Persian Arvad

Apropos of not-much I went looking up Biblical / Canaanite Arvad. The island earned some minor notoriety among Islam specialists when Lawrence Conrad looked into the hadiths about its Late-Antique conquest. Lately there's been talk about intercepting Hawaii's underground springs to trap more of the water currently slipping into the basalt. It happens that Strabo 16.2.13 discusses how "Arados" hit up a freshwater spring at low tide during times of war.

Someone mooted that the Persian era might have been such a time of war. He'd thought he read it in Herodotus. As noted I found it in Strabo, but I didn't rule out that Arvad might have resisted the Shah.

As I look around, it appears that several Canaani cities foederated themselves for a common league under / against Persia. John Betlyon's contribution to the Oxford Handbook names Sidon, Tyre, and Byblos. Their "D.C." was Lebanese Tripoli. Each polis retained its own MLK, usually translated "King" but "phylarch" will do; these were all commercial cities and the real power was held by the merchants. Arvad's MLK might even have been elected. Arvad had a presence at Tripoli but did not join the rest when they revolted against Persia, which they did twice over the fourth century BC. Alexander was able to pry Arvad off Darius III's network; it stayed by the Seleucid dynasty until the Roman era.

A literal footnote to history, perhaps; but not without interest in studies of the later Persian Empire.