Qedarites Map

The Qedarites () were an ancient Arab tribal confederation centred in their capital Dumat al-Jandal in the present-day Saudi Arabian province of Al-Jawf. 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.Stearns and Langer, 2001, p. 41.

The Qedarites played an important role in the history of the Levant and North Arabia, where they enjoyed close relations with the nearby Canaanite and Aramaean states and became important participants in the trade of spices and aromatics imported into the Fertile Crescent and the Mediterranean world from South Arabia. Having engaged in both friendly ties and hostilities with the Mesopotamian powers such as the Neo-Assyrian and Neo-Babylonian empires, the Qedarites eventually became integrated within the structure of the Achaemenid Empire. Closely associated with the Nabataeans, who may have eventually assimilated the Qedarites at the end of the Hellenistic period.

The Qedarites also feature within the scriptures of Abrahamic religions, where they appear in the Hebrew and Christian Bible and the Quran as the eponymous descendants of '' Qaydar'', the second son of Isma'il, himself the son of Ibrahim. Within Islamic tradition, some scholars claim that the Islamic prophet Muhammad was descended from Isma'il through Qaydar.

Name

The name of the Qedarites is recorded in Old Arabic inscriptions written using the Ancient North Arabian script as (), and in Classical Arabic as () and ().

The name of the Qedarites is recorded in Aramaic as () in Achaemenid and Hellenistic period ostraca found at Maresha.

Assyrian records have transcribed in Neo-Assyrian Akkadian various variants of the name of the Qedar tribe under the forms of , , , , , , , and . In one Neo-Assyrian letter, the Qedarites are referred to as , reflecting the use of a voiced , similarly to the one used in the present-day Hejazī dialect of Arabic.

In the Hebrew Bible as (; ).

The Qedarites were also mentioned in Old South Arabian inscriptions as the ( or ).

Latin sources mention the Qedarites as the .

Geography

During the second half of the 9th century BC, the Qedarites were living to the east of Transjordan and to the south-east of Damascus, within the southwestern Syrian Desert in the region of the Wadi Sirhan, more specifically in the Jauf depression in its eastern part, where was located the Qedarites' main centre of Dūmat or ad-Dūmat (; recorded in Akkadian as ). Dūmat's location halfway between Syria and Babylonia and halfway between the Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Aqaba, as well as its relative water richness and its orchards made it the most important oasis of all North Arabia and gave it the position of being a main stop on the roads which connected Al-Hirah, Damascus and Yathrib.

At the time of the 7th century BC, the Qedarites had expanded eastwards so that their kingdom adjoined the western border of Babylonia, In the western Syrian Desert, the Qedarites adjoined the western section of the Fertile Crescent on the eastern border of the Levant, and before the conquest of Syria by the Neo-Assyrian Empire, the neighbours of the Qedarite Arabs to the west were the Aramaean kingdom of Damascus and the Canaanite kingdoms of Ammon, Edom, Israel, and Moab. After the Neo-Babylonian Empire destroyed the Canaanite kingdoms of Ammon, Judah, and Moab, followed by the Persian Achaemenid's annexation of Babylonia, the Qedarites expanded westwards into the eastern and southern Levant until their territory included the northern Sinai and they controlled the desert region which bordered ancient Israel and the eastern border of Egypt and of the Nile Delta.

Identification

The Qedarites were an Arab tribal confederation who were closely related to the other ancient Arabian populations of North Arabia and the Syrian Desert. Under the reigns of the Neo-Assyrian kings Esarhaddon and Ashurbanipal, Assyrian records referred to the Qedarites as being almost synonymous with the Arabs as a whole.

Although the Assyriologists Friedrich Delitzsch, R.C. Thompson and Julius Lewy had identified the Qedarite tribe of the () with the Biblical Ishmaelites () and considered the Akkadian name as derivative of , the scholar Israel Ephʿal has criticised this identification on several grounds:
* Ephʿal's criticism of the identification on historical grounds rests on three arguments:
** The term "Ishmaelites" only appear in Biblical sources relating to the period before the reign of the Israelite king David;
** The term "Arabs" starts appearing for the first time in Mesopotamian sources the middle of the 9th century BCE;
** Neither the Assyrian nor the Biblical sources ever identify or even connect the names "Arabs" and Ishmaelites.
* Ephʿal's criticism of the identification on phonetic grounds rests on two arguments:
** the name is already attested in early Akkadian under the forms and (), () and () and in later Akkadian under the forms () and ();
** likewise, the Hebrew form of Akkadian would have been () or () rather than ().

History

Neo-Assyrian period

During the 9th century BCE, the Qedarite confederation was centered around the region of the Wadi Sirhan, and it had commercial interests in the trade and border routes of the Syrian Desert. To the west, the borderlands of the Qedarites bordered on the powerful kingdoms of Damascus and Israel in the west, although the Qedarites themselves were independent of Damascene hegemony. The Qedarite king Gindibuʾ during this period enjoyed good relations with the Aramaean kingdom of Zobah, and, the Qedarites being transhumant nomads, they would bring their flocks to the summer pastures of the lower Orontes or the Anti-Lebanon mountains in Zobah while spending the winter in the regions to the east and south-east of these mountains.

The earliest known activities of the Qedarites date from between 850 and 800 BC, when their king Gindibuʾ allied with his powerful neighbours, the kings Hadadezer of Aram-Damascus and Ahab of Israel, against the rising Neo-Assyrian Empire. Although Gindibuʾ's kingdom was not in danger of being attacked by the Assyrians, the Qedarite rulers participated in the trade which passed through Damascus and Tyre, and Damascus and Israel controlled crucial parts of the trade routes as well as the pastures and water sources which were of vital importance to the nomadic Qedarites, especially in drought periods. This meant that the rise of Assyrian power in the 9th century BCE put the desert and border routes where Gindibuʾ had economic interests under threat of Assyrian disruptions, fearing which Gindibuʾ led 1000 camelry troops at the battle of Battle of Qarqar in 853 BCE on the side of the alliance led by Aram-Damascus and Israel against Shalmaneser III of Assyria.

Before the ascent of Assyrian hegemony, the Qedarite confederation was a polity of significant importance in the region of the Syrian Desert, and, beginning in the 8th and lasting until the 5th or 4th centuries BCE, the Qedarites were the hegemons among the Syrian Desert nomads, dominating the northwestern section of the Arabian peninsula in alliance with the local rulers of the kingdom of Dadān.

The alliance of Qarqar soon fell apart after Hadadezer of Damascus died and was succeeded by his son Hazael, who declared war on Israel and killed its king Jehoram and the Judahite king Ahaziah near Ramoth-Gilead in 842 BC; the consequent ascension of Jehu to the throne of Israel did not end the hostilities between Damascus and Israel. Despite this significant change, the Qedarites continued enjoying good relations with Damascus.

Shalmaneser III later campaigned to Damascus and Mount Hauran in 841 BCE, but his inscriptions mentioned neither the Qedarite kingdom nor Gindibuʾ himself or any successor of his. The Qedarites were not mentioned either in the list of rulers, including those of distant places such as Philistia, Edom, and Israel, who paid tribute to Adad-nirari III after the latter's defeat of Bar-Hadad III of Damascus in 796 BCE. This reason for absence the Assyrian records is that the kingdom of Gindibuʾ was far from the campaign routes of the Assyrians during the later 9th century BCE.

Following the rise in the Armenian highlands of a powerful rival of the Neo-Assyrian Empire the form of the kingdom of Urartu, which, just like Assyria, was interested in the rich states of northern Syria, in 743 BC the Assyrian king Tiglath-Pileser III started a series of campaigns in Syria which would result in this region's absorption into the Neo-Assyrian Empire, and the first phase of which was the defeat in that very year of an alliance consisting of Urartu and the Aramaean states of Melid, Gurgum, Kummuḫ, Bit Agusi, and ʿUmqi, after which he besieged Bit Agusi's capital of Arpad, which was Urartu's principal ally, for two years before capturing it. While Tiglath-Pileser III was campaigning against Urartu in 739 BC, the Levantine states formed a new alliance, headed by the king ''Azriya'u'' of Ḥamat, and including various Phoenician cities ranging from Arqa to Ṣumur and multiple Aramaean states from Samʾal in the north to Ḥamat in the south, which was defeated by Tiglath-Pileser III in 738 BC.

After this triumph of Assyrian hegemony in the western Fertile Crescent, the rulers of Damascus, Tyre and Israel accepted Assyrian overlordship and paid tribute to Tiglath-Pileser III. Since the Qedarite rulers participated in the trade which passed through Damascus and Tyre, they sought to preserve the Arabian commercial activities and the revenues that they acquired from these, and consequently the Qedarite queen Zabibe joined the kings Rezin of Damascus, Menahem of Israel, Hiram II of Tyre, as well as other various rulers from southern Anatolia, Syria and Phoenicia in acknowledging Assyrian hegemony and paying tribute to Tiglath-Pileser III in 738 BC. The tribute of Zabibe consisted of camels, but did not include frankincense or perfumes as the Qedarites would later offer the Assyrians because they had not yet become participants in the trade of aromatics produced in South Arabia. Tiglath-Pileser III's inscriptions recording this tribute payment constitutes the first explicit mention of the Qedarites by name.

During the 8th century itself, the North Arabian region acquired increased economic importance, with the northern Hejaz becoming a transit zone for the trade of goods imported from 'Asir and from Africa across the Red Sea. This, in turn, led to increasing interest to control this region by the Assyrians.

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. Among the many rulers in the western Fertile Crescent who pledged allegiance to Tiglath-Pileser III as result of this campaign in Palestine was the Qedarite queen Šamši.

Tiglath-Pileser III's campaign had not only disrupted the interests of Tyre, Damascus, Israel and the Qedarites but also resulted in the formation of a pro-Assyrian alliance consisting of Arwad, Ashkelon and Gaza, soon joined by Judah, Ammon, Moab, and Edom, who became players in Syrian politics with the goal of countering the anti-Assyrian alliance led by Damascus, Israel, Qedar and Tyre. However, the alliance headed by Damascus continued its anti-Assyrian activities, which caused the pro-Assyrian alliance to disintegrate, with Ashkelon and Edom soon defecting to the pro-Assyrian side. And since the Qedarites were still participating in the trade networks passing through Damascus and Israel, who themselves controlled important parts of the Arabian commercial route as well as pasture and water sources on which the Qedarites depended, especially during periods of drought, Šamši followed Rezin, Pekah, and Hiram II in rebelling against Assyrian authority in 733 BC.

During the reign of Tiglath-Pileser III itself, the Qedarites invaded Moab and killed the inhabitants of its capital city of Qir-Mōʾāb.

When Judah remained loyal to Assyria, Rezin and Pekah attacked it, starting the Syro-Ephraimite War, in retaliation of which Tiglath-Pileser III in turn attacked Damascus in 733 and 732 BC. As part of his intervention in Syria, Tiglath-Pileser III also attacked and defeated the Qedarites in the region of Mount Saqurri (Often identified with Jabal al-Druze), forcing Šamši to flee to the Wadi Sirhan, and taking significant spoils from them, including spices, which are first mentioned in relation with the Qedarites in Tiglath-Pileser III's records relating to this campaign, and cultic utensils like the resting places of the Qedarite gods as well as their goddess's sceptres. While Rezin would be executed and his kingdom annexed by the Assyrians and Peqaḥ was assassinated, Tiglath-Pileser III allowed Šamši to retain her position as the ruler of the Qedarites and appointed an Arab as (overseer for the count of Assyria) in Qedar to prevent her from providing aid to Damascus during the campaign in which the Assyrians annexed its territory, and to manage the Qedarites' commercial activities. This mild treatment of Šamši was due to the fact that the Qedarites by then had become wealthier and more powerful, and the Assyrians were interested in products, such as camels, cattle and spices which they could obtain from the Qedarites, as well as in preserving the administrative and social structures of the peoples of the Assyrian border regions who played an important role in international commerce and thus ensured the stability of the Neo-Assyrian Empire's economy. The arrangement between the Assyrians and the Qedarites established at the end of Tiglath-Pileser III's campaign in Palestine satisfied both parties enough that Šamši remained loyal to Assyria and later paid Tiglath-Pileser III a tribute of 125 white camels. Among the other Arabian populations around the southern Levant who offered tribute to Tiglath-Pileser III after his campaign were the Masʾaya. the Taymanites, Sabaean traders established in the Hejaz, the Ḫaipaya, the Badanaya, the Hatiaya, and the Idibaʾilaya.

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. The Assyrians would allow these nomad groups to graze their camels in the settled areas and integrate them into their control structure of the border regions of Palestine and Syria, which consisted of a network of sentry stations, check posts and fortresses at key positions, and administrative and governmental centres in the cities, and which would ensure that these Arabs would remain loyal to the Assyrians and would prevent the encroachment of other Arab nomads on the settled areas; thus, several letters to Tiglath-Pileser III by two Assyrian officials stationed in the Levant, respectively named Addu-ḫati and Bēl-liqbi, mention the participation of Arabs in several caravanserais in the region, including the one located at Hisyah; moreover, one Arabian chief from Tiglath-Pileser III's time, named Badiʾilu, was given a grazing permit and appointed as an official of the Assyrian administration as part of this policy. This in turn allowed the Arabs integrated into the Assyrian administration to further expand into the Levantine settled regions around Damascus and the Anti-Lebanon until the Valley of Lebanon.

In 729 BC, Tiglath-Pileser III proclaimed himself King of Babylon, thus marking the renewal of the importance of southern Mesopotamia and starting the resurgence of Babylon. This revival was itself related to the formation of new commercial links between Babylonia and the Persian Gulf and its surrounding regions, which would eventually lead to Aramaeans as well as Arabs moving into the region.

After the annexation of the kingdom of Israel to the Neo-Assyrian Empire by the Assyrian king Sargon II in , the Assyrians transferred some Arabs to the territory of the former kingdom as well as to the southern border regions of Palestine, and some sedentary Qedarites might have been present among the Arabians resettled by the Assyrians as colonists in the hill country around Samaria to perform economic activities as part of the Assyrian diversion of some of the Spice trade to Tyre through Samaria so as to increase both Assyrian control over it and imperial revenue from this commercial traffic. These Arabian settlers introduced the cult of the god Ashima in the region of Samaria.

Due to the revival of Babylonia which had started under Tiglath-Pileser III, nomads had also migrated over the course of the middle 8th century BC to the east into Babylonia, where they settled down and either founded their own settlements or became the majority population in pre-existing local settlements there. 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; 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. These Arabians might have been settled in Mesopotamia by the Assyrian kings themselves, especially by Sargon II and his son and successor Sennacherib, and some of these might have in turn been resettled in Media as camel tamers by the Assyrians after they had introduced the use of the dromedary in this region.

In 716 BC, the Qedarite queen Šamši joined a local Egyptian kinglet of the Nile Delta and the 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. Assyrian records referred to these three rulers as the "kings of the seashore and the desert," reflecting their influence in the trade networks which spanned North Arabia, the Syrian desert, and the northern part of the Sinai.

In the late 8th century BC, shortly before 700 BC, the domestication of the camels had made it possible for the Qedarites populations to travel further south the Arabian Peninsula, thus competing with the regional maritime trade routes. During the 7th century BC, this ability to travel so far to the south led to the establishment of the import of frankincense from the kingdom of Sabaʾ, thus forming the incense trade route, and further increasing the commercial importance of the northern Hejaz and of Palestine and Syria and the adjoining regions. And, under Sargon II, the Arabs within Syria, who may or may not have included Qedarites, were continuing to participate in the caravan traffic in close cooperation with the Assyrian authorities, especially in the area of the Homs plain, which itself extended eastwards towards Palmyra, and where these Arabs were allowed to graze their camels. As part of this collaboration, the Assyrian official Bēl-liqbi, who was stationed in Ṣupite, wrote a letter to Sargon II demanding the permission to transform an old caravanserai which had since become an archers' camp back into a caravanserai. During this period, the Assyrians imposed prohibition on selling iron, which was important for Assyrian armament, to the Arabs to prevent them from developing more efficient weaponry, and instead permitted only copper to be sold to them. 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.

The increased importance of Babylonia during this period was reflected by several anti-Assyrian revolts in Babylonia led by Marduk-apla-iddina II and supported by Elam, and when he recaptured Babylon and revolted against the Assyrians again in 703 BC with the support of the Elamites, the Qedarites supported him, with this policy of theirs being motivated by the trade relations which existed between Qedar and Babylon. One of the Arab supporters of Marduk-apla-iddina II, a chieftain by the name of Bašqanu, was captured by the Assyrian king Sennacherib when he suppressed the Babylonian revolt that same year. This Bašqanu was the brother of an Arab queen named Yaṯiʿe, who appears to have been a Qedarite queen and a successor of Šamši; the Qedarites had thus adopted the policy of supporting Assyria's enemy once Syria was firmly under Assyrian control after the previous one and half a century of trying to remain on good terms with the powers governing Syria, including Assyria.

During his repression of the Babylonian revolt in 702 BC, Sennacherib also attacked several Arab walled towns surrounded by unwalled villages in Babylonia, although it is unclear what relation existed between these Arabs and the Qedarites despite some of these settlements having names including Arabic components which would later be borne by several Qedarite kings, such as Dūr-Uait (from Arabic ) and Dūr-Birdada in Bīt-Amukkani, and Dūr-Abiyataʾ (from Arabic ) in Bit-Dakkuri; among the settlements attacked by Sennacherib was Qidrina, in the territory of Bit-Dakkuri, suggesting that these Babylonian Arabs might have been connected with the Qedarites.

Through a series of campaigns conducted from 703 to 700 BC, Sennacherib was able to establish control over the settled parts of Babylonia, as well as over the nomads of the desert to the immediate west of it, and according to his annals, members of the Taymanites and of the Qedarite sub-group of the Šumuʾilu, the latter of whom lived in the eastern Syrian Desert bordering on Babylonia, went to offer him tribute in the late 690s at the Assyrian capital of Nineveh, where they had to pass through a then recently built gate of the city called the (Desert Gate).

Although Sennacherib had regained control of Babylon in 703 BC, the Babylonians revolted against Assyrian rule with Elamite help yet again in 694 BC, and the Qedarites supported them again. As part of Sennacherib's repression of this new rebellion, which would end with the destruction of the city of Babylon itself in 689 BC, in 691 BC he conducted a campaign against the Qedarites, who by then had grown enough powerful to pose a danger to Assyrian interests. At this time, the Qedarites were ruled by Yaṯiʿe's successor, the priestess-queen Teʾelḫunu and her husband, King Ḫazaʾil, and who was attacked by the Assyrians while encamped in an oasis in the western borderlands of Babylonia; Teʾelḫunu, who had come with the nomads to invade the settled areas attacked by the Qedarites, stayed behind in a camp behind the frontlines to remain out of danger should the Qedarite forces be defeated. Teʾelḫunu and Hazael fled deep into the desert, to the Qedarite capital of Dūmat, where the Assyrians overtook and captured Teʾelḫunu and her daughter Tabūʿa, and took them as hostages to Assyria along with the idols of the Qedarites' gods, and continued pursuing the Qedarites until Kapanu near the eastern border of the Canaanite kingdom of Ammon, following which Hazael surrendered to Sennacherib and paid him tribute. 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.

Teʾelḫunu was taken to the Neo-Assyrian capital of Nineveh in 689 or 698 BC, where Sennacherib raised her daughter Tabūʿa, following the Assyrian practice of controlling vassal populations by raising their rulers at the Assyrian court, while Hazael had retained his position, but as an Assyrian vassal, and he sent Sennacherib continuous tribute until the latter's death. 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. From this period onwards, the Assyrians would attempt to control the North Arabian populations through vassals, although these vassals would themselves often rebel against the Neo-Assyrian Empire.

When Sennacherib's son Esarhaddon succeeded him in 681 BC, Hazael went to Nineveh to request from him that Tabūʿa and the idols of the Qedarite gods be returned to him. Esarhaddon, after having had his own name as well as "the might of Aššur" inscribed on the idols, acquiesced to Hazael's demand in exchange for an additional tribute of 65 camels, with this light tribute being motivated by Esarhaddon's desire to maintain Hazael's loyalty. This was motivated by Esarhaddon's view that the desert populations were required to maintain control of Babylonia, hence why he adopted the same conciliatory attitude towards the Arabs that he had towards Babylonia itself, and Hazael in consequence ruled over the Qedarites as an Assyrian vassal, and Esarhaddon soon allowed Tabūʿa to return to Dūmat and appointed her as queen of the Qedarites at some point before 678 or 677 BC.

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. Yauṯaʿ agreed to these conditions due to his dependence on Assyria and to consolidate his precarious position of rulership.

Hazael and his son Yauṯaʿ might have been seen as Assyrian agents by the Qedarites, and, sometime between 676 and 673 BC, one Wahb united the Arab tribes in a revolt against Yauṯaʿ. The Assyrians intervened by suppressing Wahb's rebellion, capturing him and his people, and deporting them to Nineveh to be punished as enemies of the king of Assyria.

When the Assyrians invaded Egypt in 671 BC, Yauṯaʿ was one of the Arab kings summoned by Esarhaddon to provide water supplies to his army during the crossing of the Sinai Desert separating southern Palestine from Egypt. Yauṯaʿ however soon took advantage of Esarhaddon being preoccupied with his operations in Egypt to rebel against Assyria, likely in reaction to the hefty tribute required from him. The Assyrian army intervened against Yauṯaʿ and defeated him, and captured the idols of the Qedarites, including that of their god ʿAttar-Šamē, while Yauṯaʿ himself fled, leaving the Qedarites king-less for the rest of Esarhaddon's rule.

After Esarhaddon died and was succeeded as king of Assyria by his son Ashurbanipal in 669 BC, Yauṯaʿ returned, and requested from the Assyrian king the return of the idol of ʿAttar-Šamē, which Ashurbanipal granted after Yauṯaʿ swore his allegiance to him.

Yauṯaʿ however soon led the Qedarites and the other Arab peoples into rebelling against the Assyrians, although the Nabataean king Nadnu refused when approached by join the revolt by Yauṯaʿ, who, along with the king ʿAmmu-laddin of another sub-group of Qedarites, attacked the western regions of the Neo-Assyrian Empire in Transjordan and southern Syria, while Yauṯaʿ's wife ʿAṭīya, who had come with the nomads to invade the settled areas attacked by the Qedarites, stayed behind in a camp behind the frontlines to remain out of danger should the Qedarite forces be defeated. The Assyrian troops stationed in the region, from Ṣupite to Edom, and the armies of the local Assyrian vassal kings, especially of Moab, repelled the Arab attacks, with ʿAmmu-laddin being defeated and captured by the Moabite king Kamas-halta

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