Ancient Arabia: archaeology & history of pre-islamic Arabia

The Ancient Arabia website aims to disseminate the results of research conducted as part of the Maparabia project, supported by the French National Research Agency (ANR), and based at the CNRS (Paris-Lyon), the CNR (Milano), and the University of Pisa.

The geographic tools and resources accessible on this site are intended for both specialists of Ancient Arabia, as well as the wider academic community. The presented summarized data takes into account the latest research developments in pre-Islamic Arabia, and provides access to crucial sources for understanding the Ancient World and the emergence of Islam.

The resulting open access archive is structured into three repositories: a digital atlas, a gazetteer and a dictionary of Ancient Arabia. They are the outcome of five decades of archaeological and epigraphic research which has yielded a considerable amount of data on the ancient Arabian Peninsula. This research addresses topical issues such as the man-environment relationship, pre-Islamic religious practices and beliefs, the emergence of an Arab identity, as well as the place of Arabia in a connected Ancient World system. The tools required for the analysis of this newly produced and dense research were lacking up until now. Ancient Arabia aims to bridge this scientific gap.