[2] The Nabataeans of Iraq were strongly associated by their Muslim overlords with agriculture and with a sedentary way of living, as opposed to the nomadic lifestyle of the conquering Arabs.
As a general term for pre-Islamic Mesopotamian people, it was also used in a more positive way by learned authors such as the historian al-Mas'udi (died 956), who identified the ancient Babylonian kings as 'Nabataeans',[8] stating that "these are the Nabataeans and others [...] It is they who erected the buildings, founded the cities, established the administrative divisions, dug the canals, planted the trees, sank the wells, worked the land.
However, the fact that the Iraqi 'Nabataeans' whom he used as direct informants were speakers of Aramaic, a language best known in his time through its Syriac variant, led him to use the terms 'Nabataean' and 'Syrian' (Suryānī) interchangeably, applying them both to the various Aramaic-speaking Hellenistic kingdoms established in the Near East after the death of Alexander the Great in 323 BCE.
[16] Ibn Wahshiyya claimed to have translated this work from a c. 20,000 old original written in "ancient Syriac" (al-Suryānī al-qadīm),[17] believing it to contain the first seeds of all human knowledge.
[21] Together with al-Mas'udi's historical works, and like the latter written in the context of the Shu'ubiyya movement which sought to preserve and promote the heritage of non-Arab peoples, the Nabataean Agriculture is the product of a conscious attempt to write down what was known at the time about pre-Islamic Mesopotamian, 'Nabataean' culture, a subject for which it remains a valuable source today.