Introduction

THE HISTORY OF human habitation east of the Jordan River has been continuous from prehistory to the present. There is now growing evidence that the Late Bronze and Iron Ages were the period of heaviest settlement in earliest antiquity. Several localities (e.g. Gerasa, Abila, Pella, Philadelphia) that would in time be numbered among the cities of the Decapolis were already in existence at the end of the second millennium.

The collapse or decline of various Bronze Age empires throughout the eastern Mediterranean affected inland as well as coastal cities. From the end of the Iron Age until the early Roman period there is evidence of urban decline and impoverishment throughout Transjordania. The intervention of Rome in A.D. 64/63, the creation of the Decapolis, and the recognition of the Nabataean Arabs as a client kingdom fostered a new period of urbanisation and wide-spread settlement.

Nabataean independence ended with the annexation of that kingdom in A.D. 106. Most of it became the Roman province of Arabia. A paved highway (the famous via nova Traiana) connected Aela (al- ‘Aqaba) in the south with Bostra (Busrā al-Shām) in the north. Around A.D. 300 the entire portion of Roman Arabia south of the Wādī l-Ḥasā was administratively detached and joined to Roman Palestine. Just under a century later (ca A.D. 390) another modification occurred with the tripartite division of Palestine into Prima, Secunda and Tertia (or Salutaris). Cities of the Transjordanian northwest such as Pella, Gadara and Hippos (and their territoria) were now administratively part of Palestine II. The towns and villages of the old Peraea (Judaean territory across the Jordan) fell within Palestine I. Northeastern and central Transjordania, as well as Moab, remained within Roman Arabia. In A.D. 451 Moab was detached and added to Palestine 111. For most of the next two centuries portions of Transjordania remained parts of four Byzantine provinces. It has been argued recently by Shahid that another provincial modification occurred ca A.D. 628, when, he believes, Heraclius reorganized the east in the aftermath of the Persian occupation and created administrative/military provinces (themata) , e.g. “Palaestina” and “Iordanes”. Shahid maintains that these themata were subsequently incorporated as military districts (sing. jund, pl. ajnād), with Arabized names such as “Filasṭīn” and “al-Urdunn”, into the earliest Islamic administrative scheme for Bilad al-Sham (Fig. 11).