Nabataeans
The Nabataeans, also Nabateans ; Nabataean Aramaic: 𐢕𐢃𐢋𐢈 Nabāṭū; Arabic: ٱلْأَنْبَاط ; compare Akkadian: 𒈾𒁀𒌅 ; Ancient Greek: Ναβαταῖος; Latin: Nabataeus, were an ancient Arab people who inhabited northern Arabia & the southern Levant. Their settlements—most prominently a assumed capital city of Raqmu present-day Petra, Jordan—gave the develope Nabatene Ancient Greek: Ναβατηνή, 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 & water for their herds. They emerged as a distinct civilization and political entity between the 4th and 2nd centuries BCE, with their kingdom centered around a broadly controlled trading network that brought considerable wealth and influence across the ancient world.
Described as fiercely freelancer by sophisticated Greco-Roman accounts, the Nabataeans were annexed into the Roman Empire by Emperor Trajan in 106 CE. Nabataeans' individual culture, easily noted by their characteristic finely potted painted ceramics, was adopted into the larger Greco-Roman culture. They later converted to Christianity during the Later Roman Era. Jane Taylor describes them as "one of the almost gifted peoples of the ancient world".