ABSTRACT
Ancient Hawara (in Nabataean, HWR; in Greek, Auara; in Latin, Havarra), now officially called al-Humayma, was a small desert trading post and caravan way-station in Edom, the desert region of southern Jordan. It is located 80 km south of Petra, the capital of the Nabataean kingdom, and 80 km north of ‘Aqaba (ancient Ayla), on the Red Sea. According to Ouranios’s Arabika, Hawara was founded by a Nabataean prince and later King Aretas—probably Aretas III (84–62/59 bc) rather than Aretas IV (9 bc–ad 39/40), since archaeological evidence at the site commences around 50 bc. Ouranios writes (FGrH 675 frag. A.l.b):
Auara: town in Arabia, named by Aretas from an oracular response given to his father Obodas. Aretas set out in search of the oracle’s meaning, for the oracle said ‘to seek out a place auara’—which in the Arabian and Syrian languages means ‘white’. And as he lay in wait, a vision appeared to him of a man clothed in white garments riding along on a white dromedary. But when the apparition vanished, a craggy hill appeared, quite natural and rooted in the earth; and there he founded the town.
The name ‘White’ and the white camel that led Aretas to the site may refer to the rounded, humpy hillocks of white Disi sandstone that surround Hawara on all sides but the west, or to a pre-existing camel market organized by local Bedouin breeders. A shrine found at the site seems to be oriented towards the red sandstone jabal (hill, mountain) that looms over Hawara on the west, reinforcing the connection with a ‘craggy hill’ that also features in the foundation myth. The location and historical context of the settlement suggest it was intended to serve as a centre for sedentarization of the nomadic Nabataean pastoralists who occupied the region. Through careful management of the meager spring water and precipitation, the resulting community was able to enjoy a settled existence based on agriculture, stock-raising, and the servicing of caravans. A modest prosperity continued through the Roman, Byzantine, and Early Islamic periods, based in part on the trade that continued to move along the north/south road, the Via Nova Traiana, built by Trajan on the old Nabataean route that extended from Damascus, past Petra, to Ayla. The Abbasid family purchased the village site late in the 7th century, built a qasr (large residence) and family mosque (identified in 1992 and 1993), and plotted the overthrow of the Umayyad caliphate there. After the success of their conspiracy in the mid-8th century, and the shift of the caliphate to Baghdad, the site was essentially abandoned. The name and historical associations of the site survived among Arab historians and are still familiar to the local Bedouin.