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Arabic Trade of Nabataea (4)
| • | "In Petra - Capital of Nabatea Kingdom - archeologists found column capitals (of the great temple), each of which comprises of 4 elephant heads. Those elephant heads had not been well done that archeologists and researchers have differed whether the Arab Nabataeans knowing of elephants was of Indian or African elephants (as distinguishing differences are there between the two types)". [Whatever the type of the elephants the Arab Nabataen traders have known - Indian or African, the depicted heads confirm the oldness of their knowledge with that tropical or equatorial animal, either via their sea trade voyages to India and beyond, or to the eastern coasts of Africa - overlooking the Arab Sea of the Indian Ocean - to Tanzania and beyond southward, before making such heads that date back to 50 BC. The unskillfully depicting of the Nabataeans' elephant heads may mostly suggest their knowledge of them distantly, undomesticated in their wild habitat, the thing that prevented the viewer Nabataean from closely examining them, thence, well depicting them. But, it would be worth asking: why elephants, not camels or horses? The Nabataeans taking elephant heads in this important site of their Kingdom's capital, as an emblem must have been an imitation to a match in some ancient Indian or Asian kingdoms which they contacted. As a strong connection to this, is that the emblem of Laos Kingdom - of the south-east Asian countries - is still depicted mainly of four elephant heads. It is most likely that Nabataean Arabs had noticed the fact that nearly no other animal dares to attack an adult of such strong animal, the elephant].
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| • | ".. Those Arab navigators were the means through which ideas and inventions have transmitted from Far East to Europe", [This is untrue; because Arabs were proprietors of thoughts and inventions that only their arduous desert habitat was preventing them from appearance; the habitat that barely provided them with the food and drinking. The proof to this is that once this obstacle has disappeared and it got affluence, their thoughts and inventions manifested. This happened by the Yemenis building Arem Dam 300 BC in Maareb (Arabia Felix or happy Arabia); in Arabs utilizing stars in substitution of compass in their sea navigation; the navigation that western historians have testified that it had went farther than Christopher Columbus' went, and 1500 years before him. Those thoughts and inventions have also manifested in the Nabataeans (500 BC - 106 AD) building a flourishing civilization extended in Sinai Peninsula, Palestine and southern Jordan before Romans annihilating it by Antigonus, (the one-eyed). Then, another civilization emerged by Palmyreans (44 AD - 272 AD) in the Syrian Desert, with Tadmor as its capital, before Roman again annihilating it by Orleans. Their invention of the ten digits and decimal places and surpassing in arithmetic as testified in the Qor'ann: Younos:5, Al-esraa:12. And when they spread with Islam in Syria, Iraq, Egypt, Persia and Andalusia, their thoughts and inventions extended and got loud in most of the life's aspects: medicine, mathematics, geography, astronomy, industry, and so on]. Nabataeans were not the only Arab traders. The proof to this is in the Qor'ann - that has startingly addressed Arabs - bringing 11 verses that treating on navigation with ships in the sea in seeking goods. This means the linkage of all Arabs - directly or indirectly - with sea trade, as well as its bringing the deep familiarization of Qoraish tribe with the "Two-Trips-of-Summer-and-Winter" (One trip from Makka to Shamm (Syria) in the Summer time; the other from Makka to Yemen in the winter time) in land trade. Arab traders worked not in isolation from each other, but were integrating each other. The proof to this - for the third time - is the Qor'ann's mentioning the Derham (Drahma), the Greek coin, was not but being well known to Qorashites in Makkah. It is the coin that Nabataeans knew before, as well as the Palmyrans of Syria thereafter.
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| • | "Some Chinese junk sailed westward (from southern Chinese sea via Malacca strait) till Sri Lanka to meet with the Arab sea traders". [This may have been true in a limited period of time due to racial or political hazards that have prevented Arab sea traders from reaching China themselves; as Arab sea traders used to reach China and exchange trade with them. The great evidence to this is that once Islam revealed in Arabia, the Arab sea traders brought the new religion with their trade, not only to southern of India (Madras), Sri Lanka and the Maldives, but also to Bangladesh, Indonesia, Malaysia and Philippines].
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| • | "The following picture is the remaining part of the full map, being preserved in Istanbul Library in Turkey. That map is known as "Piri Re'is" (Captain or Head Piri), having been drawn by Hadji Muhiddin Piri Ben Hadji Mehmed, in 1513 AD, and who has been an Admiral in the Ottoman Navy (according to Professor Charles Hapgood, writer of: Maps of the Ancient Sea Kings)". |
