Among the more remote regions of the ancient Near East were the lava-lands of southern Syria. Volcanic activity in the northeastern corner of the Hawran produced an area of low mountains today called the Jebal al-Arab (Jebal Hawran or Jebal Druz). Lava flows from nearby eruptions created two bleak volcanic plateaux of lunar desolation. Immediately northwest of the Jebel al-Arab is the Lega, a roughly trapezoidal region of forzen lava some fifty kilometers square and in places ten meters thick. The other plateau is the Qura, a forty kilometer tongue of lava with projecting "fingers" which angles northeastward into the desert fringes toward yet more massive lava-spills in the region of al-Safa. The aestern lava-fields originate in the forbidding and grandiose crater of the Jebal al-Says. Some twenty kilometers west of the Lega a third lava-field spreads northwest and northeast of Qunaytra, curving round the foothills of Mt. Hermon.

The geographer Strabo vaguely referred to "two Trachones" which he located "above Damascus." Which two of the three just described is entirely unclear, but it is certain that the Lega is one, since it is referred to in contemporary epigraphy as the Trachon and its political designation is Trachonitis, the "Rough-District" of Syria.

The history of human settlement in Trachonitis is poorly documented. The inhospitable character of the region gave it from earliest times an unsavory reputation as a haunt for brigands and desperadoes who preyed on the more civilized communities within the territories of the only three urban centers nearby: Canatha (Qanawat) in the Jebal al-Arab, Adraa (der'a) in the western Hawran, and Damascus to the north. Yet this very region in time produced a Roman emperor, Philip the Arab, son of a native Syrian, whose fate it was to preside over the festivities surrounding Rome's millenium in AD 248.

What little we know of Trachonitis before it came under direct Roman rule is preserved in Josephus. Greek rule of the territory went back to 301 BC when all of southern Syria was ceded to the Ptolemaic regime in Egypt. After 200 BC Trachonitis became, briefly, part of the Seleucid domains in Syria. It subsequently fell under the aegis of the Ituraean Arabs of the Biqa' Valley between the Lebanon and Anti-Lebanon ranges, and its cultural and linguistic affiliations no doubt remained strongly tied to those mountain Arabs in contrast to the more settled Syrian population of the adjacent regions. The shadows of late Seleucid history remain so far impenetratable.

It was under Herod the Great, so Josephus tells us, that the first concerted attempt to subjugate the area as undertaken following the establishment of Herod's client-kingship with his Roman patrons. The task was formidable and the pacification program still incomplete at least as late as the time of the famous Agrippan edict from Canatha which inveighs against "the animal-like customs" of neighboring folk who were "skulking, hidden in holes throughout the countryside."⁶ The latter phrase is surely a reference to the volcanic caves, craters, and ravines of Trachonitis and Auranitis. At some time in the first century BC the inhabitants of Trachonitis began to experience the effects of a neighboring Arab culture, that of the Nabataeans.⁷

These were by then a sedentary people who flourished in the late Hellenistic period at the expense of weaking Seleucid authority east of the Jordan River. By the late first century AD the territory under their control was contiguous with that of the Herodian dynasty in two regions: in the south across the Wadi 'Araba west of Petra, and in the north, in the regions of Batanaea, Auranitis, and Trachonitis. IT was precisely during the reign of Herod the Great that the massive mountain-side sanctuary at Si' /Seeia (slightly southeast of Canatha) was built, and a statue of Herod himself prominently displayed.⁸ The fact that Herod was honored at Si', or that late Agrippan dedications were recorded at that site and at nearby Canatha, should not be taken as proof that the Herodian dynasty exercised political control over either place. The extent of Nabataean influence at Si' and Canatha remains to be assessed. Nabataean influence in the interior of Trachonitis was doubtless limited, but the poorly-preserved and seldom-visited sanctuary at Sahr in the northeastern edge of the Lega surely bears witness to direct cultural contact with the Nabataeans, as does the better-documented Nabataean temple at Sur (Saura).⁹

The last Herodian dynast, Agrippa II, died in 92/93.¹⁰ Trachonitis and Auranitis were subsequently attached to Syria, as Claudius had done with the same region upon the death of Agrippa I in 44. It is not known if the area was administered as a separate district on either occasion. Direct Roman control now extended as far south as the territory of Canatha, the latter constituting part of the administrative district of the Decapolis. Within a decade of Agrippa's death the Syrian governor Palma authorised the construction of an aqueduct system which tapped the springs on the western slopes of Auranitis and channelled the water to Canatha and villages within its territorium.¹¹ Palma also orchestrated the Syrian military during the annexation of Nabataea, the latter event precipitated by the death of Rabbel II in 105/106. The creation of provincia Arabia left the territory of Canatha in an awkward and untenable situation, since its territory effectively lay between southern Syria and northern Arabia. The solution was to dissolve the Decapolis and join the last portion of thel ava-lands to Syria. The remainder of the cities were distributed among Arabia, Judaea, and Syria. The death of two important client-kings, the immediate absorption of their kingdoms, and the dissolution of the Decapolis occurred within thirteen years. This chaing of events could be attributed to coincidence, but it more likely reflects an imperial policy formulated during the tenure of Trajan's father as Syrian consular in the late 70s.¹²

Also of concern would be the linkage of Syria and Arabia by a road-system. The initial stages of this appearance to have included the stationing of military forces along an already-existing road between Damascus and Philadelphia ('Amman) via the north Lega, Canatha, and named road-stations in the southern Hawran. This is the road depicted on the PT at segmentum IX.

At some point in the early Severan period, perhaps 200, major border adjustments between the provinces of Syria and Arabia directly affected communities in Trachonitis and Auranitis. That Syria itself had been partitioned into northern (Syria Coele) and southern (Syria Phoenice) sub-provinces in 194/195 has long been an accepted fact. But details of where the new border between Syria Pheonice and Arabia actually lay have been disputed. The independent conclusions of two recent and thorough studies have clarified matters greatly.¹³ The accumulated weight of related bits of evidence, rather than some incontrovertible discovery, points the way to an acceptable scenario. In short, the regions of Trachnoitis, most of Auranitis and the northern portion of Batanaea (the Nuqra) were ceded to Arabia. This was no arbitrary decision, as Bowersock rightly notes.¹⁴ It simply reunited a large geographic area once shared by the interrelated dynasties of the Herods and the Nabataeans.

In the early Byzantine period the villages of Trachonitis in particular took on a Christian aspect. Local saints were honored with shrines and sanctuaries,¹⁵ and at least two Trachonite communities (metrocomiai now become cities?) sent bishops to church councils in the fourth century.¹⁶ SOuthern Syria appears not to have suffered the same economic decline experienced by villages in northern Syria in the fifth and sixth centuries. Perhaps this was due in part to the allegiance of this region to the new regimes of the Lakhmids and Ghassanids, especially the latter who made the Hawran and adjacent regions their dynastic playground and who ultimately constructed the massive palatial complex of Qasr al-Abyad (Khirbit al-Bayda) in the volcanic lowlands east of Jebal al-Says.¹⁷ The loyalties of the villages within Ghassanid hegemony- nominally as communities within Byzantine "federated" territory- were naturally divided.¹⁸ Quite probably allegience shifted to the Ghassanids in the period before Islam, and if the dearth of Greek inscriptions (dated or not) is any indication, the urbanisation process of some three or four hundred years' duration ground to a halt. Reactivation of tribal loyalties may ultimately have proved a stronger bond under the aegis of a new Arab regime.¹⁹

6 IGR III 1223.^{^}

7 A useful survey of the Nabataean period in southern Syria is given by Peters (1977). On Roman-Nabataean relations in the late Republic see Sartre (1979). This material, and much more, is now conveniently discussed by Bowersock (1983) 12-58.^{^}

8 For an early survey of the ruins at Si', see Butler (1919) 365-402. More recent work, including sondages and some restorations, has been done by a French team. See J.-M. and J. Dentzer (1981) and J.-M. Dentzer (1985). One result has been to reassess some earlier conclusions regarding the pantheon worshipped at Si'. Cf. especially J. Dentzer (1979). For the dedicatory inscription on the base of the statue of Herod, see IGR III 1243.^{^}

9 On Sahr see Butler (1919) 441-446 and on Sur, ibid, 428-431. This does not prove that Nabataeans had settled within Trachonitis. Classical sources, unlike many modern studies, distinguish between Nabataeans, and other Arabs. Cf. the comments by Bowersock (1983) 19-20 and Shahid (1984a) 3-16.^{^}

10 The evidence for the date of Agrippa's death is summarised well in Shurer (1971) 480-483 and Smallwood (1981) 573-574. On this and other matters concerning Agripa II see Frankfurt (1962). Her map (Pl. CXLII) should not be taken seriously.^{^}

11 The aqueduct epigraphy was discussed by Dunand (1930), but the conclusions given there for the extent of Canatha's territory have been challenged more recently by Shurer (1979) 138-142 and Sartre (1981).^{^}

12 Bowersock (1973). What epigraphical and archaelogical evidence there is indicates that Rabbel II (70-106) made Bostra his administrative capital from the 90s until his death. The annexation of Agrippa's kingdom would have meant that the new 'royal' city of Bostra lay just a few kilometers from Roman-administered territory. If Rabbel actually died at Bostra the news of his demise had not far to travel before the Syrian consular Palma learned of it. Eadie (1985) 407-412 assembles what evidence there is for a violent annexation of Nabataea, but this is no more convincing than his resurrection of Malichus III (ibid. 412-417), the phantom roi pretendant of post-conquest Nabataea.^{^}

13 Kettenhofen (1981) and Sartre (1982a) 48-64. But see Sartre's comments on the consular dating of a newly-discovered Greek inscription from Shaqqa dated 238, Sartre (1984) 52.^{^}

14 Bowersock (1983) 116. For border adjustments initiated under Diocletian, but not directly affecting Trachonitis, see Sartre (1982a) 64-70 and Bowersock (1983) 142-144.^{^}

15 E.g. an undated chapel (martyrion) to St. Elias at al-Jaj, (Littmann et al. [1921] 791), and a shrine of some sort dedicated to St. Leonitus at Sur in 458 (ibid. 793³).^{^}

16 Philippopolis (Shuhba) and Constantia (Buraq) to the Council of Chalcedon. See the chart in Jones (1971) 545.^{^}

17 Gaube (1974). This may have alternated with al-Jabiya (in the Golan) as a seasonal capital for this confederacy. See Lammens and Sourdel-Thomine (1965).^{^}

18 Sartre (1982a) 177-188.^{^}

19 See especially the comments on tribalism and the effect of Ghassanid rule in Donner (1981) 37-49, and the excellent essay by Caskel (1954). For military relations between Byzantium and the Arabs of the eastern frontier see Shahid (1984b) especially 381-407. On the role of the one tribal group in the region see Milik (1980). For the most comprehensive recent discussion of Arab-Roman relations from the annexation of Nabataea to the Islamic conquest, see Sartre (1982a) Chapter 3.^{^}

Henry Innes MacAdam. Studies in the History of the Roman Province of Arabia: The Northern Sector. B.A.R. Oxford, England. p 48-52.