Midian

Midian (; Hebrew: מִדְיָן, romanized: Mīḏyān; Arabic: مَدْيَن, romanized: Madyan; Ancient Greek: Μαδιάμ, romanized: Madiám; Taymanitic: 𐪃𐪕𐪚𐪌‎, romanized: mdyn) was a geographical region in the Tabuk Province of modern-day Saudi Arabia, mentioned in the Hebrew Bible and Quran. William G. Dever states that biblical Midian was in the "northwest Arabian Peninsula, on the east shore of the Gulf of Aqaba on the Red Sea", an area which contained at least 14 inhabited sites during the Late Bronze and early Iron Ages. According to the Hebrew Bible, the region was named after Midian, a son of Abraham and his wife Keturah, and the eponymous ancestor of the Midianites. Scholars believe the Midian originally referred, not to a geographical location, but instead, to a tribal confederation. This was first suggested in 1909 by Paul Haupt who termed Midian a "cultic collective" (German: Kultgenossenschaft) or an amphictyony, and has since been widely adopted. Traditionally, knowledge about Midian and the Midianites' existence was based solely upon Biblical and classical sources, but in 2010 a reference to Midian was identified in a Taymanitic inscription dated to before the 9th century BC.