Attested from the 9th century BC, the Qedarites formed a powerful polity which expanded its territory throughout the 9th to 7th centuries BC to cover a large area in northern Arabia stretching from Transjordan in the west to the western borders of Babylonia in the east, before later consolidating into a kingdom that stretched from the eastern limits of the Nile Delta in the west till Transjordan in the east and covered much of southern Judea (then known as Idumea), the Negev and the Sinai Peninsula.

[4] Assyrian records have transcribed in Neo-Assyrian Akkadian various variants of the name of the Qedar tribe under the forms of Qidri, Qīdri, Qidrāya, Qidari, Qadari, Qādri, Qidarāya, and Qudari.

[30] Once Tiglath-Pileser III had returned to Assyria, the king Rezin of Damascus organised an anti-Assyrian alliance in Syria which was supported by Pekah of Israel and Hiram II of Tyre, and which started a revolt against Assyrian hegemony by the cities on the coast of the Levant.

Tiglath-Pileser III retaliated by campaigning in 734 BC against the southern Levantine coast until the Brook of Egypt and successfully managed to establish control over the commercial activities between the Phoenicians, the Egyptians and the Philistines.

[32][19] The Assyrian annexation of the kingdoms of Damascus and later of Israel would allow the Qedarites, to expand into the pastures within the settled areas of these states' former territories, which improved their position in the Arabian commercial activities.

These Arabs appear to have originated from the Wadi Sirhan region, passing through the Jawf depression and along the road near the city of Babylon which went from Yathrib to Borsippa, before finally settling into Bit-Dakkuri and Bit-Amukkani, but not Bit-Yakin or the region of the Persian Gulf;[16] the name of one of these settlements, Qidrina, located in the territory of Bit-Dakkuri, suggests that these newcomers might have been connected with the Qedarites, and the Arabian population in Babylonia remained in close contact with the Qedarites in the desert, who by this time had expanded eastwards so that they adjoined the western border of Babylonia.

[35] In 716 BC, the Qedarite queen Šamši joined a local Egyptian kinglet of the Nile Delta and the mukarrib Yiṯaʿʾamar Watar I of Sabaʾ in offering lavish presents consisting of gold, precious stones, ivory, willow seeds, aromatics, horses, and camels to the Assyrian king Sargon II to normalise relations with Assyria and to preserve and expand their commercial relations with the economic and structures of the newly established western borderlands of the Neo-Assyrian Empire following the Assyrian annexation of Damascus and Israel.

[35] Some Arabs, of unclear relation with both those which were then moving into Babylonia and the Qedarites, were at this time also living in Upper Mesopotamia, where they might have been settled by Sargon II and Sennacherib, and where their camels used to graze between Aššur and Ḫindanu, under the authority of the governor of Kalḫu.

Due to inadequate rainfall, the governor of Kalḫu lost control of these Upper Mesopotamian Arabs, who in 716 BC engaged in raids in the regions around Suḫu and Ḫindanu and even further south-east till Sippar, possibly with the support of Assyrian officials.

[43][44][45][33] The rich booty captured by the Assyrians at Dūmat included camels as well as luxuries which the Qedarite rulers had acquired from the Arabian trade routes, such as spices, precious stones, and gold.

Sennacherib also retained the idols of the Arabian gods as a way to ensure that they would remain loyal to Assyrian power and as a punishment against them in accordance with his heavy-handed policy with respect to Babylonia and its surrounding regions.

[43] Around the same time, Hazael died and was succeeded as king by his son Yauṯaʿ with the approval of Esarhaddon, who demanded from him a heavier tribute consisting of 10 minas of gold, 1000 gems, 50 camels, and 1000 spice bags.

[50] Abyaṯiʿ, along with his brother Ayammu, as well as Yauṯaʿ's cousin, the king Yuwaiṯiʿ ben Birdāda of the Šumuʾilu, led a contingent of Arab warriors to Babylon, where they arrived shortly before Ashurbanipal besieged the city.

[54] Following a domestic revolt in Babylon in 594 BC, the new king of Judah, Zedekiah, organised an anti-Babylonian meeting supported by Egypt in Jerusalem in which Ammon, Edom, Moab, Sidon and Tyre participated, and to which the Qedarites were also aligned.

[56] After Nebuchadnezzar II annexed the Canaanite kingdoms of Judah in 587 BC and of Ammon and Moab in 582 BC, the resulting power vacuum in Transjordan allowed the Arabs of the Syrian desert, including the Qedarites and the Nabataeans, to expand into these former states' settled territories close to the desert, including across southern Transjordan and Palestine until the Judaean hills, where they remained throughout the existence of the Neo-Babylonian Empire[52] and cohabited with the sedentary Ammonite, Moabite, and Edomite populations,[10] with whom these Arab incomers mingled over several generations.

[66][55] In the mid-5th century BC, the Qedarites were ruled by the king Gešem ben Šahr,[67] who enjoyed a prominent status within the Achaemenid administration and controlled the region to the south of Judaea in his role as an imperial official in Dadān, which is attested in the form of a Dadanitic inscription in which he is mentioned alongside the governor of Dadān, reading 𐪈𐪑𐪚𐪃 𐪔𐪆𐪃 𐪈𐪌 𐪆𐪀𐪇 𐪅𐪒𐪑𐪕 𐪐𐪂𐪉 𐪕𐪕𐪌‎ (bʾym Gšm bn Šhr wʿbd fḥt Ddn, lit.

'governor' is unattested in Arabian languages and is a loanword from Akkadian bel pīḫati, thus implying that the region was under Achaemenid rule), being evidence that Gešem was not the governor of Dadān but nevertheless held an important position as the oasis.

Like the earlier Qedarite rulers, Gešem had important interests in the trade passing through North Arabia into southern Palestine, and his fear of a resurgence of Judah led him to oppose Nehemiah in 445 BC after the latter rebuilt the walls of Jerusalem.

[77][78][55] Once Alexander had captured Gaza, he proceeded to send 500 talents of frankincense and 100 talents of myrrh captured as booty to his teacher, Leonidas of Epirus, and the success of his campaign placed the western part of the Qedarite kingdom which laid on the southern Levantine coast until the eastern borders of Egypt under Macedonian authority, with Alexander III appointing Cleomenes of Naucratis to be its governor at Hērōōnpolis (as Pithom was then known), while its parts in the Sinai Peninsula and the northern Hejaz remained independent.

[79][80] The Qedarites remained independent during the time of the Hellenistic states established by the Diadokhoi after the death of Alexander III, and uring the post-Achaemenid period, the whole of the area to the east of the Nile Delta became included in the Qedarite-inhabited territory named "Arabia.

[31]Due to increased contacts between Greece and Arabia over the course of the 4th century BC, the First Delphic Hymn to the Greek god Apollo mentions Άραψ ατμός (Áraps atmós, lit.

According to Herodotus, the mythical phoenix bird also lived in this part of the Qedarite kingdom, from where it would bring its father's remains to the temple of Ra in the Egyptian city of Heliopolis every 500 years.

[75][97][2][85] Sarah I. Groll, Manfred Bietak, and Mark Janzen reject any connection between the Land of Goshen and the territories of the Qedarite king Gešem, proposing instead that the biblical placename is related to the lake gsm mentioned in the Papyrus Anastasi IV, dated to the 13th century BC.

[9] According to Irfan Shahîd, historians view genealogical Ishmaelism with skepticism due to confusion in the Islamic period which led to Ismail being considered as the ancestor of all Arabian tribes.

[101] The Qedarites practised the ancient North Arabian polytheistic religion, including the worship of idols of their six deities, whose names are attested as ʿAttar-Šamē, Dāya, Nuhay, Ruḍa, Abbīr-ʾilu.

[106] The celestial god 𐪒𐪉𐪇𐪊𐪃‎ (ʿAttar-Šamē in Dumaitic Ancient North Arabian; recorded in Neo-Assyrian Akkadian as 𒀭𒀀𒋻𒊓𒈠𒀀𒀀𒅔, ᴰAtar-Samayin, reflecting the Aramaic form ʿAttar-Šamayin), was a local hypostasis of the Semitic deity ʿAṯtar,[114] and was closely connected to the king of the Qedarites.

[114] Attesting of the significant Aramaean-Canaanite and Mesopotamian cultural impact on the Qedarites is the fact that the earliest record of the god ʿAttar-Šamayin is from an early Aramaic cylinder-seal dating from the 9th century BC belonging to one 𐡏𐡁𐡃 𐡏𐡕𐡓𐡔𐡌𐡉𐡍 (ʿbd ʿtršmyn, lit.

[6][8][101] The Qedarites were thus members of a large commercial structure within which they provided the settled populations with animals, such as small cattle for food, wool production, and currency, as well as camels, which were useful for the Assyrians as a means of transport.

[90] Unlike the later Bedouin Arabs who often carried out razzias, the Qedarites were largely peaceful pastoralists whose involvement with the empires surrounding them primarily consisted of handling camels for transport and selling them cattle for food.

[55] During the early Hellenistic period, they are recorded as being armed with javelins, at which they were skilled enough to have defeated a Macedonian army,[121] and by the 2nd century BCE, they had developed the use of long and slender swords and knives which allowed them to attack enemies at close range from their camels' backs.