Central Arabia
As central Arabia , the area is inside the Arabian Peninsula called. The term Inner Arabia , which is often used synonymously , also includes the Arab or Syrian desert in the north of the peninsula.
expansion
Both terms, however, primarily designate that isolated area of Arabia that has no access to the sea (and therefore no trade with overseas peoples), i.e. excluding the coastal countries Hejaz , Asir , Yemen , Oman , Gulf Emirates , al-Hasa , etc. Inner Arabia therefore roughly corresponds to this Desert Arabia of the ancient tripartite division of the Arabian Peninsula into Petrean Arabia ( Petra , Northern Arabia ), Desert Arabia (Central Arabia ), Happy Arabia (Yemen and Oman, Southern Arabia ).
In a narrower sense, central Arabia only includes the historical region of Najd , which became the heartland of the Saudis and where most of the oases are located, separated from the rest of the world by the desert. The main enemies of the Saudis of Nejd were the also inner-Arab Banu Rashid in Jebel Shammar to the north .
In a broader sense, Central Arabia stretches from the Syrian Arabian Desert in the north to the “ Empty Quarter ” in the south, thus also including the desert hinterland of Syria , Iraq and Jordan as well as Oman ( Inner Oman ), the Emirates ( Jamama ) and Yemen ( Hamza line , Taif line or to Habarut), from Amman to Oman.
emigration
In ancient times, the area was more steppe than desert, there were significantly more oases and settlement centers than today, which made nomadic pasture farming possible. Several times there were waves of emigration, B. the Western Semites ( Akkadians and their descendants Assyrians and Babylonians ) from 2800 BC , The Eastern Semites ( Amurrites or Canaanites and the Hebrews or Jews descended from them ) from 2000 BC. As well as the Arameans from 1400 BC BC, finally the Arabs with the spread of Islam from the year 634.
The Arabian Peninsula is therefore regarded as the original home , at least as the common “nursery” of all Semites .
Before Islamization, the Arab regional empires of the Nabataeans , Ghassanids and Lachmids (converted to Islam in 636/637) had already emerged on the northern edge of Inner Arabia . B. fought for their existence with the inner-Arab Kinda Federation.
Expression
Especially in the Arab-Islamic period, the desert of inner Arabia was again and again a model and starting point for religious-extremist revival movements and Islamic puritans . After Mohammed himself, the Karmatians also found staunch supporters here in the 10th and 11th centuries , even after they had lost the coastal regions of Bahrain and al-Hasa.
In the 18th and 19th centuries, the Saudi Wahhabis formed in Nedschd . The Arab historian Ibn Chaldun holds the asabiya , a special tribal and solidarity feeling or a central culture, mission and God consciousness , responsible for which only desert nomads could develop or shape in this way. He also compares the sons of the desert within Arabia with the strictly Islamic Berber dynasties of North Africa ( Almoravids , Almohads and Merinids ). The German orientalist Ewald Banse drew a similar comparison between Arab Bedouins and Turkmen-Tatar steppe nomads in Central Asia.
literature
- Ibn Khaldun: al-Muqaddima. Beirut 1900.
- Lothar Rathmann (Ed.): History of the Arabs, Volume 1. Berlin 1975.
- Ulrich Haarmann: History of the Arab World. Munich 1994.