Search

[German version] Although A. owes its name to the word arab (Bedouins), the majority of its population was always sedentary. However, favourable climatic conditions for agriculture only existed in the south-western A. highland and large oases such as  Yat̄rib/Medina (Ḥiǧāz) and al-Yamāma in the East. Classical geography distinguished between A. deserta, which extended from southern Syria to the northern Ḥiǧāz, and A. felix, the southern part of the A. peninsula. The tripartite classification of Ptolemy, which added A. petraea, did not establish itself [1]. Since the earliest t…

[German version] Most northern region of  Palaestina. Under Ptolemaic rule ( Ptolemaeus) after the death of  Alexander [4] the Great, together with all of Palestine, G. became a Seleucid territory at the beginning of the 2nd cent. BC. Urbanization, and the  Hellenization that came along with it, resulted in an antagonism between the Hellenized cities and the Judaism in rural G. In 164 BC, in the context of the Maccabaean ( Judas Maccabaeus) rebellion against the Seleucids and the Hellenistic citie…

(Νέα πόλις/ Néa pólis, Νεάπολις/ Neápolis, ‘New City’). [German version] [1] Town on the northern coast of the Aegean This item can be found on the following maps: | Macedonia, Macedones | Moesi, Moesia Town on the northern coast of the Aegean to the west of the mouth of the Nestus river, across from the island of Thasos, modern Kavalla (Str. 7a,1,36; Ps.-Scyl. 67), probably a Thasian colony but the exact period of foundation is unknown. Early in the 6th cent. BC, autonomous silver coinage modelled on that of Eretria [1] (HN 196…

[German version] High plain, bordered to the west by the Golan Mountains (Γαυλανῖτις), to the north-west by Mount Hermon, to the north-east by the basalt desert of Laǧā (Τραχωνῖτις), to the south-east by the Ḥaurān Mountains (Αὐρανῖτις), and to the south by the river Yarmuk (Hieromykes) and its tributary wadis, thus occupying the same area as today's Nuqra. The name goes back to OT Bāšān (therefore Greek Βασάν; Basán and Βασανῖτις; Basanîtis). The dissolution of the Seleucid government in Syria and Palestine in the late 2nd cent. BC briefly brought B. under Nabataea…

[German version] (Ἰαμβία κώμη; Iambía kṓmē). Port town on the western coast of the Arabian peninsula, according to Ptolemy belonging to the territory of the Arsae (Ἄρσαι, Ptol. 6,7,3). I. is probably also identical with the island of Iambe, which, according to Plin. HN 6,168, lies off Berenice but is otherwise unknown. While the history of I. during the Hellenistic and Roman-Byzantine periods is largely unknown, the town achieved some importance under the Arab name of Yanbuʿ al-baḥr as the port of Medina (Ἰάθριππα; láthrippa/Yaṯrib), especially for pilgrim traffic. …

[German version] City in  Galilaea on the north-west shore of the Sea of Galilee ( Tiberias). The Greek designation Καφαρναούμ ( Kapharnaoúm), in the NT in some variants also Καπερναούμ ( Kapernaoúm Mk 1,21), is derived from the Hebrew Kefar Naḥūm (village of Naḥūm) which appears in a Byzantine inscription found in the synagogue of Ḥammaṯ-Gāder. In later Jewish tradition, the name was changed to Kefar Tanḥūm or simply Tanḥūm, which in turn gave rise to the current Arab name Talḥūm (but not Tall Ḥūm as a derivation of Tall Naḥūm). Even though C. was inhabited from the 3rd millennium B…