarite forces to march against the kings of the Amurru
is recorded by Ashurbanipal. 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 thought to be the only woman who was not a ruler in her own right. The inscriptions record how Adiya was sent by Yauta to accompany Ammuladi and the Qedarite forces, and their subsequent defeat and capture in 604 BC by the forces of Kamushaltu, king of Moab
and a loyal vassal
of the Assyrian empire. Yauta is said to have "fled to the Nabataeans
." His subsequent capture and sentencing in Nineveh
are recorded by Ashurbanipal who relates that, "I put a dog chain upon him and made him guard a kennel." Abiyate was appointed as Yauta's successor, and soon joined with the Nabataeans
to revolt against Assyria again, prompting Ashurbanipal to launch a three-month campaign to end it, beginning in Palmyra
, continuing on to Damascus
and ending in the southern part of al-Leja.
Old South Arabic inscriptions mention qdrn ("Qadirān" or "Qadrān") as a person or people. Graffiti
found in al-Ula, known as the Graffito of Niran at Dedan, mentions Gashmu I, son of Shahr I, as King of Qedar.
A "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 him as "Qainū son of Gashmu," with the vessel described as an, "offering to han-'Ilāt
".
While it does not specifically mention the Qedar and is therefore a subject of debate, an Aramaic inscription dating to 5th century BC discovered on an incense altar at Lachish
and dedicated to, "Iyas, son of Mahaly, the king," is interpreted by André Lemaire as a possible reference to kings of Qedar.
has documented that the Qedarites were called upon to assist Cambyses II of the Persian empire in his invasion of Egypt
in 525 BC. The Qedarites and Nabataens were known to enjoy close relations, even engaging as wartime allies against the Assyrians. It is possible that the Qedarites were eventually incorporated into the Nabataen state which emerged as the strongest Ishmaelite presence in northwestern Arabia c. the 2nd century AD. In The Cambridge Ancient History, some of the (Arab) Nabataens mentioned by Diodorus in his retelling of events that took place in 312 BC are said to be Qedarites.
Pliny the Elder
(23–79 AD), who refers to the Cedrei and Cedareni ("Cedarenes") in the context of other Arabian tribes, placing their domain to the south of the Conchlei and adjacent to that of the Nabataei, is thought to be referring to the Qedar. Jerome
(c. 357–420 AD), also writing in Latin, transcribes Qedar as Cedar, and refers to it as a region. In one entry, he describes it as, "a region of the Saracens, who are called Ishmaelites
in scripture"; in another, he writes it that is was a "once uninhabitable region across Saracen Arabia"; and in a third, he writes that it is a "deserted region of the Ishmaelites, whom they now call Saracens." According to the Catholic Encyclopedia
, Theodoret
(c. 393 – c. 457) mentions that in his time, the Qedar lived near Babylon.
travellers to the Levant in the 19th century. Drawing on biblical motfis, comparisons are made between the Bedouins and the Qedar. For example, Albert Augustus Isaacs
describes the imposing spectacle of a Bedouin encampment on a plain upon which, "the black tents of Kedar were spread far and wide." An earlier account by Charles Boileau Elliot describes the Arabs as falling into two main groups, Fellah
s and Bedouins, and identifies the latter with Ishmael and the Qedar as follows:
Charles Forster identifies the Arab tribe of the Beni Harb as the modern descendants of the Kedar. He proposes that Beni Harb ("sons of war") is a patronym and nom de guerre that was adopted by the tribe at least 2,000 years ago, replacing Kedar as the national moniker.
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: "Black I am, but beautiful, ye daughters of Jerusalem / As tents of Qedar, as tentcloth of Salam black." Their tents are said to be made of black goat hair. A tribe of Salam
was located just south of the Nabateans in Madain Salih, and Knauf proposed that the Qedarites mentioned in this Masoretic text
were in fact Nabataeans and played a crucial role in the spice trade
in the 3rd century BC.
Biblical descriptions indicate there were two major types of Qedarites: nomads (Arabic
: wabariya) living in tents and sedentary people (Arabic
:ḥaḍariya) living in villages. Jeremiah describes them as "a nation at ease, that dwells securely" (49:31), and notes that they engage in the pagan practice of shaving their temples. 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.
Though they were vassals under Assyrian rule and were often engaged in rebellion against that empire, the rise to dominance of the Persian empire proved beneficial to the Qedarites. Qedarite control of the trade routes and the access they afforded the Persians translated into what Herodotus described as a friendly relationship.
groups. Early Arab tribal groups like the Qedarites spoke early Arab dialects, but as the Arabic alphabet
had not yet been developed, they used the Aramaic alphabet
to write. "The tongue of Kedar" is used in rabbinical sources as a name for the Arabic language.
Papponymy, the practice of naming boys after their grandfathers, was common among the Qedar. Some Qedarite monarchs had Aramaic personal names (e.g. Hazael or Haza-el), while others had Arabic personal names (e.g. Gashmu and Zabibe
). Aramaic civilization and its peoples were gradually absorbed by the Arabs with Arabic dialects
in Lebanon
, Palestine
, Syria
, and Iraq
in particular exhibiting the huge influence of Aramaic.
("The Goddess"), to whom the inscription on a silver bowl from a king of Qedar is dedicated. In the Babylonian Talmud
, which was passed down orally for centuries before being transcribed c. 500 AD, in tractate Taanis
(folio 5b), it is said that the Qedarites worship water.
political and cultural map describes it as a set of branching geneaologies. Biblical figures three generations forward from Terah
are invariably described as the eponymous founders of different tribes and polities that interacted with the Kingdom of Judah
between the 8th and 6th centuries BC. Such is the case of the Qedarite Arabs, who according to biblical tradition, are the offspring of the Abraham-Ishmael-Kedar geneaological line.
Historical tradition among the Arabs holds that they are descendants of Ishmael, Abraham
's first son by Hagar
. Abu Ja'far al-Baqir
(676–743 AD) wrote that his father Ali ibn Husayn informed him that Mohammed had said: "The first whose tongue spoke in clear Arabic was Ishmael, when he was fourteen years old." Hisham Ibn Muhammad al-Kalbi (737–819 AD) established a genealogical link between Ishmael and Mohammed using writings that drew on biblical and Palmyra
n sources, and the ancient oral traditions of the Arabs. His book, Jamharat al-Nasab ("The Abundance of Kinship"), seems to posit that the people known as "Arabs" are all descendants of Ishmael. Ibn Kathir
(1301–1373) writes, "All the Arabs of the Hijaz are descendants of Nebaioth
and Qedar." Medieval Jewish sources also usually identified Qedar with Arabs and/or Muslims. According to author and scholar Irfan Shahîd, Western scholars viewed this kind of "genealogical Ishmaelism" with suspicion, seeing it as,
ous ancestor for some of the Arabs of western Arabia. Prominence is given in Arab genealogical accounts to the first two of Ishmael's twelve sons, Nebaioth and Qedar , who are also prominently featured in the Genesis account. It is likely that they and their tribes lived in northwestern Arabia and were historically the most important of the twelve Ishamelite
tribes.
In accounts tracing the ancestry of 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.
Sayyid Ahmed Amiruddin
, deputy of Shaykh Nazim al-Qubrusi, the second most influential (non-political) Muslim in the world according to a 2009 REUTERS
online poll of nearly two million votes, asserts that according to Naqshbandi
transmitters, citing the last prominent Naqshbandi
teacher of south-India, the Muhaddith of Deccan Abul Hasanat Sayyid Abdullah Shah Naqshbandi, Nabt (Nabīt), the father of the Nabataeans
, was actually the grandson of Qedar (Kedar), son of Ishmael
. The genealogy of Muhammad
the Prophet by the Muhaddith of Deccan Abul Hasanat Sayyid Abdullah Shah Naqshbandi was cited in the pamphlet, "The Family Tree And Lineage Of The Pride Of Creation" .
, Ú-a-a-te is used to refer to the first names of both Yauta ibn Hazail (son of Hazael) and Uayte ben Birdadda (son of Birdadda). The latter is also sometimes referred to as Ia-u-ta- and in the inscriptions of Ashurbanipal, the two spellings were confused, with both written Ú-a-a-te. The transliteration of the original Akkadian into English is highly unstable and only some of the alternate spellings appear in this article.For example, in a love poem by Moses Ibn Ezra
centering on a beautiful Muslim boy he met, he refers to him as, "a son of Qedar," another way of saying he is "Arab".Herodotus described the relationship between the Qedarites and the Persians as follows: "they did not yield the obedience of slaves to the Persians, but were united to them by friendship for having given Cambyses passage into Egypt, which the Persians could not enter without the consent of the Arabs."
Nomad
Nomadic people , commonly known as itinerants in modern-day contexts, are communities of people who move from one place to another, rather than settling permanently in one location. There are an estimated 30-40 million nomads in the world. Many cultures have traditionally been nomadic, but...
ic, ancient Arab tribal confederation. Described as "the most organized of the Northern Arabian
Ancient North Arabian
Ancient North Arabian is a language known from fragmentary inscriptions in modern day Iraq, Jordan, Syria and Saudi Arabia, dating to between roughly the 6th century BC and the 6th century AD, all written in scripts derived from Epigraphic South Arabian...
tribes", at the peak of its power in the 6th century BC it controlled a large region between the Persian Gulf
Persian Gulf
The Persian Gulf, in Southwest Asia, is an extension of the Indian Ocean located between Iran and the Arabian Peninsula.The Persian Gulf was the focus of the 1980–1988 Iran-Iraq War, in which each side attacked the other's oil tankers...
and the Sinai Peninsula
Sinai Peninsula
The Sinai Peninsula or Sinai is a triangular peninsula in Egypt about in area. It is situated between the Mediterranean Sea to the north, and the Red Sea to the south, and is the only part of Egyptian territory located in Asia as opposed to Africa, effectively serving as a land bridge between two...
.
Biblical tradition holds that the Qedarites are named for Qedar, the second son of Ishmael
Ishmael
Ishmael is a figure in the Hebrew Bible and the Qur'an, and was Abraham's first born child according to Jews, Christians and Muslims. Ishmael was born of Abraham's marriage to Sarah's handmaiden Hagar...
, mentioned in the Bible
Hebrew Bible
The Hebrew Bible is a term used by biblical scholars outside of Judaism to refer to the Tanakh , a canonical collection of Jewish texts, and the common textual antecedent of the several canonical editions of the Christian Old Testament...
's books of Genesis (25:13) and 1 Chronicles (1:29), where there are also frequent references to Qedar as a tribe. The earliest extrabiblical inscriptions discovered by archaeologists
Syro-Palestinian archaeology
Syro-Palestinian archaeology is a term used to refer to archaeological research conducted in the southern Levant. Palestinian archaeology is also commonly used in its stead, particularly when the area of inquiry centers on ancient Palestine...
that mention the Qedarites are from the Neo-Assyrian Empire. Spanning the 8th and 7th centuries BC, they list the names of Qedarite kings who revolted and were defeated in battle, as well as those who paid Assyrian monarchs tribute, including Zabibe
Zabibe
Zabibe was a queen of Qedar who reigned for five years between 738 and 733 BC. She was a vassal of Tiglath-Pileser III, king of Assyria. She was succeeded by another queen, Samsi, who also reigned for five years...
, queen of the Arabs (šar-rat KUR.a-ri-bi). There are also Aramaic
Aramaic language
Aramaic is a group of languages belonging to the Afroasiatic language phylum. The name of the language is based on the name of Aram, an ancient region in central Syria. Within this family, Aramaic belongs to the Semitic family, and more specifically, is a part of the Northwest Semitic subfamily,...
and Old South Arabian
Old South Arabian
Old South Arabian is the term used to describe four extinct, closely related languages spoken in the far southern portion of the Arabian Peninsula. There were a number of other Sayhadic languages , of which very little evidence survived, however...
inscriptions recalling the Qedarites, who further appear briefly in the writings of Classical Greek
Classical Greece
Classical Greece was a 200 year period in Greek culture lasting from the 5th through 4th centuries BC. This classical period had a powerful influence on the Roman Empire and greatly influenced the foundation of Western civilizations. Much of modern Western politics, artistic thought, such as...
and Roman
Roman Empire
The Roman Empire was the post-Republican period of the ancient Roman civilization, characterised by an autocratic form of government and large territorial holdings in Europe and around the Mediterranean....
historians, such as Herodotus
Herodotus
Herodotus was an ancient Greek historian who was born in Halicarnassus, Caria and lived in the 5th century BC . He has been called the "Father of History", and was the first historian known to collect his materials systematically, test their accuracy to a certain extent and arrange them in a...
, Pliny the Elder
Pliny the Elder
Gaius Plinius Secundus , better known as Pliny the Elder, was a Roman author, naturalist, and natural philosopher, as well as naval and army commander of the early Roman Empire, and personal friend of the emperor Vespasian...
, and Diodorus.
It is unclear when the Qedarites ceased to exist as a separately defined confederation or people. Allies with the Nabataeans
Nabataeans
Thamudi3.jpgThe Nabataeans, also Nabateans , were ancient peoples of southern Canaan and the northern part of Arabia, whose oasis settlements in the time of Josephus , gave the name of Nabatene to the borderland between Syria and Arabia, from the Euphrates to the Red Sea...
, it is likely that they were subsumed into the Nabataean state around the 2nd century AD. Arab genealogical scholars widely consider Ishmael to be an ancestral forefather of the Arab people, and assign great importance in their accounts to his first two sons (Nebaioth
Nebaioth
Nebaioth is mentioned at least five times in the Hebrew Bible according to which he was the firstborn son of Ishmael, and the name appears as the name of one of the wilderness tribes mentioned in the Book of Genesis 25:13, and in the Book of Isaiah 60:7.-Biblical occurrences:In the Book of...
and Qedar), with the genealogy of Mohammed
Muhammad
Muhammad |ligature]] at U+FDF4 ;Arabic pronunciation varies regionally; the first vowel ranges from ~~; the second and the last vowel: ~~~. There are dialects which have no stress. In Egypt, it is pronounced not in religious contexts...
, the founder of Islam
Islam
Islam . The most common are and . : Arabic pronunciation varies regionally. The first vowel ranges from ~~. The second vowel ranges from ~~~...
, alternately assigned to one or the other son, depending on the scholar.
Etymology
The name of the Qedarites is generally said to be derived from the name for Ishamel's second son Qedar. Though the tribal name is ArabicArabic language
Arabic is a name applied to the descendants of the Classical Arabic language of the 6th century AD, used most prominently in the Quran, the Islamic Holy Book...
, it was first transcribed in Assyrian
Akkadian language
Akkadian is an extinct Semitic language that was spoken in ancient Mesopotamia. The earliest attested Semitic language, it used the cuneiform writing system derived ultimately from ancient Sumerian, an unrelated language isolate...
(8th century BC) and Aramaic
Aramaic language
Aramaic is a group of languages belonging to the Afroasiatic language phylum. The name of the language is based on the name of Aram, an ancient region in central Syria. Within this family, Aramaic belongs to the Semitic family, and more specifically, is a part of the Northwest Semitic subfamily,...
(6th century BC), as the Arabic alphabet
Arabic alphabet
The Arabic alphabet or Arabic abjad is the Arabic script as it is codified for writing the Arabic language. It is written from right to left, in a cursive style, and includes 28 letters. Because letters usually stand for consonants, it is classified as an abjad.-Consonants:The Arabic alphabet has...
had not yet been developed. In the Mareshah onomasticon, the Qedarites are listed as an ethnic group whose name in Aramaic transliteration is QDRYN.
The Arabic triliteral root q-d-r means, "to measure, compute, estimate"; "to decree, appoint, ordain"; and "to have power, or ability." Qidr, a noun derived from the same root, means "cauldron, kettle," and also gives the verbal derviation, "to cook." Ernst Axel Knauf, a biblical scholar who undertook a historical study of the Ishmaelites
Ishmaelites
According to the Book of Genesis, Ishmaelites are the descendants of Ishmael, the elder son of Abraham.-Traditional Origins:According to the Book of Genesis, Abraham's first wife was named Sarah and his second wife Hagar. However Sarah was old and barren, and could not conceive...
and determined that they were known in Assyrian inscriptions as the Šumu'il, surmises that the name of the Qedarites was derived from the verb qadara, with its meaning of "to ordain, "to have power." As this etymology is a deduction based solely on the prominence of the Qedar among the Šumu'il tribes, it is viewed as inconclusive by other scholars.
Geographical scope
The Qedarites were an "Arab tribal confederation," or "alliance of nomadic Arab tribesTribes of Arabia
Tribes of Arabia refers to Arab clans hailing from the Arabian Peninsula.Much of the lineage provided before Ma'ad relies on biblical genealogy and therefore questions persist concerning the accuracy of this segment of Arab genealogy...
." According to Philip J. King, theologian and historian, they lived in the northwest Arabian desert
Arabian Desert
The Arabian Desert is a vast desert wilderness stretching from Yemen to the Persian Gulf and Oman to Jordan and Iraq. It occupies most of the Arabian Peninsula, with an area of...
and were "an influential force from the 8th to 4th centuries BC." Geoffrey Bromiley, historical theologist and translator, transcribes their name as Kedar and states they lived in an area southeast of Damascus and east of the Transjordan
Transjordan
The Emirate of Transjordan was a former Ottoman territory in the Southern Levant that was part of the British Mandate of Palestine...
.
8th century BC Assyrian inscriptions place the Qedarites as living in the area to the east of the western border of Babylon. Moving further east into areas of the Transjordan
Transjordan
The Emirate of Transjordan was a former Ottoman territory in the Southern Levant that was part of the British Mandate of Palestine...
and southern Syria
Syria
Syria , officially the Syrian Arab Republic , is a country in Western Asia, bordering Lebanon and the Mediterranean Sea to the West, Turkey to the north, Iraq to the east, Jordan to the south, and Israel to the southwest....
in the 7th century BC, by the 5th century BC they had spread into the Sinai and as far as the Nile Delta
Nile Delta
The Nile Delta is the delta formed in Northern Egypt where the Nile River spreads out and drains into the Mediterranean Sea. It is one of the world's largest river deltas—from Alexandria in the west to Port Said in the east, it covers some 240 km of Mediterranean coastline—and is a rich...
. Qedarite domination of northwest Arabia involved alliances between the kings of Qedar and the kings of Dedan
Dedan
The word Dedan means "low ground". The people are called Dedanim or Dedanites.In the Bible, it can refer to either:* A son of Raamah . His descendants are mentioned in Isaiah 21:13, Ezekiel 25:13 and Ezekiel 27:15...
(Al-`Ula
Al-`Ula
The Al-`Ula oasis , some 110 km southwest of Tayma in northwestern Arabia was located at the incense route.It was the capital of the ancient Lihyanites...
). Historian Israel Eph'al writes that the "breadth of Qedarite distribution suggests a federation of tribes with various sub-divisions."
Oases in the largely desert region ruled by the Qedarites - such as Dedan, Tayma
Tayma
Tayma is a large oasis with a long history of settlement, located in northwestern Saudi Arabia at the point where the trade route between Yathrib and Dumah begins to cross the Nefud desert...
, and Dumah - played an important role as sites of settlement, trade, and watering-places. Dumah
Dumat Al-Jandal
Dumat al-Jundal , is the name for an ancient city of ruins located in North Western Saudi Arabia in the Al Jawf province its located 37KM away from Sakakah. The name Dumat al-Jandal means literally "Dumah of the Stone", since this was the territory of Dumah, one of the twelve sons of Ishmael...
, a remote desert city to the west, known later as Dumat Al-Jandal
Dumat Al-Jandal
Dumat al-Jundal , is the name for an ancient city of ruins located in North Western Saudi Arabia in the Al Jawf province its located 37KM away from Sakakah. The name Dumat al-Jandal means literally "Dumah of the Stone", since this was the territory of Dumah, one of the twelve sons of Ishmael...
and today as al-Jawf, was the most important of these, sitting as it did between the empires of Babylonia
Babylonia
Babylonia was an ancient cultural region in central-southern Mesopotamia , with Babylon as its capital. Babylonia emerged as a major power when Hammurabi Babylonia was an ancient cultural region in central-southern Mesopotamia (present-day Iraq), with Babylon as its capital. Babylonia emerged as...
and Assyria
Assyria
Assyria was a Semitic Akkadian kingdom, extant as a nation state from the mid–23rd century BC to 608 BC centred on the Upper Tigris river, in northern Mesopotamia , that came to rule regional empires a number of times through history. It was named for its original capital, the ancient city of Assur...
. Serving as the base for Qedarite religious ceremonies, Dumah's strategic position on the north-south trade route in the area meant that relations with its inhabitants were sought after by both empires, though Dumah and the Qedarites were closer in both geographical and political terms to Babylonia. Those coming from the south and wishing to access Mesopotamia
Mesopotamia
Mesopotamia is a toponym for the area of the Tigris–Euphrates river system, largely corresponding to modern-day Iraq, northeastern Syria, southeastern Turkey and southwestern Iran.Widely considered to be the cradle of civilization, Bronze Age Mesopotamia included Sumer and the...
were obliged to pass through Dumah, which also lay on an alternate route to the northwest, leading to the city of Damascus
Damascus
Damascus , commonly known in Syria as Al Sham , and as the City of Jasmine , is the capital and the second largest city of Syria after Aleppo, both are part of the country's 14 governorates. In addition to being one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in the world, Damascus is a major...
, and from there, on to Assyria and Anatolia.
During the period of Persian imperial rule in the region (c. 550–330 BCE), the Qedarites exercised control over the desert areas bordering Egypt
Egypt
Egypt , officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, Arabic: , is a country mainly in North Africa, with the Sinai Peninsula forming a land bridge in Southwest Asia. Egypt is thus a transcontinental country, and a major power in Africa, the Mediterranean Basin, the Middle East and the Muslim world...
and Palestine
Palestine
Palestine is a conventional name, among others, used to describe the geographic region between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River, and various adjoining lands....
and the traffic related to Arabian incense trade upon which Gaza
Gaza
Gaza , also referred to as Gaza City, is a Palestinian city in the Gaza Strip, with a population of about 450,000, making it the largest city in the Palestinian territories.Inhabited since at least the 15th century BC,...
depended. Herodotus
Herodotus
Herodotus was an ancient Greek historian who was born in Halicarnassus, Caria and lived in the 5th century BC . He has been called the "Father of History", and was the first historian known to collect his materials systematically, test their accuracy to a certain extent and arrange them in a...
(c.
Circa
Circa , usually abbreviated c. or ca. , means "approximately" in the English language, usually referring to a date...
484–425 BC) writes of their presence in the northern Sinai near the Egyptian
Ancient Egypt
Ancient Egypt was an ancient civilization of Northeastern Africa, concentrated along the lower reaches of the Nile River in what is now the modern country of Egypt. Egyptian civilization coalesced around 3150 BC with the political unification of Upper and Lower Egypt under the first pharaoh...
border where they may have been engaged by the Achaemenids, the Persian imperial authorities, to keep that border secure as well as their control of the city of Gaza.
Assyrian inscriptions
The first documented mention of Qedar is from a steleStele
A stele , also stela , is a stone or wooden slab, generally taller than it is wide, erected for funerals or commemorative purposes, most usually decorated with the names and titles of the deceased or living — inscribed, carved in relief , or painted onto the slab...
(c. 737 BC) of Tiglath-Pileser III
Tiglath-Pileser III
Tiglath-Pileser III was a prominent king of Assyria in the eighth century BC and is widely regarded as the founder of the Neo-Assyrian Empire. Tiglath-Pileser III seized the Assyrian throne during a civil war and killed the royal family...
, a king of the Neo-Assyrian Empire, that lists leaders from the western part of Mesopotamia
Mesopotamia
Mesopotamia is a toponym for the area of the Tigris–Euphrates river system, largely corresponding to modern-day Iraq, northeastern Syria, southeastern Turkey and southwestern Iran.Widely considered to be the cradle of civilization, Bronze Age Mesopotamia included Sumer and the...
that pay him tribute
Tribute
A tribute is wealth, often in kind, that one party gives to another as a sign of respect or, as was often the case in historical contexts, of submission or allegiance. Various ancient states, which could be called suzerains, exacted tribute from areas they had conquered or threatened to conquer...
. To the Assyria
Assyria
Assyria was a Semitic Akkadian kingdom, extant as a nation state from the mid–23rd century BC to 608 BC centred on the Upper Tigris river, in northern Mesopotamia , that came to rule regional empires a number of times through history. It was named for its original capital, the ancient city of Assur...
ns, the Qedarites were known as Qidri or qi-id-ri with other cuneiform
Cuneiform
Cuneiform can refer to:*Cuneiform script, an ancient writing system originating in Mesopotamia in the 4th millennium BC*Cuneiform , three bones in the human foot*Cuneiform Records, a music record label...
inscriptions also using Qadri, Qidarri, Qidari and Qudari (Neo-Babylonian). Zabibe
Zabibe
Zabibe was a queen of Qedar who reigned for five years between 738 and 733 BC. She was a vassal of Tiglath-Pileser III, king of Assyria. She was succeeded by another queen, Samsi, who also reigned for five years...
(c. 738 BC) is listed among those paying tribute under the title "queen of the Qidri and the Aribi" (Aribi meaning "Arabs").
Also mentioned in Assyrian royal inscriptions is Zabibe's successor Yatie
Yatie
Yatie was a queen of Qedar who ruled in the 8th century BC, circa 730 BC.Yatie sent her forces, headed by her brother Baasqanu, to aid Merodach-Baladan in his bid to hold onto Babylon...
(c. 730 BC), who sent forces headed by her brother Baasqanu to aid Merodach-Baladan in his bid to hold onto power in Babylon
Babylon
Babylon was an Akkadian city-state of ancient Mesopotamia, the remains of which are found in present-day Al Hillah, Babil Province, Iraq, about 85 kilometers south of Baghdad...
. Together with an army from Elam
Elam
Elam was an ancient civilization located in what is now southwest Iran. Elam was centered in the far west and the southwest of modern-day Iran, stretching from the lowlands of Khuzestan and Ilam Province, as well as a small part of southern Iraq...
, this alliance faced the forces of Sennacherib
Sennacherib
Sennacherib |Sîn]] has replaced brothers for me"; Aramaic: ) was the son of Sargon II, whom he succeeded on the throne of Assyria .-Rise to power:...
, on the Assyrian king's first campaign in 703 BC. The events of the battle are recorded in the annals of Sennacherib which describe Yatie as "queen of the Arabs," and tell of 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
Babylonia
Babylonia was an ancient cultural region in central-southern Mesopotamia , with Babylon as its capital. Babylonia emerged as a major power when Hammurabi Babylonia was an ancient cultural region in central-southern Mesopotamia (present-day Iraq), with Babylon as its capital. Babylonia emerged as...
.
Statements about the Qedarites in the annals of the Assyrian kings of Ashurbanipal
Ashurbanipal
Ashurbanipal |Ashur]] is creator of an heir"; 685 BC – c. 627 BC), also spelled Assurbanipal or Ashshurbanipal, was an Assyrian king, the son of Esarhaddon and the last great king of the Neo-Assyrian Empire...
and his son Esarhaddon
Esarhaddon
Esarhaddon , was a king of Assyria who reigned 681 – 669 BC. He was the youngest son of Sennacherib and the Aramean queen Naqi'a , Sennacherib's second wife....
indicate that the term Kedar was almost synonymous with Arabia. Hazael
Hazael
Hazael was a court official and later an Aramean king who is mentioned in the Bible. Under his reign, Aram-Damascus became an empire that ruled over large parts of Syria and Palestine....
, 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
Babylonia
Babylonia was an ancient cultural region in central-southern Mesopotamia , with Babylon as its capital. Babylonia emerged as a major power when Hammurabi Babylonia was an ancient cultural region in central-southern Mesopotamia (present-day Iraq), with Babylon as its capital. Babylonia emerged as...
in 691–689 BC, Hazael fled to Dumah. Dumah is referred to as Adummatu by the Assyrians, and the city is described by them as the seat of the Qedar confederation and the base of their cult.
Te'elkhunu and Tabua, both referred to as both "queens of Qidri" and "queens of Aribi," have Adummatu explicitly denoted as their seat and capital city in the inscriptions. While the capital city for the three other queens referred to as "queens of Aribi" (Samsi
Samsi
Samsi was an Arab queen who reigned in the 8th century BCE. As an ally of Rakhianu of Damascus, she fought the Assyrian king Tiglath-Pileser III in 732 BCE. After her forces were defeated, she fled the battlefield. Later, she went to Assyria to pay tribute to the king and was permitted to reign,...
, Zabibe and Yatie) is not explicitly mentioned, it is thought to have been Adummatu as well. Numerous inscriptions discovered in Dumah itself are further indications for a strong Qedarite presence, one of which asks of three deities known to the Assyrians as gods of Qedar (Ruda
Ruda (deity)
Ruda is a deity that was of paramount importance in the Arab pantheon of gods worshipped by the North Arabian tribes of pre-Islamic Arabia. The etymology of his name gives the meaning "well disposed" an indication of his function as a protective deity. The oldest reference to Ruda is found in the...
, Nuha
Nuha (deity)
Nuha is a deity that was worshipped among the Northern Arabian tribes in pre-Islamic Arabia. Associated with the sun, she formed part of a trinity of gods, along with Ruda and Atarsamain.-Meaning:...
and Atarsamain
Atarsamain
Atarsamain was an astral deity of uncertain gender, worshipped in the pre-Islamic northern and central Arabian Peninsula. Worshipped widely by Arab tribes, Atarsamain is known from around 800 BC and is identified in letters of the Assyrian kings Esarhaddon and Assurbanipal...
) for "help in the matter of my love."
The conquest of Adummatu by Sennacherib in 690 BC and the capture of a Qedarite queen, Te'elkhunu, who was brought back to Assyria with other loot, including divine images, is also mentioned in the annals of the Assyrian monarchs. Esarhaddon eventually returned the "renewed" images of the Arab gods to Adummatu with Tabua, "who grew up in the palace of Sennacherib," and was appointed Qedarite queen by Esarhaddon to replace Te'elkhunu. However, strained relations between the Assyrians and the Qedarites meant that she ruled for only a brief period, with Esarhaddon recognizing Hazael as the king of Qedar after he increased his tribute to the Assyrian monarch by 65 camels. Esarhaddon then appointed Yauta, son of Hazael, as a Qedarite king, following Hazael's death. That Yauta paid a tribute in the form of 10 minas of gold, 1,000 precious stones, 50 camels, and 1,000 leather pouches of aromatics is also recorded.
The defeat of Ammuladi and Yauta after they mounted Qedarite forces to march against the kings of the Amurru
Amurru kingdom
Amurru was an Amorite kingdom located at the territory of modern Lebanon during the 14th–12th centuries BCThe first documented leader of Amurru was Abdi-Ashirta, under whose leadership Amurru was part of the Egyptian empire...
is recorded by Ashurbanipal. 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 thought to be the only woman who was not a ruler in her own right. The inscriptions record how Adiya was sent by Yauta to accompany Ammuladi and the Qedarite forces, and their subsequent defeat and capture in 604 BC by the forces of Kamushaltu, king of Moab
Moab
Moab is the historical name for a mountainous strip of land in Jordan. The land lies alongside much of the eastern shore of the Dead Sea. The existence of the Kingdom of Moab is attested to by numerous archeological findings, most notably the Mesha Stele, which describes the Moabite victory over...
and a loyal vassal
Vassal
A vassal or feudatory is a person who has entered into a mutual obligation to a lord or monarch in the context of the feudal system in medieval Europe. The obligations often included military support and mutual protection, in exchange for certain privileges, usually including the grant of land held...
of the Assyrian empire. Yauta is said to have "fled to the Nabataeans
Nabataeans
Thamudi3.jpgThe Nabataeans, also Nabateans , were ancient peoples of southern Canaan and the northern part of Arabia, whose oasis settlements in the time of Josephus , gave the name of Nabatene to the borderland between Syria and Arabia, from the Euphrates to the Red Sea...
." His subsequent capture and sentencing in Nineveh
Nineveh
Nineveh was an ancient Assyrian city on the eastern bank of the Tigris River, and capital of the Neo Assyrian Empire. Its ruins are across the river from the modern-day major city of Mosul, in the Ninawa Governorate of Iraq....
are recorded by Ashurbanipal who relates that, "I put a dog chain upon him and made him guard a kennel." Abiyate was appointed as Yauta's successor, and soon joined with the Nabataeans
Nabataeans
Thamudi3.jpgThe Nabataeans, also Nabateans , were ancient peoples of southern Canaan and the northern part of Arabia, whose oasis settlements in the time of Josephus , gave the name of Nabatene to the borderland between Syria and Arabia, from the Euphrates to the Red Sea...
to revolt against Assyria again, prompting Ashurbanipal to launch a three-month campaign to end it, beginning in Palmyra
Palmyra
Palmyra was an ancient city in Syria. In the age of antiquity, it was an important city of central Syria, located in an oasis 215 km northeast of Damascus and 180 km southwest of the Euphrates at Deir ez-Zor. It had long been a vital caravan city for travellers crossing the Syrian desert...
, continuing on to Damascus
Damascus
Damascus , commonly known in Syria as Al Sham , and as the City of Jasmine , is the capital and the second largest city of Syria after Aleppo, both are part of the country's 14 governorates. In addition to being one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in the world, Damascus is a major...
and ending in the southern part of al-Leja.
Old South Arabic and Aramaic inscriptions
| Name | Years of reign | Alt spellings | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Gindibu Gindibu Gindibu led the Arab forces at the Battle of Qarqar , as an ally of Ben Haddad the king of the Aramean state of Damascus, as they fought against Assyria... , of Arabia |
c. 870–850 | First mention of "Arabs" in Assyrian texts. Not explicitly associated with Qedar. |
|
| Queen Zabibe Zabibe Zabibe was a queen of Qedar who reigned for five years between 738 and 733 BC. She was a vassal of Tiglath-Pileser III, king of Assyria. She was succeeded by another queen, Samsi, who also reigned for five years... of Arabia and Qedar |
c. 750–735 BC | Zabiba | First monarch explicitly associated with Qedar in Assyrian texts. |
| Queen Samsi Samsi Samsi was an Arab queen who reigned in the 8th century BCE. As an ally of Rakhianu of Damascus, she fought the Assyrian king Tiglath-Pileser III in 732 BCE. After her forces were defeated, she fled the battlefield. Later, she went to Assyria to pay tribute to the king and was permitted to reign,... of Arabia |
c. 735–710 BC | Shamsi, Samsil | |
| Queen Yatie Yatie Yatie was a queen of Qedar who ruled in the 8th century BC, circa 730 BC.Yatie sent her forces, headed by her brother Baasqanu, to aid Merodach-Baladan in his bid to hold onto Babylon... of Arabia |
c. 710–695 BC | Iati'e, Yatie | |
| Queen Te'elkhunu of Arabia | c. 695–690 BC | Te'elhunu | |
| Hazael, King of Qedar | 690–676 BC | Hazail, Khaza'il | |
| Tabua | ? | Appointed queen by Esarhaddon. |
|
| Yauta, son of Hazael (ibn Hazael), King of Qedar |
676–652 BC | 'Iauta, Iata, Uaite or Yawthi'i |
|
| Abiyate, son of Teri (ibn Teri), King of Qedar |
652–644 BC | Abyate | |
| Mati-il, King of Dedan | c. 580–565 BC | ||
| Kabaril, son of Mati-il (ibn Mati-il) King of Dedan |
c. 565–550 BC | ||
| Nabonidus, King of Babylon | c. 550–540 | Ruled from Tayma | |
| Mahlay, King (of Qedar?) | c. 510–490 | Mahaly | Mentioned in Lachish inscription. |
| Iyas, son of Mahlay | c. 490–470 | Also named in Lachish inscription. |
|
| Shahr I, King of Qedar | c. 470–450 BC | Shahru | |
| Gashmu I, son of Shahr (ben Shahr), King of Qedar |
c. 450–430 BC | Geshem | |
| Qainu, son of Gehsem (bar Geshem), King of Qedar |
c. 430–410 BC | Kaynau, Qaynu |
Old South Arabic inscriptions mention qdrn ("Qadirān" or "Qadrān") as a person or people. Graffiti
Graffiti
Graffiti is the name for images or lettering scratched, scrawled, painted or marked in any manner on property....
found in al-Ula, known as the Graffito of Niran at Dedan, mentions Gashmu I, son of Shahr I, as King of Qedar.
A "king of Qedar" is also mentioned in a late 5th century BC Aramaic
Aramaic language
Aramaic is a group of languages belonging to the Afroasiatic language phylum. The name of the language is based on the name of Aram, an ancient region in central Syria. Within this family, Aramaic belongs to the Semitic family, and more specifically, is a part of the Northwest Semitic subfamily,...
inscription on a silver vessel found at Tell Maskhuta in the eastern Nile
Nile
The Nile is a major north-flowing river in North Africa, generally regarded as the longest river in the world. It is long. It runs through the ten countries of Sudan, South Sudan, Burundi, Rwanda, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Tanzania, Kenya, Ethiopia, Uganda and Egypt.The Nile has two major...
Delta in lower Egypt
Egypt
Egypt , officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, Arabic: , is a country mainly in North Africa, with the Sinai Peninsula forming a land bridge in Southwest Asia. Egypt is thus a transcontinental country, and a major power in Africa, the Mediterranean Basin, the Middle East and the Muslim world...
. The inscription names him as "Qainū son of Gashmu," with the vessel described as an, "offering to han-'Ilāt
Allat
' or ' was a Pre-Islamic Arabian goddess who was one of the three chief goddesses of Mecca. She is mentioned in the Qur'an , which indicates that pre-Islamic Arabs considered her as one of the daughters of Allah along with Manāt and al-‘Uzzá....
".
While it does not specifically mention the Qedar and is therefore a subject of debate, an Aramaic inscription dating to 5th century BC discovered on an incense altar at Lachish
Lachish
Lachish was an ancient Near East town located at the site of modern Tell ed-Duweir in the Shephelah, a region between Mount Hebron and the maritime plain of Philistia . The town was first mentioned in the Amarna letters as Lakisha-Lakiša...
and dedicated to, "Iyas, son of Mahaly, the king," is interpreted by André Lemaire as a possible reference to kings of Qedar.
Classical Antiquity
HerodotusHerodotus
Herodotus was an ancient Greek historian who was born in Halicarnassus, Caria and lived in the 5th century BC . He has been called the "Father of History", and was the first historian known to collect his materials systematically, test their accuracy to a certain extent and arrange them in a...
has documented that the Qedarites were called upon to assist Cambyses II of the Persian empire in his invasion of Egypt
Ancient Egypt
Ancient Egypt was an ancient civilization of Northeastern Africa, concentrated along the lower reaches of the Nile River in what is now the modern country of Egypt. Egyptian civilization coalesced around 3150 BC with the political unification of Upper and Lower Egypt under the first pharaoh...
in 525 BC. The Qedarites and Nabataens were known to enjoy close relations, even engaging as wartime allies against the Assyrians. It is possible that the Qedarites were eventually incorporated into the Nabataen state which emerged as the strongest Ishmaelite presence in northwestern Arabia c. the 2nd century AD. In The Cambridge Ancient History, some of the (Arab) Nabataens mentioned by Diodorus in his retelling of events that took place in 312 BC are said to be Qedarites.
Pliny the Elder
Pliny the Elder
Gaius Plinius Secundus , better known as Pliny the Elder, was a Roman author, naturalist, and natural philosopher, as well as naval and army commander of the early Roman Empire, and personal friend of the emperor Vespasian...
(23–79 AD), who refers to the Cedrei and Cedareni ("Cedarenes") in the context of other Arabian tribes, placing their domain to the south of the Conchlei and adjacent to that of the Nabataei, is thought to be referring to the Qedar. Jerome
Jerome
Saint Jerome was a Roman Christian priest, confessor, theologian and historian, and who became a Doctor of the Church. He was the son of Eusebius, of the city of Stridon, which was on the border of Dalmatia and Pannonia...
(c. 357–420 AD), also writing in Latin, transcribes Qedar as Cedar, and refers to it as a region. In one entry, he describes it as, "a region of the Saracens, who are called Ishmaelites
Ishmaelites
According to the Book of Genesis, Ishmaelites are the descendants of Ishmael, the elder son of Abraham.-Traditional Origins:According to the Book of Genesis, Abraham's first wife was named Sarah and his second wife Hagar. However Sarah was old and barren, and could not conceive...
in scripture"; in another, he writes it that is was a "once uninhabitable region across Saracen Arabia"; and in a third, he writes that it is a "deserted region of the Ishmaelites, whom they now call Saracens." According to the Catholic Encyclopedia
Catholic Encyclopedia
The Catholic Encyclopedia, also referred to as the Old Catholic Encyclopedia and the Original Catholic Encyclopedia, is an English-language encyclopedia published in the United States. The first volume appeared in March 1907 and the last three volumes appeared in 1912, followed by a master index...
, Theodoret
Theodoret
Theodoret of Cyrus or Cyrrhus was an influential author, theologian, and Christian bishop of Cyrrhus, Syria . He played a pivotal role in many early Byzantine church controversies that led to various ecumenical acts and schisms...
(c. 393 – c. 457) mentions that in his time, the Qedar lived near Babylon.
19th century
There are brief references to the Qedar in the writings of WesternWestern culture
Western culture, sometimes equated with Western civilization or European civilization, refers to cultures of European origin and is used very broadly to refer to a heritage of social norms, ethical values, traditional customs, religious beliefs, political systems, and specific artifacts and...
travellers to the Levant in the 19th century. Drawing on biblical motfis, comparisons are made between the Bedouins and the Qedar. For example, Albert Augustus Isaacs
Albert Augustus Isaacs
Albert Augustus Isaacs was a 19th century historian and anthropologist, specializing in the history of the Jews and Arabs in the Middle East. Of major note is his biography of the Reverend Henry Aaron Stern , published in 1886, who for more than forty years was a missionary amongst the Jews...
describes the imposing spectacle of a Bedouin encampment on a plain upon which, "the black tents of Kedar were spread far and wide." An earlier account by Charles Boileau Elliot describes the Arabs as falling into two main groups, Fellah
Fellah
Fellah , also alternatively known as Fallah is a peasant, farmer or agricultural laborer in the Middle East and North Africa...
s and Bedouins, and identifies the latter with Ishmael and the Qedar as follows:
[...] the Bedouins still retain the wandering habits of their father Ishmael; their 'hand is against every man, and every man's hand is against' them; the wild desert is their home; the ground their pallet and their canopy the sky; or, if luxurious their choicest place of sojourn is a little tent 'black as the tents of Kedar' their progenitor [...]
Charles Forster identifies the Arab tribe of the Beni Harb as the modern descendants of the Kedar. He proposes that Beni Harb ("sons of war") is a patronym and nom de guerre that was adopted by the tribe at least 2,000 years ago, replacing Kedar as the national moniker.
Biblical
Abraham
Abraham , whose birth name was Abram, is the eponym of the Abrahamic religions, among which are Judaism, Christianity and Islam...
and Hagar
Hagar (Bible)
Hagar , according to the Abrahamic faiths, was the second wife of Abraham, and the mother of his first son, Ishmael. Her story is recorded in the Book of Genesis, mentioned in Hadith, and alluded to in the Qur'an...
are called Ishmaelites
Ishmaelites
According to the Book of Genesis, Ishmaelites are the descendants of Ishmael, the elder son of Abraham.-Traditional Origins:According to the Book of Genesis, Abraham's first wife was named Sarah and his second wife Hagar. However Sarah was old and barren, and could not conceive...
, after Ishmael
Ishmael
Ishmael is a figure in the Hebrew Bible and the Qur'an, and was Abraham's first born child according to Jews, Christians and Muslims. Ishmael was born of Abraham's marriage to Sarah's handmaiden Hagar...
, 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
Book of Isaiah
The Book of Isaiah is the first of the Latter Prophets in the Hebrew Bible, preceding the books of Ezekiel, Jeremiah and the Book of the Twelve...
(21:16-17, 42:11, 60:7), Jeremiah
Book of Jeremiah
The Book of Jeremiah is the second of the Latter Prophets in the Hebrew Bible, following the book of Isaiah and preceding Ezekiel and the Book of the Twelve....
(2:10, 49:28-33), Ezekiel
Book of Ezekiel
The Book of Ezekiel is the third of the Latter Prophets in the Hebrew Bible, following the books of Isaiah and Jeremiah and preceding the Book of the Twelve....
(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
Meshech
In the Bible, Meshech is named as a son of Japheth in Genesis 10:2 and 1 Chronicles 1:5.Another Meshech is named as a son of Aram in 1 Chronicles 1:17 .-Interpretations:...
" 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: "Black I am, but beautiful, ye daughters of Jerusalem / As tents of Qedar, as tentcloth of Salam black." Their tents are said to be made of black goat hair. A tribe of Salam
S-L-M
Shin-Lamedh-Mem is the triconsonantal root of many Semitic words, and many of those words are used as names. The root itself translates as "whole, safe, intact".-Salam "Peace":...
was located just south of the Nabateans in Madain Salih, and Knauf proposed that the Qedarites mentioned in this Masoretic text
Masoretic Text
The Masoretic Text is the authoritative Hebrew text of the Jewish Bible and is regarded as Judaism's official version of the Tanakh. While the Masoretic Text defines the books of the Jewish canon, it also defines the precise letter-text of these biblical books, with their vocalization and...
were in fact Nabataeans and played a crucial role in the spice trade
Spice trade
Civilizations of Asia were involved in spice trade from the ancient times, and the Greco-Roman world soon followed by trading along the Incense route and the Roman-India routes...
in the 3rd century BC.
Biblical descriptions indicate there were two major types of Qedarites: nomads (Arabic
Arabic language
Arabic is a name applied to the descendants of the Classical Arabic language of the 6th century AD, used most prominently in the Quran, the Islamic Holy Book...
: wabariya) living in tents and sedentary people (Arabic
Arabic language
Arabic is a name applied to the descendants of the Classical Arabic language of the 6th century AD, used most prominently in the Quran, the Islamic Holy Book...
:ḥaḍariya) living in villages. Jeremiah describes them as "a nation at ease, that dwells securely" (49:31), and notes that they engage in the pagan practice of shaving their temples. Isaiah recalls their warrior activities and skill with the bow
Bow (weapon)
The bow and arrow is a projectile weapon system that predates recorded history and is common to most cultures.-Description:A bow is a flexible arc that shoots aerodynamic projectiles by means of elastic energy. Essentially, the bow is a form of spring powered by a string or cord...
. (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
Nehemiah
Nehemiah ]]," Standard Hebrew Nəḥemya, Tiberian Hebrew Nəḥemyāh) is the central figure of the Book of Nehemiah, which describes his work rebuilding Jerusalem and purifying the Jewish community. He was the son of Hachaliah, Nehemiah ]]," Standard Hebrew Nəḥemya, Tiberian Hebrew Nəḥemyāh) is the...
who lists him as one of his adversaries, since Gashmu stands opposed to Nehemiah's governorship over Judea
Judea
Judea or Judæa was the name of the mountainous southern part of the historic Land of Israel from the 8th century BCE to the 2nd century CE, when Roman Judea was renamed Syria Palaestina following the Jewish Bar Kokhba revolt.-Etymology:The...
in 447 BC.
Culture and society
Biblical and extrabiblical evidence suggests that of the Arabian tribes, the Qedarites were most prominent in their contacts with the world outside of Arabia. Like other nomadic groups, they lived primarily in unforitified encampments. Pastoralists and traders in livestock, such as male lambs, rams and goats, they also played a key role in the prosperity of Gaza's incense trade, controlling traffic in the desert regions between Egypt and Palestine. As a result of their trading activities, there were clans from among the Qedarites that became wealthy.Though they were vassals under Assyrian rule and were often engaged in rebellion against that empire, the rise to dominance of the Persian empire proved beneficial to the Qedarites. Qedarite control of the trade routes and the access they afforded the Persians translated into what Herodotus described as a friendly relationship.
Language
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 SemiticSemitic
In linguistics and ethnology, Semitic was first used to refer to a language family of largely Middle Eastern origin, now called the Semitic languages...
groups. Early Arab tribal groups like the Qedarites spoke early Arab dialects, but as the Arabic alphabet
Arabic alphabet
The Arabic alphabet or Arabic abjad is the Arabic script as it is codified for writing the Arabic language. It is written from right to left, in a cursive style, and includes 28 letters. Because letters usually stand for consonants, it is classified as an abjad.-Consonants:The Arabic alphabet has...
had not yet been developed, they used the Aramaic alphabet
Aramaic alphabet
The Aramaic alphabet is adapted from the Phoenician alphabet and became distinctive from it by the 8th century BC. The letters all represent consonants, some of which are matres lectionis, which also indicate long vowels....
to write. "The tongue of Kedar" is used in rabbinical sources as a name for the Arabic language.
Papponymy, the practice of naming boys after their grandfathers, was common among the Qedar. Some Qedarite monarchs had Aramaic personal names (e.g. Hazael or Haza-el), while others had Arabic personal names (e.g. Gashmu and Zabibe
Zabibe
Zabibe was a queen of Qedar who reigned for five years between 738 and 733 BC. She was a vassal of Tiglath-Pileser III, king of Assyria. She was succeeded by another queen, Samsi, who also reigned for five years...
). Aramaic civilization and its peoples were gradually absorbed by the Arabs with Arabic dialects
Varieties of Arabic
The Arabic language is a Semitic language characterized by a wide number of linguistic varieties within its five regional forms. The largest divisions occur between the spoken languages of different regions. The Arabic of North Africa, for example, is often incomprehensible to an Arabic speaker...
in Lebanon
Lebanon
Lebanon , officially the Republic of LebanonRepublic of Lebanon is the most common term used by Lebanese government agencies. The term Lebanese Republic, a literal translation of the official Arabic and French names that is not used in today's world. Arabic is the most common language spoken among...
, Palestine
Palestinian Arabic
Palestinian Arabic is a Levantine Arabic dialect subgroup spoken by Palestinians and the majority of Arab-Israelis. Rural varieties of this dialect exhibit several distinctive features; particularly the pronunciation of qaf as kaf, which distinguish them from other Arabic varieties...
, Syria
Syrian Arabic
Syrian Arabic is a variety of Arabic spoken in Syria.-History:Syrian Arabic proper is a form of Levantine Arabic, and may be divided into South Syrian Arabic, spoken in the cities of Damascus, Homs and Hama, and North Syrian Arabic, spoken in the region of Aleppo. Allied dialects are spoken in...
, and Iraq
Iraqi Arabic
Iraqi Arabic is a continuum of mutually intelligible Arabic varieties native to the Mesopotamian basin of Iraq as well as spanning into eastern and northern Syria, western Iran, southeastern Turkey, and spoken in respective Iraqi diaspora communities.-Varieties:Iraqi Arabic has two major varieties...
in particular exhibiting the huge influence of Aramaic.
Religion
Religious worship among the Qedar, as was the case for most of the inhabitants of Arabia until the 4th century AD, was centered around a polytheistic system in which women figured prominently. Divine images of the gods and goddesses worshipped by the Qedar, as noted in Assyrian inscriptions, included representations of Atarsamain, Nuha, Ruda, Daa, Abirillu, and Atarquruma. The female guardian of these idols, usually the reigning queen, served as a priestess (apkallatu, in Assyrian texts) who communed with the other world. As mentioned above, there is also evidence that the Qedar worshipped AllātAllāt
' or ' was a Pre-Islamic Arabian goddess who was one of the three chief goddesses of Mecca. She is mentioned in the Qur'an , which indicates that pre-Islamic Arabs considered her as one of the daughters of Allah along with Manāt and al-‘Uzzá....
("The Goddess"), to whom the inscription on a silver bowl from a king of Qedar is dedicated. In the Babylonian Talmud
Talmud
The Talmud is a central text of mainstream Judaism. It takes the form of a record of rabbinic discussions pertaining to Jewish law, ethics, philosophy, customs and history....
, which was passed down orally for centuries before being transcribed c. 500 AD, in tractate Taanis
Ta'anit (Talmud)
Ta'anit or Taanis is a volume of the Mishnah, Tosefta, and both Talmuds. In Judaism these are the basic works of rabbinic literature.The tractate of Ta'anit is devoted chiefly to the fast-days, their practices and prayers...
(folio 5b), it is said that the Qedarites worship water.
Genealogy
The biblical view of the late Iron AgeIron Age
The Iron Age is the archaeological period generally occurring after the Bronze Age, marked by the prevalent use of iron. The early period of the age is characterized by the widespread use of iron or steel. The adoption of such material coincided with other changes in society, including differing...
political and cultural map describes it as a set of branching geneaologies. Biblical figures three generations forward from Terah
Terah
Terah or Térach is a biblical figure in the book of Genesis, son of Nahor, son of Serug and father of the Patriarch Abraham, all descendants of Shem. He is mentioned in the Hebrew bible and the New Testament.-Genesis narrative:...
are invariably described as the eponymous founders of different tribes and polities that interacted with the Kingdom of Judah
Kingdom of Judah
The Kingdom of Judah was a Jewish state established in the Southern Levant during the Iron Age. It is often referred to as the "Southern Kingdom" to distinguish it from the northern Kingdom of Israel....
between the 8th and 6th centuries BC. Such is the case of the Qedarite Arabs, who according to biblical tradition, are the offspring of the Abraham-Ishmael-Kedar geneaological line.
Historical tradition among the Arabs holds that they are descendants of Ishmael, Abraham
Abraham
Abraham , whose birth name was Abram, is the eponym of the Abrahamic religions, among which are Judaism, Christianity and Islam...
's first son by Hagar
Hagar (Bible)
Hagar , according to the Abrahamic faiths, was the second wife of Abraham, and the mother of his first son, Ishmael. Her story is recorded in the Book of Genesis, mentioned in Hadith, and alluded to in the Qur'an...
. Abu Ja'far al-Baqir
Muhammad al-Baqir
Muḥammad ibn ‘Alī al-Bāqir was the Fifth Imām to the Twelver Shi‘a and Fourth Imām to the Ismā‘īlī Shī‘a. His father was the previous Imām, ‘Alī ibn Ḥusayn, and his mother was Fatimah bint al-Hasan...
(676–743 AD) wrote that his father Ali ibn Husayn informed him that Mohammed had said: "The first whose tongue spoke in clear Arabic was Ishmael, when he was fourteen years old." Hisham Ibn Muhammad al-Kalbi (737–819 AD) established a genealogical link between Ishmael and Mohammed using writings that drew on biblical and Palmyra
Palmyra
Palmyra was an ancient city in Syria. In the age of antiquity, it was an important city of central Syria, located in an oasis 215 km northeast of Damascus and 180 km southwest of the Euphrates at Deir ez-Zor. It had long been a vital caravan city for travellers crossing the Syrian desert...
n sources, and the ancient oral traditions of the Arabs. His book, Jamharat al-Nasab ("The Abundance of Kinship"), seems to posit that the people known as "Arabs" are all descendants of Ishmael. Ibn Kathir
Ibn Kathir
Ismail ibn Kathir was a Muslim muhaddith, Faqih, historian, and commentator.-Biography:His full name was Abu Al-Fida, 'Imad Ad-Din, Isma'il bin 'Umar bin Kathir, Al-Qurashi, Al-Busrawi...
(1301–1373) writes, "All the Arabs of the Hijaz are descendants of Nebaioth
Nebaioth
Nebaioth is mentioned at least five times in the Hebrew Bible according to which he was the firstborn son of Ishmael, and the name appears as the name of one of the wilderness tribes mentioned in the Book of Genesis 25:13, and in the Book of Isaiah 60:7.-Biblical occurrences:In the Book of...
and Qedar." Medieval Jewish sources also usually identified Qedar with Arabs and/or Muslims. According to author and scholar Irfan Shahîd, Western scholars viewed this kind of "genealogical Ishmaelism" with suspicion, seeing it as,
[...] a late IslamIshmaelism in this more limited definition holds that Ishmael was both an important religious figure and eponymIslamIslam . The most common are and . : Arabic pronunciation varies regionally. The first vowel ranges from ~~. The second vowel ranges from ~~~...
ic fabrication because 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 PeninsulaArabian PeninsulaThe Arabian Peninsula is a land mass situated north-east of Africa. Also known as Arabia or the Arabian subcontinent, it is the world's largest peninsula and covers 3,237,500 km2...
. 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-IslamicPre-Islamic ArabiaPre-Islamic Arabia refers to the Arabic civilization which existed in the Arabian Plate before the rise of Islam in the 630s. The study of Pre-Islamic Arabia is important to Islamic studies as it provides the context for the development of Islam.-Studies:...
times. Some important statements to this effect were made by the Prophet Mohammed when he identified some Arabs as Ishmaelites and others as not.
Eponym
An eponym is the name of a person or thing, whether real or fictitious, after which a particular place, tribe, era, discovery, or other item is named or thought to be named...
ous ancestor for some of the Arabs of western Arabia. Prominence is given in Arab genealogical accounts to the first two of Ishmael's twelve sons, Nebaioth and Qedar , who are also prominently featured in the Genesis account. It is likely that they and their tribes lived in northwestern Arabia and were historically the most important of the twelve Ishamelite
Ishmaelites
According to the Book of Genesis, Ishmaelites are the descendants of Ishmael, the elder son of Abraham.-Traditional Origins:According to the Book of Genesis, Abraham's first wife was named Sarah and his second wife Hagar. However Sarah was old and barren, and could not conceive...
tribes.
In accounts tracing the ancestry of Mohammed
Family tree of Shaiba ibn Hashim
-Lineage of Shaiba ibn Hashim:Shaiba ibn Hashim was the grandfather of Prophet Muhammad, who was the cousin and father-in-law of Ali ibn Abi Talib, who was the fourth and last of the Rightly Guided Caliphs according to Sunni Muslims and the first Imam according to Shia Muslims...
back to Ma'ad (and from there to Adam
Adam
Adam is a figure in the Book of Genesis. According to the creation myth of Abrahamic religions, he is the first human. In the Genesis creation narratives, he was created by Yahweh-Elohim , and the first woman, Eve was formed from his rib...
), 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
God
God is the English name given to a singular being in theistic and deistic religions who is either the sole deity in monotheism, or a single deity in polytheism....
who is associated with Qedar and interpret this as a reference to Mohammed.
Sayyid Ahmed Amiruddin
Sayyid Ahmed Amiruddin
Sayyid Ahmed Amiruddin is a Deputy-Shaykh of the Baha-ud-Din Naqshband Bukhari school authorized by Shaykh Nazim al-Qubrusi; the second most influential Muslim in the world according to a 2009 Reuters online poll of over 1.8 million voters. Amiruddin is the Founder of and...
, deputy of Shaykh Nazim al-Qubrusi, the second most influential (non-political) Muslim in the world according to a 2009 REUTERS
Reuters
Reuters is a news agency headquartered in New York City. Until 2008 the Reuters news agency formed part of a British independent company, Reuters Group plc, which was also a provider of financial market data...
online poll of nearly two million votes, asserts that according to Naqshbandi
Naqshbandi
Naqshbandi is one of the major Sufi spiritual orders of Sufi Islam. It is considered to be a "Potent" order.The Naqshbandi order is over 1,300 years old, and is active today...
transmitters, citing the last prominent Naqshbandi
Naqshbandi
Naqshbandi is one of the major Sufi spiritual orders of Sufi Islam. It is considered to be a "Potent" order.The Naqshbandi order is over 1,300 years old, and is active today...
teacher of south-India, the Muhaddith of Deccan Abul Hasanat Sayyid Abdullah Shah Naqshbandi, Nabt (Nabīt), the father of the Nabataeans
Nabataeans
Thamudi3.jpgThe Nabataeans, also Nabateans , were ancient peoples of southern Canaan and the northern part of Arabia, whose oasis settlements in the time of Josephus , gave the name of Nabatene to the borderland between Syria and Arabia, from the Euphrates to the Red Sea...
, was actually the grandson of Qedar (Kedar), son of Ishmael
Ishmael
Ishmael is a figure in the Hebrew Bible and the Qur'an, and was Abraham's first born child according to Jews, Christians and Muslims. Ishmael was born of Abraham's marriage to Sarah's handmaiden Hagar...
. The genealogy of Muhammad
Muhammad
Muhammad |ligature]] at U+FDF4 ;Arabic pronunciation varies regionally; the first vowel ranges from ~~; the second and the last vowel: ~~~. There are dialects which have no stress. In Egypt, it is pronounced not in religious contexts...
the Prophet by the Muhaddith of Deccan Abul Hasanat Sayyid Abdullah Shah Naqshbandi was cited in the pamphlet, "The Family Tree And Lineage Of The Pride Of Creation" .
Footnotes
The place names of Dumah and Tayma (or Tema') also happen to be the names of two of Ishamel's sons as recorded in the Bible, and Tayma was also the name of a tribe.It should be noted that in the original AkkadianAkkadian language
Akkadian is an extinct Semitic language that was spoken in ancient Mesopotamia. The earliest attested Semitic language, it used the cuneiform writing system derived ultimately from ancient Sumerian, an unrelated language isolate...
, Ú-a-a-te is used to refer to the first names of both Yauta ibn Hazail (son of Hazael) and Uayte ben Birdadda (son of Birdadda). The latter is also sometimes referred to as Ia-u-ta- and in the inscriptions of Ashurbanipal, the two spellings were confused, with both written Ú-a-a-te. The transliteration of the original Akkadian into English is highly unstable and only some of the alternate spellings appear in this article.For example, in a love poem by Moses Ibn Ezra
Moses ibn Ezra
Rabbi Moses ben Jacob ibn Ezra, known as ha-Sallah was a Jewish, Spanish philosopher, linguist, and poet. He was born at Granada about 1055 – 1060, and died after 1138. Ezra is Jewish by religion but is also considered a great influence in the Arabic world in regards to his works...
centering on a beautiful Muslim boy he met, he refers to him as, "a son of Qedar," another way of saying he is "Arab".Herodotus described the relationship between the Qedarites and the Persians as follows: "they did not yield the obedience of slaves to the Persians, but were united to them by friendship for having given Cambyses passage into Egypt, which the Persians could not enter without the consent of the Arabs."