Sabaʾ

Sabaʾ, biblical Sheba, kingdom in pre-Islamic southwestern Arabia, frequently mentioned in the Bible (notably in the story of King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba) and variously cited by ancient Assyrian, Greek, and Roman writers from about the 8th century bce to about the 5th century ce. Its capital, at least in the middle period, was Maʾrib, which lies 75 miles (120 km) east of present-day Sanaa, in Yemen. A second major city was Ṣirwāḥ.

The Sabaeans were a Semitic people who became established in southern Arabia at an unknown date. Excavations in central Yemen suggest that the Sabaean civilization began as early as the 10th–12th century bce. Early leaders styled themselves mukarribs—they apparently either were high priest–princes or exercised some function parallel to the kingly function—and by the 7th–5th century bce there were also “kings.” This middle period was characterized above all by a tremendous outburst of building activity, principally at Maʾrib and Ṣirwāḥ, and most of the great temples and monuments, including the great Maʾrib Dam, on which Sabaean agricultural prosperity depended, date back to this period. Further, there was an ever-shifting pattern of alliances and wars between Sabaʾ and other peoples of southwestern Arabia—not only the important kingdoms of Qatabān and Ḥaḍramawt but also a number of lesser but still independent kingdoms and city-states.

Sabaʾ was rich in spices and agricultural products and carried on a wealth of trade by overland caravan and by sea. The Bab el-Mandeb Strait, which narrowly separates Arabia from Africa, served as a major trade route throughout the kingdom’s existence. The Sabaeans and the Abyssinians (Ethiopians) enjoyed significant cultural and technological entanglement: many Sabaean inscriptions and religious artifacts have been found in the historical region of Tigray, and irrigation techniques used in Sabaʾ were employed in the region as well. Many of the languages spoken in the Horn of Africa today, including Amharic and Tigrinya, continue to use a script derived from the one used by the Sabaeans (see Ethiopic alphabet; South Semitic alphabet).

Toward the end of the 3rd century ce, a powerful king named Shamir Yuharʿish (who seems incidentally to be the first really historical personage whose fame has survived in the Islamic traditions) assumed the title “king of Sabaʾ and the Dhū Raydān and of Ḥaḍramawt and Yamanāt.” By this time, therefore, the political independence of Ḥaḍramawt had succumbed to Sabaʾ, which had thus become the controlling power in all of southwestern Arabia. In the mid-4th century ce it underwent a temporary eclipse, for the title of “king of Sabaʾ and the Dhū Raydān” was then claimed by the king of Aksum on the east African coast. At the end of the 4th century, southern Arabia was again independent under a “king of Sabaʾ and the Dhū Raydān and Ḥaḍramawt and Yamanāt.” But within two centuries the Sabaeans would disappear as they were successively overrun by Persian adventurers and by the Muslim Arabs.