Kingdom of Hadhramaut in the context of "Sabaeans"

Arabs (Arabic: عَرَب) are an ethnic group mainly inhabiting the Arab world in West Asia and North Africa. A significant Arab diaspora is present in various parts of the world. Before the spread of Arabic language in the wake of the Arab conquests, "Arab" largely referred to the Semitic inhabitants—both settled and nomadic—of the Arabian Peninsula and the Syrian Desert. In modern usage, it includes people from across the Greater Middle East that share Arabic as a native language.

Arabs have been in the Fertile Crescent for thousands of years. In the 9th century BCE, the Assyrians made written references to Arabs as inhabitants of the Levant, Mesopotamia, and Arabia. Throughout the Ancient Near East, Arabs established influential civilizations starting from 3000 BCE onwards, such as Dilmun, Gerrha, and Magan, playing a vital role in trade between Mesopotamia, and the Mediterranean. Other prominent tribes include Midian, ʿĀd, and Thamud mentioned in the Bible and Quran. Later, in 900 BCE, the Qedarites enjoyed close relations with the nearby Canaanite and Aramaean states, and their territory extended from Lower Egypt to the Southern Levant. From 1200 BCE to 110 BCE, powerful kingdoms emerged such as Saba, Lihyan, Minaean, Qataban, Hadhramaut, Awsan, and Homerite emerged in Arabia. According to the Abrahamic tradition, Arabs are descendants of Abraham through his son Ishmael.

Qataban (Qatabanian: 𐩤𐩩𐩨𐩬, romanized: QTBN, lit. 'Qatabān') was an ancient Yemenite kingdom in South Arabia that existed from the early 1st millennium BCE to the late 1st or 2nd centuries CE.

It was one of the six ancient South Arabian kingdoms of ancient Yemen, along with Sabaʾ, Maʿīn, Ḥaḍramawt, Ḥimyar and Awsān.

Sheba, or Saba, was an ancient South Arabian kingdom that existed in Yemen before 275 CE. It likely began to exist between c. 1000 BCE and c. 800 BCE. Its inhabitants were the Sabaeans, who, as a people, were indissociable from the kingdom itself for much of the 1st millennium BCE. Modern historians agree that the heartland of the Sabaean civilization was located in the region around Marib and Sirwah. In some periods, they expanded to much of modern Yemen and even parts of the Horn of Africa, particularly Eritrea and Ethiopia. The kingdom's native language was Sabaic, which was a variety of Old South Arabian.

Among South Arabians and Abyssinians, Sheba's name carried prestige, as it was widely considered to be the birthplace of South Arabian civilization as a whole. The first Sabaean kingdom lasted from the 8th century BCE to the 1st century BCE: this kingdom can be divided into the "mukarrib" period, where it reigned supreme over all of South Arabia; and the "kingly" period, a long period of decline to the neighbouring kingdoms of Ma'in, Hadhramaut, and Qataban, ultimately ending when a newer neighbour, Himyar, annexed them. Sheba was originally confined to the region of Marib (its capital city) and its surroundings. At its height, it encompassed much of the southwestern parts of the Arabian Peninsula before eventually declining to the regions of Marib. However, it re-emerged from the 1st to 3rd centuries CE. During this time, a secondary capital was founded at Sanaa, which is also the capital city of modern Yemen. Around 275 CE, the Sabaean civilization came to a permanent end in the aftermath of another Himyarite annexation.

Mukarrib (Sabaean: 𐩣𐩫𐩧𐩨, romanized: mkrb, lit. 'federator') is a title used by rulers in ancient South Arabia. It is attested as soon as continuous epigraphic evidence is available, and it was used by the kingdoms of Saba, Hadhramaut, Qataban, and Awsan. The title is also found on Sabaic inscriptions from Ethiopia. The title mukarrib has no equivalent in other Near Eastern societies, and it was not used in the Christian era. The mukarrib is only cited when he is the author of the document, but not on legal documents, where the issuer is called the "king of Saba" or the "king of Qataban" instead.

The title appears very early in both Saba and Awsan, and it is unclear which borrowed it from the other. In Qataban, the title mukarrib only occurs in territories on the southern plateau. Qatabanian mukarribs performed many functions: they conducted holy hunts in the kingdom's valleys, guided the army during war, built the walls and gates of the capital, conquered and walled neighbouring cities, and cut mountains to create passes between important wadis.

Ḥaḍramautic or Ḥaḍramitic was the easternmost of the four known languages of the Old South Arabian subgroup of the Semitic languages. It was used in the Kingdom of Hadhramaut and also the area round the Hadhramite capital of Shabwa, in what is now Yemen. The Hadramites also controlled the trade in frankincense through their important trading post of Sumhuram (Hadramautic s₁mhrm), now Khor Rori in the Dhofar Governorate, Oman.