Article table of contents: S
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With its textual corpus comprising approximately 6000 inscriptions dating back from the 8th century BCE to the 6th century CE, Sabaic is the best documented and the longest attested language within the Ancient South Arabian (ASA) language family. On account of the political and cultural reputation of the tribe of Sabaʾ, Sabaic was used as a written language in southern Arabia and beyond for many centuries and this, combined with the more varied repertoire of available documents, is the reason why Sabaic has been studied much more extensively than its sister languages.
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Sabaʾ, tribe settled in the central lowlands of Yemen, which evolved into the Sabaean kingdom in the early 1st mill. BCE. Its centre was the oasis of Maʾrib. The constituents of Sabaean identity were the use of Sabaic, a Semitic language written in the South Semitic alphabet, and the worshipping of the god Almaqah, tutelary deity of its pantheon.
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Locations referred to as sacred places are located in peculiar natural environments where rituals and cultual activities were performed in Southern Arabia from the early 1st mill. BCE to the 4th cent. CE.
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The setting up and veneration of stones is a feature of the ancient religious traditions of Arabia, the Levant and the Mediterranean.
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See Rituals
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The chief god of the ancient oasis of Taymāʾ, and also worshipped at Dūma (Dūmat al-Jandal, al-Jawf), and possibly at Qurayya in the same area.
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Salūt, near Bisya in the ad-Dakhiliya Governorate, central Oman, is a site occupied from the Bronze Age until the Late Islamic Period. Three main areas have been excavated: the castle (Ḥuṣn Salūt), the village (Qaryat Salūt), and the necropolis in the plain. Salūt reached its zenith during the Iron Age (1300–300 BCE). A necropolis located in the plain to the east of Ḥuṣn Salūt bears witness to the continued occupation of the area in the following centuries (300 BCE–200 CE).
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Late pre-Islamic archaeological assemblage/period centred in the eastern Sultanate of Oman (Sharqiyya), named eponymously after the site of Samad al-Shaʾn. Otherwise, ‘Samad period’/‘Samad assemblage’.
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The settlement of Samāhīj, in Bahrain, is of historical significance. Possibly linked to the episcopal see of Mašmahig, recent archaeological excavations unveiled a structure dating from the 6th to 8th centuries CE, possibly a monastery. Evidence includes Christian artifacts and architectural parallels connecting it to the wider Gulf region.
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See Dhamarī
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Samsara (Temple of Wadd dhū-Masmaʿim)
Isolated temple dedicated to the South Arabian deity Wadd. It is located on the western side of the jabal Balaq al-Qiblī (Yemen) and was in use during the first half of the first millennium BCE.
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Now the capital of the Republic of Yemen, the city of Ṣanʿāʾ appears in textual sources around the 1st cent. CE. It gradually emerged as one of the centres of power of the kingdom of Sabaʾ before becoming one of the main cities of the Yemeni highlands in late antiquity and early Islam.
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Sarūq al-Ḥadīd is an archaeological site located in the northeastern extension of the Rubʿ al-Khālī, on the southern border of the Emirate of Dubai, approximately 45 km from the Persian Gulf coast. The site is characterised by archaeological remains dating from the Neolithic to the Islamic period, with a particularly rich concentration of early Iron Age material likely reflecting periodic group aggregations associated with cultic and craft activities.
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The Sasanian family ruled the Iranian empire from the early 3rd to the mid-7th centuries CE. At various points during this period, they worked to extend their influence and control over the Arabian Peninsula, particularly in eastern and southern Arabia.
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See Saybān
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In pre-Islamic times, large quantities and a wide variety of artefacts, such as statues, statuettes, stelae, decorative friezes, etc., either of monumental proportions or of small dimensions, record the spread of sculpture in North and South Arabia. For the most part, these works are in stone, but bronze is also common, especially in South Arabia, while wood is rarely attested on account of its perishability. These sculptures are generally related to funerary or religious contexts but some of them come from an institutional context of royal power celebration.
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A distinct glyptic tradition in ancient South Arabia spans the period from the first millennium BCE to the early Christian era. Crafted from gold, silver, bronze and quartz, seals served as much as jewellery as they did as signing tools.
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For the Seleucid kingdom, East Arabia and the Gulf represented the main gateways to both the overland trade routes of the Peninsula and the maritime routes of the Indian Ocean. The available evidence suggests that the Seleucids established direct rule over the main Gulf islands for some periods of time, but exerted at most indirect and intermittent control over the East Arabian mainland.
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Rock art site with several hundred prehistoric and historic rock art panels, inscribed on UNESCO’s World Heritage List in 2015.
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A small monastery with a church, SBY9, has been identified and partially excavated on the island of Ṣīr Banī Yās. It dates to the late 7th and/or 8th century CE, and is considered to be a religious centre of the Church of the East. Other buildings are found nearby with related material culture, and are considered to be senior monks' cells (SBY2–7).
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Ancient fortified Sabaean city located in modern Yemen, west of Maʾrib. In the central courtyard of its main temple, dedicated to Almaqah, two Sabaean royal accounts of the late 8th – early 7th cent. BCE were displayed, illustrating the highly symbolic nature of this monument.
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Symbol of fertility and prosperity widely distributed in Arabia and in the nearby regions (Syria, Jordan, Israel, Egypt, Mesopotamia, Iran) from the 4th-3rd mill. BCE onwards. In Arabia, the snake symbol developed in particular during the end of the 2nd and the 1st mill. BCE.
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The largest island of the homonym archipelago comprising the islands Soqotra, ʿAbd al-Kūri, Samḥa and Darsa. It functioned as an important maritime hub within the Indian Ocean trading networks during the first centuries BCE / CE, and was one of the principal producers of frankincense, aloes, and dragon’s blood resin.
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Sorghum is a hot-climate drought-resistant crop used for human and animal consumption. It was domesticated in eastern Africa at least as early as the 4th millennium BCE before spreading throughout the African and the Asian continents in the following millennia and diversifying into five main landraces. Most of the early archaeobotanical evidence in Arabia has now been called into question and sorghum might in fact only date back to Classical and Islamic medieval periods.
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See Weaponry
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See Stone vessel
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Soft stones were worked as early as the 9th millennium BCE in the Arabian Peninsula and in the neighbouring regions of the Middle East: Egypt, Iran and any other territory with such geological resources. The production of soft stone objects has continued to the present-day, with peaks of manufacture in the Bronze Age and much later in the early Islamic period. Hard stones were also worked, for the manufacture of large vessels and macrolithic tools, but unlike for soft stone vessels, there is no evidence of a clearly identified tradition and long-term production.
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Strabo (ca. 60/50 BCE–ca. 25 CE), Greek historian and geographer, author of the ‘Geography’ (written by 17–24 CE), a geographical description of the world known to Greeks and Romans, of which the second part of book 16 (sections 3 and 4) is one of the most complete extant accounts of Arabia and its peoples in Ancient Greek literature, while other sections of the work also provide a few scraps of information about Arabs and Arabia (especially books 1–2).
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See Weaponry
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The national god of Ḥaḍramawt, i.e., the divine protector and master of this South Arabian kingdom.
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Place of worship in South Arabia in the monotheistic period. It designated a synagogue in Jewish or Judaizing inscriptions but could also have a broader meaning in some inscriptions.