Article table of contents: Q
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See Ḥuqqa (al-)
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Qalʿat al-Bahrain, listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2005, is the most significant archaeological site of the Kingdom of Bahrain. Adjacent to the northern coast of the main island of the archipelago, about 5.5 km west of Manama, the site is a tell of c. 17.5 hectares, crowned by a huge fort from the 15th/16th centuries CE. Despite its somewhat confusing name (“Bahrain Fort”), this is essentially a settlement site. A thick accumulation of urban archaeological layers (over about 8 m) attests to the long history of the site, beginning with the first human settlement c. 2300 BCE and ending with Islamic dwellings and progressive abandonment during the 17th century CE.
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See Dhamarī
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The kingdom of Qatabān was one of the most important kingdoms of Ancient South Arabia. Its centre was in the Wādī Bayḥān, where the capital Tamnaʿ (now Hajar Kuḥlān) was located. Qatabān was the leading tribe of a confederation based on the alliance of various political entities, called ‘the children of ʿAmm’ (i.e., the tribes that identified themselves with the cult of the greatest Qatabanian god). Much of the southern Yemeni plateau was part of this confederation for centuries. The history of Qatabān can be dated from the beginning of the 7th cent. BCE to the 2nd cent. CE.
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See Queen [Arabian]
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Qurayyah is a megasite extending over 300 hectares and is, after Taymāʾ, the second largest urban oasis enclosed by continuous walls ever documented in the Arabian Peninsula. This permanent settlement since the early 3rd millennium BCE developed around a significantly older ceremonial landscape. In the 2nd millennium BCE, Qurayyah was the birth place of the Qurayyah Painted Ware, formerly known as “Midianite Pottery”, attested from the Southern Levant down to the Hejaz. The settlement continued throughout the entire 1st millennium BCE and until the late Roman period.
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A Nabataean settlement and presumably a seaport located in northwest Saudi Arabia, linked to Roman harbours on the Red Sea and probably to Hegra (Madāʾin Ṣāliḥ), through a potential caravan route along the Wādī al-Ḥamḍ.
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Al-Quṣūr, located in the centre of Faylakā Island (Kuwait), was excavated in 1975-76, 1988-89, 2006-09, and has been under excavation since 2011. This monastery mainly dates from the Umayyad and early Abbasid periods and is characterised by at least one church, a refectory, and a food processing building in the centre of the site. The surroundings could be monks’ cells related to the monastery or a contemporaneous village.