Introduction

THE NATURE OF settlement during the nearly two hundred years from the death of Justinian in 565 to the fall of the Umayyad dynasty in 750 is not well understood for the southern half of modern-day Jordan (the area south of the Wādī Mūjib). This paper will survey the information about settlement patterns available from archaeology and literary sources, and indicate the limits of our current knowledge. It will be organized around a presentation of the types of information available, rather than around a geographical or site by site analysis of settlement patterns.

The area to be examined here is the eastern portion of the Roman- Byzantine province of Palaestina Tertia and the southern part of the Early Islamic jund of Dimashq. Southern Jordan consists of several geographical areas: Moab -between the Wādī Mūjib and the Wādi l-Ḥasā; Edom - between the Wādi l-Ḥasā and the Rās al-Naqb escarpment; the Ḥasā - south of the Ras al-Naqb escarpment; and the Wādi ‘Araba valley.

Any study of southern Jordan is hindered by the fact that only a limited amount of archaeological work, in particular excavation, has been carried out so far. Thus, while archaeology is potentially the prime source of data for an examination of settlement patterns, its contribution so far remains slight. Study of southern Jordan is also difficult because the area is largely invisible historically throughout this period. It was of marginal importance and so of limited historical interest both for the Byzantine empire and the Umayyad caliphate. As a consequence, relatively few literary or historical references in Greek or Arabic sources record events, people or places in the time period under discussion. From Justinian's death until the beginning of the Islamic conquest virtually nothing happened there that had a more than strictly local impact. It is only in connection with events surrounding the start of the Islamic conquest that the traditional Arabic sources shed much light on the area. I But once the Islamic conquest was over, the area again largely dropped out of historical sight.

The lack of written documentation is, of course, related to the marginal economic importance of the area, and the concomitantly low density of occupation. Although the area south of the Wādī Mūjib constitutes roughly half of modem-day Jordan, less than ten per cent of its present population lives there; indeed, large parts are virtually uninhabited. The rainfall is sufficient for dry-farming in only a small portion of the region, most notably on the Moab plateau, and other natural resources are meagre. Dry-farming, along with sheep/goat and camel pastoralism, would have formed the bulk of the economy, although it is difficult to say much of anything concrete about this. Trade would have played a much smaller role, although caravans did travel continuously across the area on their way between Syria and the Ḥijāz, as, for example, the rich caravan from Syria that provoked the battle of Badr on 2 March, 624.