8th century BCE Assyrian inscriptions place the Qedarites as living in the area to the east of the western border of Babylon. Moving further east into areas of the Transjordan and southern Syria in the 7th century BCE, by the 5th century BCE they had spread into the Sinai and as far as the Nile Delta. Qedarite domination of northwest Arabia involved alliances between the kings of Qedar and the kings of Dedan (Al-`Ula). Historian Israel Eph'al writes that the breadth of Qedarite distribution suggests a federation of tribes with various sub-divisions.