ARVAD (Hebrew 'Arvād; Assyrian 'Arvada; Septuagint Ἀράδιοι, Ἀρσάοι; Vulgate Aradii, Aradus). - A small Phoenician island (800 by 500 m) with a city of the same name (today Ruvād, with 2500 inhabitants), two and a half km from the coast, about 60 km north of Tripoli in Syria, inhabited by the Aradians, descendants of Canaan (Gen. 10:18). According to Strabo (XVI, 2, 133) it was founded by fugitives from Sidon. In antiquity it held an important place in commerce and navigation, together with Sidon and Tyre. A. ruled over the facing mainland territory, of which two cities mentioned in the Egyptian lists of the 15th-12th centuries B.C. are known: Qamaqa (today Tell Gamqē) and Marathos (today Amrit), in which after 1000 B.C. the rock-cut mausoleums of the kings of A. were located.
In the 15th century B.C. it had relations with Egypt (it is named ['rt] in the documents of Thutmose III [1501-1447], then in the el-Amarna letters), then with Assyria, and Tiglath-Pileser I (1115?-1102) boasts of having embarked on ships of A. Esarhaddon (680-69) and his son Ashurbanipal (668-26) subjected the kings of A., Matan-ba'al and Iskin-lā. In the middle of the 6th century B.C. it seems subject to Tyre, to which it supplied sailors and soldiers (Ezek. 28:8, 11); but, under the Maccabees, it reappears as independent (1 Macc. 15:23). The pseudo-Clementine writings place a visit of St. Peter there (Recogn., hom. VII, 26; XII, 12: PG 1, 1360; 2, 312; cf. Nicephorus, Historia eccl., II, 35: PG 145, 848).
Perhaps from the 2nd-3rd century it was an episcopal see. But its bishops are known only from the 4th century, at first also with the title of Antaradus (v.): Mocimus at the Council of Constantinople (381), Musaeus or Moses at the Council of Ephesus (431), Paul at the Council of Chalcedon (451), Atticus (458), Stephen at the Council of Jerusalem (536), Asyncretius at the Second Ecumenical Council of Constantinople (553). From the Middle Ages it is a titular see. v. ANTARADUS.
Like other Phoenician cities, it was razed to the ground in 648 A.D. by Mo'āwijah, sent by 'Omar. Its ruins were explored in 1860-61 and in 1915.
Bibliography3 works
der klass. Altertumswiss., II, p. 371 sq.; F.-M. Abel, in DBs, I, col. 597 sq.; G. Corradi, Studi ellenistici, Torino 1920, pp. 222-228; J. G. Milne, The coinage of Arados in the Hellenistic Period, in Iraq, 5 (1938), pp. 12-21. On the episcopal see: R. Janin, s. v. in DHG, III, col. 1345 sq.
Antonino Romeo