Sabaean

Sabaean, member of a people of South Arabia in pre-Islamic times, founders of the kingdom of Sabaʾ, the biblical Sheba.

Although it is uncertain when exactly the Sabaeans first settled the region, their kingdom is known from ancient times from cuneiform inscriptions of Mesopotamia as well as their own South Semitic inscriptions. The earliest mention of the Sabaeans was in the Assyrian annals of the late 8th and early 7th centuries bce (although some scholars date Sabaean inscriptions to about the 6th century bce). They were responsible for impressive constructions both cultic and irrigational, including the greatest part of what is now visible of the dam in Maʾrib; however, there are traces of earlier dam works, and the silt deposits indicate agricultural exploitation far back in prehistory.

From the early historic period one ruler, named Karibʾil Watar, left a long epigraphic record of victories over peoples throughout the major part of Yemen, most importantly the Awsānian kingdom to the southeast, but the victories did not lead to permanent conquest. Nor did his campaigns ever extend into the Ḥaḍramawt region or to the Red Sea coastal area. At no period of their history as an independent people did the Sabaeans have real control of those two areas; in the Red Sea coastal area the sole indication of their presence is a small temple near Zabīd, probably attached to a military outpost guarding a route down to the sea.

Two secondary centres were Ṣirwāh, on a tributary of the Wadi Dhana above the dam, and Nashq (now Al-Bayḍāʾ), at the western end of Wadi al-Jawf. From perhaps just before the Common Era, however, the highland regions, both north and west of Sanaa, played a much more active part in Sabaean affairs, and some of the rulers belonged to highland clans. The early centuries of the Common Era also saw the emergence of Sanaa as a government centre and royal residence (in its palace, Ghumdān) almost rivaling the status of Maʾrib. Nevertheless, Maʾrib (with its palace, Salḥīn) retained its prestige into the 6th century ce.

Sabaean rulers of the early period employed a regnal style consisting of two names, each chosen from a very short list of alternatives; possible permutations were thus limited, and the same style recurs several times over. In drafting their own texts, the rulers adopted the title mukarrib, now generally thought to mean “unifier” (with allusion to the process of expansion of Sabaean influence over neighbouring communities). Persons other than the rulers never used this title in their texts but referred to the rulers by their regnal styles or occasionally as “king of Maʾrib.” Later the title mukarrib disappeared, and the rulers referred to themselves, and were referred to by their subjects, as “king of Sabaʾ.”

The first three centuries of the Common Era have yielded a more ample documentation than any other period, but during those centuries the Sabaeans were facing a strong threat from the Himyarites to the south of them. The Himyarites succeeded at times in gaining supremacy over the Sabaeans, and at the end of the 3rd century they definitively absorbed the Sabaeans into their realm. In the wars of the 1st century onward, the kings (whether Sabaean or Himyarite) were supported both by a national army (khamīs) under their own command and by contingents raised from the associated communities led by qayls, belonging to the aristocratic clans that headed each associated community.

The principal deity of the Sabaeans was Almaqah, a guardian of irrigation often symbolized by a bull’s head or a vine motif. The temple of Almaqah in Maʾrib had an unusual shape, that of an ellipse with a major axis about 345 feet long, with a strong wall about 28 feet high, built of fine limestone ashlars. A small temple, in front of which were eight standing pillars, comprised a gallery supported by interior pillars around a rectangular court; it served as a peristyle to the main temple, in the wall of which it was inserted. Other deities included ʿAthtar and Kurūm, among others known to have been worshipped in the region (see Arabian religion).