Dedan

Dedan is a name that appears in the Hebrew Bible, used for both a person and the land associated with his descendants. In Genesis 10, Dedan is listed as a son of Raamah, who is a son of Cush, placing Dedan in the genealogies of the nations descended from Noah. Dedan is traditionally understood as the progenitor of the Dedanim, and the land or region called the land of Dedan is described as the homeland of his people.

The Dedanim are depicted as a Semitic people inhabiting a territory in the northwestern part of the Arabian Peninsula. In biblical and later traditions they are associated with caravan trade and commerce along ancient routes, and are mentioned in connection with other Arabian peoples in prophetic and poetic passages.

Scholarly discussion notes that the exact location of the land of Dedan is uncertain. Ancient sources place it in the Arabian margin of the Red Sea or near the Persian Gulf, but precise identifications vary, and some modern researchers treat Dedan as a symbolic or dispersed reference to southern Arabian nomadic groups rather than a single fixed locale.

Outside the biblical corpus, the name Dedan appears infrequently. It is primarily encountered in religious and historical literature examining biblical geography, genealogy, and the ancient economies of the Arabian Peninsula. The term survives chiefly as a historical and scholarly reference rather than a commonly used modern name.