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Sunday September 15th 2019Tim
Candler9
The Romans
called the southern part of the Arabian Peninsular,
Arabia Felix. Felix here means something like happy and
fertile, unlike Arabia Deserta which wasn't worth much,
it was full of nomadic tribes eking a precarious living
that required intense discipline to master, the sort of
intense discipline that occasionally made them very
challenging for the happy and more fertile lands that
basically surrounded them. And for the Romans there was
Arabia Petraea which was the Sinai, it was a Roman
Frontier Province east of the very rich and very fertile
lands of Egypt. If you ever go anywhere near modern day
Arabia Felix you'd be forgiven for wondering where the
Romans got the fertile idea from, back then however
rainfall was more plentiful, the land was green and
around 900 BC a number of dams had been built to
mitigate the effects of seasonal flooding on crop lands.
Nor did the Romans know much about Arabia Felix other
than stories about the fabulously wealthy, possibly
mythical, ancient Queen of Sheba, and too, Romans had a
sneaky suspicion that the Arabian Peninsular was chock
full of exotic treasures, a suspicion that was well
founded because even in Roman times, there was an
ancient trade between Arabia Felix, the Indian
subcontinent and all the way down the eastern coast of
Africa which in time included exporting really neat and
unusual stuff to Romans. Sometimes, in this area of
trade a person might begin to wonder whether our rather
oddly named species, Homo Sapiens, should be renamed
something like Homo Erectus Artifici. Artifici is a
general Latin word for trade, method, trick, skill,
talent and so on, that lends itself to the possibilities
in the idea of neat stuff, art if you like, rather than
the Latin word Commercium which translates more as the
money grubbing wheeling and dealing side of barter and
exchange. Not to get carried away, the English word
trade comes from the Dutch, meaning path, track, course
of action. Sailing ships for the Dutch traded their
course. The word Trade merged with an old English word
Tread, which was and is to step on, trample, traverse.
The old meaning in trade was more regular habit
than it was barter or exchange. Trade Winds had nothing
to do with commerce, rather Trade winds had regular and
reliable habits. The modern use of the word Trade
emerged in the 1800's. Trade War first appeared in the
English language in the 1890's.
Past
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Then in 20
odd BC the Romans thought they'd send an exploratory
army to take a jolly good look at Arabia Felix, check
out the possibilities, smell the air, and of course
develop relationships with the local inhabitants. To do
this the Roman Prefect of Egypt at the request of his
Emperor collected around 10,000 soldiers and off they
all went, south down the western side of the Arabian
Peninsular toward Arabia Felix. With the Roman army
heading toward Arabia Felix there was a guide and
adviser who was a native of Northern Arabia, he came
from up there near Aqaba, which is the Port Town of
Jordan. The western coastal area of Arabia, heading
south before you get to Yemen, has been called the Hejaz
for thousands of years. The word means 'The Barrier', to
the East of which is the Red Sea and Africa, to the west
is Arabia. The Hejaz includes Mecca, Jeddah and Medina,
it was the prize of the Ottoman Empire. During the First
World War the Hejaz declared itself independent of the
Ottoman Empire, the British happily joined in, and soon
after the end of the First World War with the help of
the British the Hejaz lost its independence and became
part of the Saud family Royal territory of Saudi Arabia.
Meanwhile the Roman army had been six months attempting
to reach Arabia Felix, they'd had a few successes,
they'd lingered there, they'd lingered here, but the sun
was cruel, the water appalling, food very inadequate,
diseases and sicknesses Romans had never seen before and
had few remedies to combat took a toll, and there was
some doubt as to the motives of their guide, a slight
suspicion that he either didn't know as much as he
claimed to know, or he wasn't whole hearted in his
desire to see Arabia Felix become a part of the Roman
Empire. The other thing about Arabia Felix, in 20 odd BC
it had managed to survive considerable local unrest, and
a clan called the Sabaeans, of Queen of Sheba fame had
control of the ancient capital area of Yemen where the
Queen of Sheba might once have resided. A place that
today is still called Marib. It was at Marib that the
Roman army suffered a major defeat, they had to retreat.
The survivors took two months to get themselves back to
Egypt, and when they were safely home they executed
their guide. The more reasonable Geopolitical importance
to trade of who runs Yemen today has to do with access
to the Red Sea, the Gulf of Suez and the Suez Canal. The
very treacherous, wreck strewn, Strait of Aden between
Yemen and Africa, or Bab-el-Mandeb, a name that reflects
the legend of an earthquake that was supposed to have
separated the Horn of Africa from Arabia, is 16 miles
wide. 9% of international trade passes through the Suez
Canal, 21,000 ships a year, and pretty much all these
ships pass through the Strait of Aden. Most modern oil
tankers are too big to fit through the Suez Canal.
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