Arameans

The Arameans, or Aramaeans (Hebrew: אֲרַמִּים, romanized: arammim; Ancient Greek: Ἀραμαῖοι, romanized: Aramaíoi; Classical Syriac: ܐܪ̈ܡܝܐ, romanized: ārāmāyē, Syriac pronunciation: [ʔɑːrɑːˈmɑːje]), were a tribal Semitic people in the ancient Near East, first documented in historical sources from the late 12th century BC. Their homeland, often referred to as the land of Aram, originally covered central regions of what is now Syria.

The Arameans were not a single nation or group; Aram was a region with local centers of power spread throughout the Levant. That makes it almost impossible to establish a coherent ethnic category of "Aramean" based on extralinguistic identity markers, such as material culture, lifestyle, or religion. The people of Aram were called "Arameans" in Assyrian texts and the Hebrew Bible, but the terms "Aramean" and “Aram” were never used by later Aramean dynasts to refer to themselves or their country, except the king of Aram-Damascus, since his kingdom was also called Aram. "Arameans" is an appellation of the geographical term Aram given to 1st millennium BC inhabitants of Syria.

At the beginning of the 1st millennium BC, the Syro-Hittite states were established throughout the ancient Near East. The most notable was Aram-Damascus, which reached its height in the second half of the 9th century BC during the reign of King Hazael. During the 8th century BC, local Aramaean city-states were conquered by the Neo-Assyrian Empire. The policy of population displacement and relocation applied throughout Assyrian domains also affected the Arameans, many of whom were resettled by Assyrian authorities. That caused a wider dispersion of Aramean communities throughout various regions of the Near East, and the range of Aramaic also widened. It gained significance and eventually became the lingua franca of public life and administration as Imperial Aramaic, particularly during the periods of the Neo-Babylonian Empire (612–539 BC) and the Achaemenid Empire (539–330 BC).

Before Christianity, Aramaic-speaking communities had undergone considerable Hellenization and Romanization in the Near East. Thus, their integration into the Greek-speaking world had begun a long time before Christianity became established. Some scholars suggest that Arameans who accepted Christianity were referred to as Syrians by the Greeks. The early Muslim conquests in the 7th century were followed by the Islamization and the gradual Arabization (re-Semiticization after centuries of Hellenization, Persianization and Romanization) of Aramaic-speaking communities throughout the Near East. That ultimately resulted in their fragmentation and acculturation. Today, their cultural and linguistic heritage continues to be recognized by some Syriac-Christian or Neo-Aramaic speaking groups, such as the Maronites and the Aramean inhabitants of Maaloula and Jubb’adin near Damascus in Syria.

The toponym A-ra-mu appears in an inscription at the East Semitic-speaking kingdom of Ebla listing geographical names, and the term Armi, the Eblaite term for nearby Idlib, occurs frequently in the Ebla tablets (c. 2300 BC). One of the annals of Naram-Sin of Akkad (c. 2250 BC) mentions that he captured "Dubul, the ensí of A-ra-me" (Arame is seemingly a genitive form), in the course of a campaign against Simurrum in the northern mountains. Other early references to a place or people of "Aram" have appeared at the archives of Mari (c. 1900 BC) and at Ugarit (c. 1300 BC). There is no consensus on the origin and meaning of the word "Aram", one of the most accepted suggestions being that it is derived from a Semitic root rwm, "to be high". Newer suggestions interprets it as a broken plural meaning "white antelopes" or "white bulls". The earliest undisputed historical attestation of Arameans as a people appears much later, in the inscriptions of Tiglath Pileser I (c. 1100 BC).

Nomadic pastoralists have long played a prominent role in the history and economy of the Middle East, but their numbers seem to vary according to climatic conditions and the force of neighbouring states inducing permanent settlement. The Late Bronze Age seems to coincide with increasing aridity, which weakened neighbouring states and induced transhumance pastoralists to spend longer and longer periods with their flocks. Urban settlements (hitherto largely inhabited by Amorite, Canaanite, Hittite, and Ugarite peoples) in the Levant diminished in size until fully-nomadic pastoralist lifestyles came to dominate much of the region. The highly mobile competitive tribesmen, with their sudden raids, continually threatened long-distance trade and interfered with the collection of taxes and tribute.

The people who had long been the prominent population in what is now Syria (called the Land of the Amurru during their tenure) were the Amorites, a Northwest Semitic-speaking people who had appeared during the 25th century BC, destroyed the hitherto dominant state of Ebla, founded the powerful state of Mari in the Levant and during the 19th century BC also Babylonia, in southern Mesopotamia. However, they seem to have been displaced or wholly absorbed by the appearance of a people called the Ahlamu by the 13th century BC and disappear from history. Ahlamû appears to be a generic term for Semitic wanderers and nomads of varying origins who appeared during the 13th century BC across the ancient Near East, the Arabian Peninsula, Asia Minor, and Egypt.

The Arameans would appear to be one part of the larger generic Ahlamû group rather than synonymous with the Ahlamu. The presence of the Ahlamû is attested during the Middle Assyrian Empire (1365–1020 BC), which already ruled many of the lands in which the Ahlamû arose in the Babylonian city of Nippur and even at Dilmun. Shalmaneser I (1274–1245 BC) is recorded as having defeated Shattuara, King of the Mitanni and his Hittite and Ahlamû mercenaries. In the next century, the Ahlamû cut the road from Babylon to Hattusas. Also, Tukulti-Ninurta I (1244–1208 BC) conquered Mari, Hanigalbat and Rapiqum on the Euphrates and "the mountain of the Ahlamû", apparently the region of Jebel Bishri in northern Syria.