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DEDAN

(Heb. dĕḏān)

Name given to the al-ʿUla oasis in northwest Arabia, ca. 300 km. (186 mi.) NNW of Medina, as confirmed by its presence (Ddn) in the funerary inscription (JS 138) of “Kabarʾil, son of Mataʿʾil, king of Dedan” found there by the Dominican fathers Antonin J. Jaussen and Raphael Savignac in 1909/1910. Listed as a son of Keturah (Gen. 25:3; 1 Chr. 1:32) and of Raamah (Gen. 10:7), Dedan is twice associated with Edom (Jer. 49:8; Ezek. 25:13) and once with the north Arabian oasis town of Tema (Jer. 25:23). The people of Dedan are called merchants (Ezek. 27:15-20), and the “caravans of Dedanites” are said to lodge “in the forest in Arabia” (Isa. 21:13). According to records, the Babylonian king Nabonidus (555-539 b.c.) visited Dedan and defeated its unnamed king.

By the 4th century Dedan had become the site of a large trading colony of Minaean merchants from South Arabia, as attested by the Minaean inscriptions and graffiti at al-ʿUla and the occurrence of the name Dedan (DDN) in the hierodule inscriptions from the Rṣf temple at Qarnaw (ancient Maʿin) in Yemen. Later still it became capital of the Lihyanite kingdom, some 13 kings of which are attested epigraphically. By the late 1st century b.c. Dedan seems to have been eclipsed by the nearby Nabatean town of Hegra (Medaʾin Salih).

Bibliography. W. F. Albright, “Dedan,” in Geschichte und AT. Festschrift Albrecht Alt. Beiträge zur historischen Theologie 16 (Tübingen, 1953), 1-12.

D. T. Potts

Prayer Tents Bible References - Prayer Tents

DEDAN

Eerdmans Dictionary of the Bible (2000)