Annexation of the Nabataean Kingdom — Arabia Petraea
Trajan annexed the Nabataean kingdom in 106 and turned a caravan state into the province of Arabia Petraea. The Nabataeans had built a kingdom on the incense route from southern Arabia to the Mediterranean, with a capital at Petra carved into a sandstone gorge, an unmatched command of desert water engineering, and a habit of avoiding conquest by paying and by being harder to reach than they were worth. They had been Roman clients for a century and a half. The annexation on the death of Rabbel II was done without a war of any consequence — the sources barely record fighting, and the Roman commander was the governor of Syria — which suggests either a testamentary arrangement or an accomplished fact nobody contested. The new province ran from the Sinai to Damascus and included Petra and Bostra. Trajan then built the Via Nova Traiana from Bostra to Aqaba, some 430 kilometres, completed by 114, which gave the Roman army a north-south road along the desert edge and gave the trade a route that could be taxed. The province was garrisoned by a single legion. The commercial effect was mixed. Petra declined over the following century as trade shifted to Palmyra and to the Red Sea ports and the sea route to India, and Bostra became the administrative centre. Trajan was at that moment also preparing the Parthian war that took Armenia and Mesopotamia in 114, the empire's largest extent, and which his successor abandoned within two years. Petra itself was forgotten by Europe until a Swiss traveller reached it in 1812 disguised as a pilgrim, and the local Bedouin who lived among the tombs had known where it was throughout. It is now Jordan's principal source of tourist revenue.
- Year: 106 CE
- Category: Political
