It is known that Paul's visit to Damascus was around the year 40 AD, i.e. in the last year of the reign of Al-Harith IV. But the nature of the presence of the Nabataeans and the Nabatean ruler in Damascus is still a matter of controversy among researchers, and perhaps the return of Damascus to the Nabataeans was with the consent of the Romans.
The reign of al-Harith IV is characterized by a wide urban movement that was primarily concentrated around the southern part of the kingdom. The Nabataean settlement in Madain Saleh (Hegra or Hegra) became one of the major cities of the Nabataeans, and its rock burials can be compared to the burials of Petra. It bears inscriptions that all belong to the first century AD, and most of them date back to the first half of that century. It seems that Al-Harith sent settlers there to establish a base in the Hijaz that could be retreated to if Roman pressure increased, and this is confirmed by the fact that a large number of inscriptions belong to officers with Greek and Roman military titles (such as Strategos the Commander, Hipparchos the Knight, Centurion Centurion).
Petra received a share of the facilities during the reign of al-Harith, to whom two of its monumental monuments are attributed: the theater that was cut into the rock at the inner end of the Siq (the mountain strait that leads to Petra), and the temple in the center of the city known as Qasr al-Bint. The ratio of these two effects to Al-Harith has been proven after it was thought that they date back to the time of the Arab state.
The Treasury - the most famous monument of Petra - can also be considered one of the achievements of his reign. Al-Harith worked to transform the Nabataeans into a stable people dependent on an agricultural economy after the decline in the importance of land trade due to the use of the Red Sea to transport spices and spices from Yemen and India.
Some inscriptions mention the names of al-Harith's sons and daughters, in addition to his wives, who bore the title of queen, and it was customary to call these queens the king's sisters, just as the king's ministers were called his brothers.
Al-Harith was generous in issuing money throughout the years of his rule, and he has the most famous face image on the coin in the history of the Kingdom. Among the ten pieces of Nabataean currency, there are, on average, eight pieces of this great king.
The coin minted by King Harith the Fourth, bearing his image and the image of Queen Shaqilat, which indicates the extent of the civilizational development reached by the Nabataeans.
Thus, Al-Harith IV was undoubtedly one of the great personalities in the history of the Arabs before Islam, and the Nabataean kingdom during his reign, which lasted for nearly half a century, reached its most flourishing era. It is not surprising that his name was constantly mentioned on the Nabataean currency and inscriptions, accompanied by the phrase “the lover of his people” in Aramaic (rhm amh = merciful uncle).