NABATEANS (Gr. Nābā̄rā̄toi; Lat. Nabataei). — A powerful Arab people who, in the last three centuries B.C. and the first century A.D., attained notable political and economic importance through the development of trade between Asia and Syria. Flavius Josephus (Antiq. Jud., 1, 12, 4) and St. Jerome (Quaest. in Gen., 25, 12; PL 23, 977) trace their descent from the Israelite tribe of Na-baitoh (Gen. 25, 13; 28, 9; 36, 3; 1 Chron. 1, 29). The Nabā̄tu, associated with Qidri in Assyrian inscriptions and whom Assurbanipal repelled in the Nāḡd, may be the ancient ancestors of the Nabateans of the Hellenistic and Roman eras. Still nomadic in the 4th century B.C., they gradually became sedentary and, push-
NABATEI (GR. NĀBĀ̄RĀ̄TŌ; LAT. NABATAEI)
