Literacy and identity in pre-Islamic Arabia / by M. C. A. Macdonald.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Literacy, language and scripts -- Literacy in an oral environment -- Nomads and the Hawran in the late Hellenistic and Roman periods : a reassessment of the epigraphic evidence -- Reflections on the linguistic map of pre-Islamic Arabia -- Ancient ethnicity -- Some reflections on epigraphy and ethnicity in the Roman Near East -- Arabians, Arabias, and the Greeks : contact and perceptions -- Les Arabes en Syrie or la pénétration des Arabes en Syrie a question of perceptions -- Aspects of the history of ancient Arabia -- Was the Nabataean kingdom a Bedouin state? -- On Saracens, the Rawwfah inscription and the Roman army -- Trade routes and trade goods at the northern end of the incense road in the first millennium B.C.