Hazael of Adumu, one of the sheikhs of Kedar, defeated by
Sennacherib towards the end of his reign, had taken the opportunity of
the annual tribute to come to Nineveh with considerable presents, and
to implore the restoration of the statues of his gods. Esarhaddon had
caused these battered idols to be cleaned and repaired, had engraved
upon them an inscription in praise of Assur, and had further married
the suppliant sheikh to a woman of the royal harem, named Tabua. In
consideration of this, he had imposed upon the Arab a supplementary
tribute of sixty-five camels, and had restored to him his idols. All
this took place, no doubt, soon after the king's accession. A few years
later, on the death of Hazael, his son Yauta solicited investiture, but
a competitor for the chieftaincy, a man of unknown origin, named Uahab,
treacherously incited the Arabs to rebel, and threatened to overthrow
him. Esarhaddon caused Uahab to be seized, and exposed him in chains at
the gate of Nineveh; but, in consideration of this service to the Arabs,
he augmented the tribute which already weighed upon the people by a
further demand for ten gold _minas_, one thousand precious stones, fifty
camels, and a thousand measures of spicery. The repression of these
Arabs of Kedar thus confirmed Esarhaddon's supremacy over the extreme
northern region of Arabia, between Damascus and Sippara or Babylon; but
in a more southerly direction, in the wadys which unite Lower Chaldaea
to the districts of the Jordan and the Dead Sea, there still remained
several rich and warlike states--among others, Bazu,* whose rulers had
never done homage to the sovereigns of either Assyria or Karduniash.

* The Bazu of this text is certainly the Buz which the
Hebrew books name among the children of Nahor (Gen. xxii.
21; Jer. xxv. 23). The early Assyriologists identified Khazu
with Uz, the son of Nahor; Delitzsch compares the name with
that of Hazo (Huz), the fifth son of Nahor (Gen. xxii. 22),
and his opinion is admitted by most scholars. For the site
of these countries I have followed the ideas of Delattro,
who identifies them with the oases of Jauf and Meskakeh, in
the centre of Northern Arabia. The Assyrians must have set
out by the Wady Hauran or by one of the wadys near to
Babylon, and have returned by a more southern wady.

To carry hostilities into the heart of their country was a bold and even
hazardous undertakin