A history written in the sand

As early as the Paleolithic, over 700,000 years ago, the Arabian Peninsula was crossed and inhabited by human groups moving between Africa and Eurasia. This presence was not continuous. They depended on climatic oscillations that, during certain phases, transformed territories that are arid today into landscapes with lakes, watercourses, grasslands, and wildlife. In other phases, the return of aridity reduced settlement opportunities and prompted communities to reorganize routes and strategies.

In the Neolithic, between ten thousand and six thousand years ago, and with regional differences, hunting, fishing, and gathering were integrated with the herding of sheep, goats, and cattle. The Neolithic communities of Arabia did not develop the sedentary agricultural village model typical of the Near East. Instead, they adopted flexible strategies, combining herding, hunting, fishing, gathering, and seasonal mobility in different ways according to the opportunities offered by coasts, terraces, foothills, and actual rocky mountains.

In the third millennium BCE, copper made the Arabian Peninsula one of the protagonists of the great trade networks of the Near East. Mesopotamian sources mention the land of “Magan”—generally referable to southeastern Arabia and the Oman Peninsula—as a region linked to the production and circulation of this metal. Further north, the kingdom of “Dilmun,” in the Gulf area, played an important role as an intermediary in maritime trade.

Copper was not merely a raw material. It was an engine of exchange, relations, and technical transformations, capable of connecting Mesopotamia, Iran, the Indus Valley, the Arabian Gulf, and the Sea of Oman. Not only metals, objects, and knowledge circulated through these networks, but also plants and agricultural practices, which in Arabia contributed to the formation of the oasis as a new way of organizing the landscape. Water, date palms, cultivation, and herding allowed for the formation of more stable productive landscapes, without erasing seasonal mobility. Arabian communities thus built their own forms of organization, based on resources, ancestors, territories, and exchange networks.

In the first millennium BCE, water and mobility became two decisive forces. In southeastern Arabia, the falaj spread—a system of tunnels and channels that tapped into underground water and led it toward fields and oases. This innovation favored agriculture, more stable and densely populated settlements, artisanal productions, and more intense connections between mountains, plains, and coasts.

Between the end of the second and the beginning of the first millennium BCE, the domestication of the dromedary progressively transformed mobility in arid environments. Caravan journeys became more efficient, and the distances between oases, deserts, coasts, and inland areas could be crossed with greater continuity.

The pre-Islamic framework remained heavily regional. In the southwest, the so-called South Arabian Kingdoms developed, including Saba, linked to the famous queen of Biblical and Quranic tradition. Their prosperity was based on massive infrastructure for irrigated agriculture, control of caravan routes, and the trade of frankincense, myrrh, and other aromatic resins—products in high demand in the flourishing markets of the Mediterranean. In the north and northwest, oases, Arab groups, and the Nabataean world connected the southern routes to the Levant and Rome. In the southeast, between Oman and the Emirates, distinct local traditions took shape among inland communities and coastal settlements.

In the seventh century CE, the birth of Islam deeply transformed the history of the Arabian Peninsula. Mecca and Medina became the centers of a new religious and political community, capable of uniting different groups without erasing the variety of local territories and traditions. Following the death of the Prophet Muhammad in 632, Islamic expansion projected Arabia into a much broader horizon, from Syria to Iraq, and from Egypt to Iran.

Even when the main centers of power shifted outside the Peninsula, Arabia maintained an essential role. The holy cities remained poles of pilgrimage, while the coasts continued to participate in the trade of the Red Sea, the Arabian Gulf, and the Indian Ocean. Islam did not erase the preceding history, but reorganized places, networks, and identities within a new religious, political, and commercial framework.