from the Dark Ages to modern times.

Secondly the Arabs brought with them their immemorial instinct of
restlessness. This habit also is apt to persist in a settled society,
finding satisfaction in annual recourse to tent or hut life and in
annual predatory excursions. The custom of the razzia or summer raid,
which is still obligatory in Arabia on all men of vigour and spirit, was
held in equal honour by the ancient Semitic world. Undertaken as a
matter of course, whether on provocation or not, it was the origin and
constant spring of those annual marches to the frontiers, of which royal
Assyrian monuments vaingloriously tell us, to the exclusion of almost
all other information. Chederlaomer, Amraphel and the other three kings
were fulfilling their annual obligation in the Jordan valley when Hebrew
tradition believed that they met with Abraham; and if, as seems agreed,
Amraphel was Hammurabi himself, that tradition proves the custom of the
razzia well established under the First Babylonian Dynasty.

Moreover, the fact that these annual campaigns of Babylonian and
Assyrian kings were simply Bedawi razzias highly organized and on a
great scale should be borne in mind when we speak of Semitic "empires,"
lest we think too territorially. No permanent organization of
territorial dominion in foreign parts was established by Semitic rulers
till late in Assyrian history. The earlier Semitic overlords, that is,
all who preceded Ashurnatsirpal of Assyria, went a-raiding to plunder,
assault, destroy, or receive submissive payments, and their ends
achieved, returned, without imposing permanent garrisons of their own
followers, permanent viceroys, or even a permanent tributary burden, to
hinder the stricken foe from returning to his own way till his turn
should come to be raided again. The imperial blackmailer had possibly
left a record of his presence and prowess on alien rocks, to be defaced