The most accepted theory is related to the Nabateans (spelled النبطي), an ancient Arab civilization that inhabited northern Arabia and the southern Levant.

In addition, the feminization may have been used for noun agreement, therefore the city may have been referred to in some variation by its early inhabitants as القرية النبطية , "the village of the Nabateans” or possibly some other toponym using the feminine form.

Therefore, being in the hinterland and at the foothills of the Lebanon mountains between Sidon and Damascus, the city may have been a trading stop or station for the Nabateans, thereby owing its name to them.

One modern tradition that may have carried over from this ancient foundation is the weekly souk (souq el-tanen) which takes place every Monday and merchants from surrounding villages come to sell their goods.

[4] In the 1596 tax records, it was named Nabatiyya al-Tahta, located in the Ottoman nahiya (subdistrict) of Sagif under the liwa' (district) of Safad, with a population of 151 households and 28 bachelors, all Muslim.

The villagers paid taxes on goats and beehives, "occasional revenues", a press for olive oil or grape syrup, a market toll, and a fixed sum; a total of 9,030 akçe.

[7] During Israel’s first full scale invasion of Lebanon, Operation Litani, March 1978, most of the population of Nabatieh fled their homes in a bombardment that, according to the New York Times, left "[h]ardly a house [ ] intact".

[8] Following the 1982 Israeli invasion of southern Lebanon, in October 1983 an Israel Defense Forces (IDF) convoy drove into Nabatieh at the height of the Ashura celebrations.

[14] The IDF shelled Nabatieh again on 21 March 1994; during the bombardment a school was hit killing a twelve year old girl and wounding twenty-two others.

[15] Just over four months later, 4 August, the Israeli Air Force launched three airstrikes in the Nabatieh area which killed eight civilians and wounded eighteen.

[21] Later that year, 8 July, two teenage sisters and their four-year-old brother were killed when the town was hit by anti-personnel shells filled with steel darts, which are banned by the Geneva Conventions.

[22][23] During Operation Grapes of Wrath by the IDF on 18 April 1996, nine members of one family in Nabatieh were killed in the seventeen day bombardment when their house was destroyed.

[32] It is the main city in the Jabal Amel area and the chief center for both the mohafazat, or governorate, and the kaza, or canton both also called Nabatieh.

[33] The Nabatieh district has three representatives in the Lebanese government, all belonging to the Shi'a religion, in accordance with Lebanon's sectarian parliamentary system.

[34] A market is held every Monday where traders and visitors from neighbouring villages gather in the centre of the town to exchange their goods in an area known in Arabic as the Souq at-Tanen.