Nabataean architecture
Ancient Near East construction style
Nabataean architecture or Nabatean architecture refers to the building traditions of the Nabateans, an ancient Arab people who inhabited northern Arabia and the southern Levant. Their settlements—most prominently the assumed capital city of Raqmu (present-day Petra, Jordan), Nabataean architecture is found across ancient settlements in northwestern Arabia, as well as throughout the Southern Levant including the Hauran region and the Negev Desert, reflecting the broad geographic reach of Nabataean civilization.
Their architectural style is notable for its temples and tombs, most famously the ones found in Petra. The style appears to be a mix of Mesopotamian, Hellenistic, and South Arabian influences modified to suit the Arab architectural taste. Petra, the capital of the kingdom of Nabatea, is as famous now as it was in the antiquity for its remarkable rock-cut tombs and temples. Most architectural Nabatean remains, dating from the 1st century BC to the 2nd century AD, are highly visible and well-preserved, with over 500 monuments in Petra, in modern-day Jordan, and 110 well preserved tombs set in the desert landscape of Hegra, now in modern-day Saudi Arabia. Much of the surviving architecture was carved out of rock cliffs, hence the columns do not actually support anything but are used for purely ornamental purposes. In addition to the most famous sites in Petra, there are also Nabatean complexes at Obodas (Avdat) and residential complexes at Mampsis (Kurnub) and a religious site of et-Tannur.
The accomplishments the Nabateans had with hydraulic technology forged the power and the increase of the standard of living of the residents living in the capital of the ancient Nabataean Kingdom. Cited among the most powerful of Pre-Islamic Arabia, Petra does not hold its fame and its prosperity only by its buildings dug and sculpted in the rocks of the surrounding mountains; it is above all through its extraordinary hydraulic system, built over the centuries, that Petra was able to develop in the middle of an inhospitable desert and become a strategic crossroad for which stood halfway between the opening to the Gulf of Aqaba and the Dead Sea at a point where the Incense Route from Arabia to Damascus was crossed by the overland route from Petra to Gaza City.
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