The Biblical picture of the Sabæan kingdom is confirmed and supplemented by the Assyrian inscriptions. Tiglath Pileser II. (733 b.c.) tells us that Teima, Saba’, and Ḥaipá (=Ephah, Gen. xxv. 4 and Isa. lx. 6) paid him tribute of gold, silver, and much incense. Similarly Sargon (715 b.c.) in his Annals mentions the tribute of Shamsi, queen of Arabia, and of Itamara of the land of Saba’, gold and fragrant spices, horses and camels.
The earliest Greek accounts of the Sabæans and other South-Arabian peoples are of the 3d century b.c. Eratosthenes (276–194 b.c.) in Strabo (xv. 4, 2) says that the extreme south of Arabia, over against Ethiopia, is inhabited by four great nations,—the Minæans (Μειναῖοι, Mηναῖοι; Ma‘in of the inscriptions) on the Red Sea, whose chief city is Carna; next to them the Sabæans, whose capital is Mariaba (Mariab of the inscriptions); then the Catabanes (Ḳatabán of the inscriptions), near the Straits of Báb-al-Mandeb, the seat of whose king is Tamna; fourthly, and farthest east, the people of Ḥaḍramaut (Chatramotitæ), with their city Sabota. The Catabanes produce frankincense and Ḥaḍramaut myrrh, and there is a trade in these and other spices with merchants who make the journey from Ælana (Elath, on the Gulf of ‘Aḳaba) to Minæa in seventy days; the Gabæans (the Gaba’án of the inscriptions, Pliny’s Gebanitæ) take forty days to go to Ḥaḍramaut. This short but important and well-informed notice is followed a little later by that of Agatharchides (120 b.c.), who speaks in glowing terms of the wealth and greatness of the Sabæans, but seems to have less exact information than Eratosthenes. He knows only the Sabæans and thinks that Saba is the name of their capital. He mentions, however, the “happy islands” beyond the straits, the station of the Indian trade (§ 103). Artemidorus (100 b.c.), quoted by Strabo, gives a similar account of the Sabæans and their capital Mariaba, of their wealth and trade, adding the characteristic feature that each tribe receives the wares and passes them on to its neighbours as far as Syria and Mesopotamia.
The accounts of the wealth of the Sabæans brought back by traders and travellers excited the cupidity of Rome, and Augustus entrusted Ælius Gallus with an expedition to South Arabia, of which we have an authentic account in Strabo (xvi. 4, 22). He hoped for assistance from the friendly Nabatæans (q.v.); but, as they owed everything to their position as middlemen for the South-Arabian trade, which a direct communication between Rome and the Sabæans would have ruined, their viceroy Syllæus, who did not dare openly to refuse help, sought to frustrate the emperor’s scheme by craft. Instead of showing the Romans the caravan route, he induced them to sail from Cleopatris to Leucocome, and then led them by a circuitous way through waterless regions, so that they reached South Arabia too much weakened to effect anything. But the expedition brought back a considerable knowledge of the country and its products, and the Roman leader seems to have perceived that the best entrance to South Arabia was from the havens on the coast. So at least we may conclude when, a hundred years later (77 a.d., as Dillmann has shown), in the Periplus of an anonymous contemporary of Pliny (§ 23) we read that Charibael of Ẓafar, “the legitimate sovereign of two nations, the Homerites and Sabæans,” maintained friendly relations with Rome by frequent embassies and gifts. Pliny’s account of Yemen, too, must be largely drawn from the expedition of Gallus, though he also used itineraries of travellers to India, like the Periplus Maris Erythræi just quoted.
Nautical improvements, and the discovery that the south-west monsoon (Hippalus) gave sure navigation at certain seasons, increased the connexion of the West with South Arabia, but also wrought such a change in the trade as involved a revolution in the state of that country. The hegemony of the Sabæans now yields to that of a new people, the Homerites or Himyar, and the king henceforth bears the title “king of the Himyarites and Sabæans.” Naval expeditions from Berenice and Myoshormus to the Arabian ports brought back the information on which Claudius Ptolemy constructed his map, which still surprises us by its wealth of geographical names.
Sabæan colonies in Africa have been already mentioned. That Abyssinia was peopled from South Arabia is proved by its language and writing; but the difference between the two languages is such as to imply that the settlement was very early and that there were many centuries of separation, during which the Abyssinians were exposed to foreign influences. New colonies, however, seem to have followed from time to time, and, according to the Periplus (§ 16), some parts of the African coast were under the suzerainty of the Sabæan kings as late as the Sabæo-Himyaritic period; the district of Azania was held for the Sabæan monarch by the governor of Maphoritis (Ma‘áfir), and was exploited by a Sabæan company. Naturally difficulties would arise between Abyssinia and the Sabæan power. In the inscription of Adulis (2d century) the king of Ethiopia claims to have made war in Arabia from Leucocome to the land of the Sabæan king. And the Ethiopians were not without successes, for on the Greek inscription of Aksúm (c. the middle of the 4th century) King Æizanes calls himself “king of the Aksumites, the Homerites, and Raidán, and of the Ethiopians, Sabæans, and Silee.” More serious was the conflict under Dhú-Nu’ás (Dhú-Nuwás of the Arab historians) in the beginning of the 6th century; it ended in the overthrow of the Himyarite king and the subjugation of Yemen, which was governed by a deputy of the Aksumite king, till (about 570) the conquerors were overthrown by a small band of Persian adventurers (see Persia, vol. xviii. p. 613).
With the exception of what the South-Arabian Hamdání relates of his own observation or from authentic tradition, the Mohammedan Arabic accounts of South Arabia and Sabæa are of little worth. The great event they dwell on is the bursting of the dam of Ma’rib, which led to the emigration northwards of the Yemenite tribes. We may be sure that this event was not the cause but the consequence of the decline of the country. When the inland trade fell away and the traffic of the coast towns took the sea route, the ancient metropolis and the numerous inland emporia came to ruin, while the many colonies in the north were broken up and their population dispersed. To this the Koran alludes in its oracular style, when it speaks (xxxiv. 17) of well-known cities which God appointed as trading stations between the Sabæans and the cities He had blessed (Egypt and Syria), and which He destroyed because of their sins.
