
Arab Kingdoms in the Levant and Iraq 2,000 Years Before Islam
These included the Lakhmids (Al-Manadhirah), Hatra, the Ghassanids, the Nabataeans, Palmyra, Qedar, Salih, Emesa (Homs), Tanukh, and Al-Hira. Even in southern Anatolia, the Kingdom of Edessa (Al-Ruha) was an Arab kingdom.
The region extending from Gaza, Petra, and Palmyra, all the way to Hatra, the Euphrates, and the borders of modern-day Turkey, spoke ancient Arabic languages and dialects (such as Nabataean Arabic, Safaitic, and Lihyanite). It was home to generations of Arabs who built palaces, minted coins, and developed writing scripts—from which the modern Arabic script was derived—throughout the era of slavery and the classical Greek and Roman empires.
Therefore, the cultural geography of pre-Islamic Arabs was "crescentic" par excellence, encompassing the Fertile Crescent just as it encompassed the Arabian Peninsula.
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