This article deals with the West Semitic nomadic tribe of the Rabbeans who at the time of the Mart archives belonged to the Benjaminite con federation and controlled one of the mixed urbantribal states on the upper Middle Euphrates. It traces the history of the tribe to the end of the Late Bronze and examins its role in the struggle of the contem poraneous great powers. Then, after a long historical, it shows the descendants of the Rabbeans re-emerge, under the same name, in the same area, and in a very similar political role, during the struggle for Syria in the first century B.C.