Humayma Roman Fort
About
Roman engineers raised this fort on a slope above the Nabataean caravan town of Hauarra within a few years of Trajan's 106 CE annexation of the Nabataean kingdom. Its playing-card plan, rounded corners included, enclosed roughly three hectares built to garrison a full quingenary auxiliary cohort of five hundred men. The fort anchored the southern stretch of the newly built Via Nova Traiana, the road running from Bostra to the Red Sea port of Aila. Excavators found its headquarters building and granaries preserved beneath centuries of desert sand. In 117 CE its garrison still watched over a frontier province not yet a dozen years in Roman hands.
What happened here
Five hundred men, sometimes a thousand, recruited from a province rather than from citizens, and often stationed a long way from where they were raised. Cavalry units get a bigger fort and far more stabling; the smell tells you which kind you are in before the plan does. The layout copies a legionary fortress at a quarter of the size — headquarters, commander's house, granaries, barracks, a bath house usually built outside the walls because of the fire risk. Duties are patrolling, escorting, customs, and policing rather than pitched battle. After twenty-five years a man is discharged with citizenship for himself and his children, recorded on a bronze diploma he keeps for life. A village grows outside the gate within a decade.
Sources
Nearby
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Roman Maps shows the empire frozen at 11 August 117 CE, the day Trajan died — its moment of greatest territorial extent. Explore the full map →