Article table of contents: ʿ
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Ancient settlement on the southern edge of the al-Bayḍāʾ plateau in Yemen. The site is strategically located on the trail connecting the kingdoms of Qatabān and Awsān to the Gulf of Aden. In the early Christian era, the site was one of the largest cities on the territory of the tribal principality of Maḍḥà.
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The island of ʿAkkāz (Kuwait) was excavated in 1978, 1984‒1985, 1995, revealing Seleuco-Parthian, Parthian and Sasanian dwellings, a circular building interpreted as a tower of silence from the Sasanian period, a Christian settlement (church?) from the late Sasanian and Umayyad periods and an Abbasid hoard of coins (fals).
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As the head of the pantheon of pre-Islamic Yemen ʿAthtar was venerated throughout the whole area of Ancient South Arabian civilization, especially in Sabaʾ in the early stages of its history and at the turn of the Christian era, in the north-eastern part of the Horn of Africa in the 8th–7th centuries BCE, and in the region of al-Jawf (Yemen), as local hypostases, in the 1st millennium BCE.
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Locally worshipped goddess in the western part of inland Ḥaḍramawt during the 1st millennium BCE.
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ʿAyn Jawān is a coastal site in north-eastern Arabia, in Tarūt Bay. It comprises a large settlement mound, tentatively dated to the 1st–3rd centuries CE, and a vast cemetery with various types of tombs. In this cemetery, a large burial tumulus yielded a particularly rich funerary assemblage including an elaborate set of jewellery.
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A site in the northern part of the Red Sea Saudi coast, close to the Gulf of Aqaba. It seems to have been a trading station in the Nabataean period, intermediary between the sea lanes and the caravan track to Aila and Petra. Several 1st-century-BCE storage facilities have been identified. They were also used in the Roman provincial period, and were rebuilt in the 4th cent. CE.
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See Dadān
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Oasis in northwestern Arabia, home to many archaeological sites.
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A goddess worshipped in pre-Islamic North and South Arabia. With Allāt and Manāt, she is one of the three so-called “daughters of Allāh” in the Qurʾān (53:19–20).