Nabataeans as Nomadic Bedouin tribes in the Arabian Desert

The Nabataeans were an ancient Arab people, who inhabited northern Arabia and the southern Levant. Their settlements ¿ most prominently the assumed capital city of Raqmu (present-day Petra, Jordan) ¿ gave the name Nabatene to the Arabian borderland that stretched from the Euphrates to the Red Sea. The Nabataeans were one of several nomadic Bedouin tribes that roamed the Arabian Desert in search of pasture and water for their herds. They emerged as a distinct civilization and political entity between the second and fourth century BCE, with their kingdom centered around a loosely controlled trading network that brought considerable wealth and influence across the ancient world. Described as fiercely independent by contemporary Greco-Roman accounts, the Nabataeans were annexed into the Roman Empire by Emperor Trajan in 106 CE. Nabataeans' individual culture, easily identified by their characteristic finely potted painted ceramics, was adopted into the larger Greco-Roman culture. They were later converted to Christianity during the Later Roman Era.