The Children of Adam and Eve

The Qedarites (also Kedarites/Cedarenes, Cedar/Kedar/Qedar, and Kingdom of Qedar) were a largely nomadic, ancient Arab tribal confederation. Described as "the most organized of the Northern Arabian tribes", at the peak of its power in the 6thcentury BC it controlled a large region between the Persian Gulf and the Sinai Peninsula.

Biblical tradition holds that the Qedarites are named for Qedar, the second son of Ishmael, mentioned in the Bible's books of Genesis (25:13) and 1 Chronicles (1:29), where there are also frequent references to Qedar as a tribe. The earliestextrabiblical inscriptions discovered by archaeologists that mention the Qedarites are from the Neo-Assyrian Empire. Spanning the 8th and 7th centuries BC, they list the names of Qedarite kings who revolted and were defeated in battle, as wellas those who paid Assyrian monarchs tribute, including Zabibe, queen of the Arabs. There are also Aramaic and Old South Arabian inscriptions recalling the Qedarites, who further appear briefly in the writings of Classical Greek and Romanhistorians, such as Herodotus, Pliny the Elder, and Diodorus.

It is unclear when the Qedarites ceased to exist as a separately defined confederation or people. Allies with the Nabataeans, it is likely that they were subsumed into the Nabataean state around the 2nd century AD. Arab genealogical scholarswidely consider Ishmael to be an ancestral forefather of the Arab people, and assign great importance in their accounts to his first two sons (Nebaioth and Qedar), with the genealogy of Mohammed, the founder of Islam, alternately assigned to oneor the other son, depending on the scholar.