# Sabaeans

The Sabaeans or Sabeans were an ancient group from the southwestern tip of South Arabia, corresponding to modern-day Yemen. The Sabaeans founded the Kingdom of Saba in the late second or first millennium BCE, considered by South Arabians and the first Abyssinian kingdoms to be the birthplace of South Arabian civilization, and whose name carried prestige. The spoken language of the Sabaeans was Sabaic, a variety of Old South Arabian. The Kingdom of Saba was originally confined to the region of Marib (its capital) and its surroundings. At its height, it encompassed much of southwest Arabia, before eventually declining to the regions of Marib and its secondary capital, Sanaa, founded in the 1st century CE, the capital of Yemen today. Around 275 CE, the Saba civilization came to an end after beig annexed by the neighbouring Himyarite Kingdom.
Saba existed alongside several neighboring kingdoms in ancient South Arabia. To their north was the Kingdom of Ma'in, and to their east was the Kingdom of Qataban and the Kingdom of Hadhramaut. The Sabaeans, like the other Yemenite kingdoms of their time, were involved in the extremely lucrative spice trade, especially including frankincense and myrrh. They left behind many inscriptions in the monumental Ancient South Arabian script as well as numerous documents in the related cursive Zabūr script. They also interacted with the societies in the Horn of Africa where they left numerous traces, including inscriptions and temples that date back to the Sabaean colonization of Africa.
This kingdom came to play an important role in the Hebrew Bible and appears in the Quran (not to be confused with the Quranic Sabians). Some Islamic exegetes identified Sheba with the People of Tubba.
* ↑ "The kingdoms of ancient South Arabia". British Museum. Archived from the original on May 4, 2015. Retrieved 2013-02-22.
* ↑ Quran 27:6-93
* ↑ Quran 34:15-18
* ↑ Robin 2002, p. 56–57. sfn error: no target: CITEREFRobin2002 (help)
* ↑ Stuart Munro-Hay, Aksum: An African Civilization of Late Antiquity, 1991.
* ↑ Robin 2002, p. 51. sfn error: no target: CITEREFRobin2002 (help)
* ↑ "Yemen | Facts, History & News". InfoPlease.
* ↑ The Athenaeum. J. Lection. 1894. p. 88.
* ↑ Poluha, Eva (2016-01-28). Thinking Outside the Box: Essays on the History and (Under)Development of Ethiopia. Xlibris Corporation. ISBN 978-1-5144-2223-6.
* ↑ The Babylonian and Oriental Record. D. Nutt. 1894. p. 107.
* ↑ Japp, Sarah; Gerlach, Iris; Hitgen, Holger; Schnelle, Mike (2011). "Yeha and Hawelti: cultural contacts between Sabaʾ and DʿMT — New research by the German Archaeological Institute in Ethiopia". Proceedings of the Seminar for Arabian Studies. 41: 145–160. ISSN 0308-8421. JSTOR 41622129.
* ↑ Burrowes, Robert D. (2010). Historical Dictionary of Yemen. Rowman & Littlefield. p. 319. ISBN 978-0810855281.
* ↑ St. John Simpson (2002). Queen of Sheba: treasures from ancient Yemen. British Museum Press. p. 8. ISBN 0714111511.
* ↑ Kitchen, Kenneth Anderson (2003). On the Reliability of the Old Testament. Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing. p. 116. ISBN 0802849601.
* ↑ Wheeler, Brannon M. (2002). Prophets in the Quran: An Introduction to the Quran and Muslim Exegesis. Continuum International Publishing Group. p. 166. ISBN 0-8264-4956-5 – via Google Books.