Obodas I
Nabatean King
Obodas I (Nabataean Aramaic: 𐢗𐢃𐢅𐢞, romanized: ʿŌbōdaṯ; Ancient Greek: Ὀβόδας) was a Nabataean king who ruled over the kingdom from 96 to 85 BC. Celebrated by his people for having defeated both Hasmonean and Seleucid forces who invaded Nabataea, he was worshipped and possibly deified after death - though this may be based on a faulty understanding of Nabataean religious practices which remain largely obscure to modern scholarship. A Nabataean inscription honouring him in Ein Avdat is considered to be one of the oldest examples of poetic verse in the Arabic language, transcribed in Nabataean script. The town of Avdat (originally Abda(t) in Arabic) was named for him.
Name
His name transcribed in Nabataean Aramaic was found in an inscription carved into a rock overlooking the Ein Avdat gorge, just over 4 kilometres (2.5 mi) from the site of the ruins of one of the Nabataean cities he ruled over in Palestine's Negev. It is composed of four letters 'a-b-d-t (Square Aramaic script:אבדת or Arabic script:عبدة), and is transliterated as 'Abda(t) or Abdeh, the original Arabic name for the town of Avdat. Al-Mallah transcribes his name in Arabic as عُبادة, ʿubādah, which means "submission, obedience or worship (of god)".
Life
Obodas I was the successor of Aretas II, and one of his sons, from whom he inherited the war with the Hasmonean kingdom.
Around 93 BC, Obodas engaged the forces of Alexander Jannaeus in Nabataean territory near Gadara (Umm Qais), just east of the Sea of Galilee, near the Golan Heights. Using camel cavalry, he forced Jannaeus into a valley where he completed the ambush; Jannaeus nearly lost his life in the battle, and in its aftermath Moab and Gilead, two mountainous areas east of the Dead Sea and the Jordan River the Hasmoneans had conquered from the Nabataeans previously, were returned.
Around 86 BCE, the Seleucid ruler, Antiochus XII Dionysus, invaded Nabatea.
“Obodas I” enters the record as nabatean King. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Obodas, Nabatean and King can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Biographical claims are most persuasive when dates, appointments and relationships can be traced to records created close to the events described. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jun 8, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q2620458. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank.
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This entry incorporates text from “Obodas I” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.