IMPERIUM ROMANUM

Provinces · The later eastern provinces

LE-49 Arabia

The later Balkan provincial landscape. Dacia south of the Danube, the two Epiri…
The later Balkan provincial landscape. Dacia south of the Danube, the two Epiri, Thessaly, Macedonia, Achaia, and the Thracian districts illustrate the replacement of large commands by smaller jurisdictions. The river network helps relate frontier districts to the Adriatic, Aegean, and imperial straits.

The province retained productive basalt-country agriculture, towns, roads, villages, military installations, and strong regional Christian communities. Its economy depended on settled cultivation and local exchange as well as wider trade. The governor’s jurisdiction no longer included every territory annexed from the Nabataean kingdom in 106.

Arab federate relationships and frontier defence connected the province to wider Syrian politics. Religious and military institutions overlapped without being identical. The seventh-century conquest ended Roman sovereignty, while many settlements, churches, agricultural systems, and local communities continued. Late Arabia must therefore be distinguished from both the original Nabataean kingdom and the whole Arabian Peninsula.