Early Assyrian Contacts with Arabs and the Impact on Levantine Vassal Tribute

A survey of Assyrian documentary evidence suggests that the fall of Damascus represented a watershed event for the spread of Arabian commerce and culture to eastern Syria, the Assyrian heartland, and eventually Babylonia. Assyria made and maintained geographic contact with Arabs as a result of Arabian traffic through the intermediate Levant and not by direct routes from Mesopotamia to Dumah or Haʾil. Arabs were evidently well established north of the Gilead prior to 732 B. C. E., but were largely restrained from trading farther east until Tiglath-pileser III removed the Aramaean stranglehold. Growing Assyrian familiarity with the characteristic largess of Arabian trade, moreover, coincided with more specific, and probably more austere, tribute impositions on vassal states in Palestine.