Station: [13] The Incense Road

This wasn’t a fixed, solidly constructed road in the modern sense, or even a beaten track. Instead, the famous Incense Road was a series of camel trails that led from present-day Oman across the tip of the Arabian Peninsula, via Hegra in today’s Saudi Arabia, to Gaza and the Mediterranean coast. Sections of this ancient trade route were controlled by the Nabataeans.

Incense, or frankincense, is the dried resin of a small tree that only grows in present-day Oman and in the highlands of Somalia. In terms of extraction, frankincense is actually a low-cost product, but in ancient societies around the Mediterranean, it was literally worth its weight in gold. Everyone in those societies used incense: in their religious practices, as a perfume or even medicinally.

However, other luxury goods were also traded along the Incense Road: cinnamon, myrrh and pepper, for instance. With every mile the sought-after goods had to travel along the overland route, middlemen were making money. They levied road tolls, demanded protection money (citing threats to the caravans) and provided services such as accommodation and food. Last but not least, controlling water sources in the desert is a nice little earner!

At first, the Nabataeans were only one of many intermediaries, but over time they controlled ever larger sections of the trade route from Hegra to the port of Gaza, the ultimate destination. However, with the expansion of the Roman Empire to the east, the overland route lost its importance: many goods were now transported by ship.

On the final stretch, from the northern end of the Red Sea to Gaza, goods still went by caravan, and trade on the Incense Road never ceased entirely. But other trade routes had become more important. Those via Charakene at the northern end of the Persian Gulf, via Seleukia on the Euphrates and via Palmyra gained in importance, since they enabled contacts with distant China. Bostra in Syria was proclaimed the new capital of the Roman province Arabia Petraea. The desert city of Petra only controlled an increasingly insignificant trade route and lost much of its importance.