across the ancient world. Egyptian demand for these rare goods established permanent trade routes to the incenseproducing areas of Ḥaḍramawt and Ẓufār in Southern Arabia. This lucrative trade was then further extended to later Greek and Roman civilizations to the north of Arabia via the vast camel caravans of the incense routes. This international trade enabled the regional kingdoms and their capitals to flourish that saw the establishment of a number of important seaports including Qānā in the south of Arabia and Gaza in the north.3 Economic cooperation was vital to all the kingdoms of the region and, despite often on-going hostilities between various regional sovereignties, protection for trade caravans was ensured through a system of ‘commissions’ or taxes from the merchants in return for safe passage through tribal territories across the deserts and highlands. However, protected travel could only be assured where traders adhered strictly to a prescribed and widely recognized route and any breaches could often result in the penalty of death.
1.1 – A British stamp from the Aden Protectorate published in the 1960s displaying an early etching of the port.
Whilst relatively little is known regarding the administration and organization of the various ancient kingdoms of the region, archaeological evidence and research suggests that the majority were polytheist, with a number of ancient temples and places of worship dedicated to astrological deities such as the sun, the moon and other celestial entities.4 Further, the excavation of burial sites also indicates a belief in an afterlife by the presence of a number of personal possessions included in many graves. Archaeologists also interpret the gradual development of simple stylized sculptural forms into intricate three-dimensional figures, complete with individual features, as suggestive of the wealth and influence generated through the highly profitable incense trade that exposed these relatively isolated societies to more advanced civilizations. The distinctive and fairly rapid shift from simple geometric designs to greater developed floral shapes and patterns indicate clear Hellenistic influences. Architecturally, the design of the original temples, constructed of rectangular buildings flanked with square shaped columns, is contrasted with the later buildings which appear to replicate the hallmarks of Greek and Roman architectural motifs.
Although historians generally refer to the overarching ancient civilization of the region as Sabean, the kingdoms of southern Arabia were largely contemporaneous and did not succeed each other. Rather, different kingdoms reached their civilizational peak at different times. For example, by the third century CE, the Ḥimyarite kingdom exercised its hegemony over the neighbouring kingdoms of Saba’, Dhū Raydān, Ḥaḍramawt and Yamnat and, a century later, Ḥimyarite ascendancy included rule over the Bedouins of the highlands and lowlands, forming the first political unification of southern Arabia under a single ruler. Before Ḥimyarite ascendancy, the Sabeans had dominated the region for well over a thousand years, creating a kingdom whose influence reached far beyond tribal tributaries. Equally, the people of the Ma˓īn kingdom in the north of the region were economic stalwarts whose commercial exploits and interests reached as far as the Nabatean city of Petra in central Arabia and several countries around the Mediterranean. However, it was only the kingdom of Ḥaḍramawt that produced the muchneeded luxury commodity of frankincense, from the Dhofar region, which was shipped through the ancient port of Qānā, today known as Bi’r ˓Alī, thereafter transported overland through Shabwah.5
In the ancient world, the consumers of the expensive incenses were never informed of their precise origins, hence the legends and myths that surround the early medieval spice and incense trade. For example, Heredotus wrote that incense growers lived in isolated groves and were forbidden marital relations with women or to attend funerals. He also claimed that the mythical groves which produced the precious incense were guarded by winged serpents. But such fables were probably largely the result of overzealous Yemeni incense merchants who wished not only to preserve the high prices sought for their wares, but also to protect the sea routes they had mastered to India and China by learning to negotiate the monsoon winds.6 The ancient sea routes brought in further expensive luxuries such as spices and silks which all passed through Yemeni ports on to camel caravan routes through Arabia into Greek and then later Roman domains. So fruitful were Yemeni merchants in the trade of precious commodities, that the Romans believed that the Arabian Peninsula was the producer of all such expensive items, prompting them to describe the Yemen as Arabia Felix (‘Fortuitous Arabia’). But the exotic and mysterious image of Arabia, cultivated by the Romans, overlooked the harsh realities of life in the region in which the majority of the population were held in virtual serfdom, working the irrigated foothills of the highlands in the production of much-needed agricultural produce. Evidence of this early sophisticated agricultural society is best seen in the ancient remains of the huge rock monoliths of the former Ma’rib Dam. These now strange free-standing structures are all that remain of the colossal wādī (valley) sluices that trapped the rainfall running down the valleys, forming a complex irrigation system constructed by the ancient Sabean civilization that is believed to have irrigated more than 16,000 hectares, producing food for an estimated 300,000 people.7
The Ma’rib Dam is a legend that even finds references in the Qur’ān (Sūrah 27, Al-Naml and Sūrah 34, Saba’) and is linked historically to the Old Testament Queen of Sheba (or, Bilqīs), who was said to have visited King Solomon’s (Sulāymān) court in ancient Palestine (10 Kings: 1–3, Chronicles: 1–2). Scripture offers only sketchy descriptions of the events and no absolute narrative exists as to the exact detail of the ancient queen, her epic journey to Solomon’s seat and the details of her kingdom. Archaeological excavations of these ancient Sabean sites are slowly beginning to offer further evidence of this once great civilization. The collapse of the Ma’rib Dam in the fifth century CE, and its ill-fated restoration that resulted in its ultimate collapse 100 years later, is seen as the catalyst for the demise of the Sabean civilization. Although historians suggest that the collapse of the Ma’rib Dam was actually only a contributory factor to the wider downturn in the incense trade from the fourth century CE onwards when the Romans discovered their own sea routes to India in search of the origins of the spices and incense they sought. Further, the political shifts within the Roman Empire as the Eastern Empire quickly acceded saw the capital transferred from Rome to Constantinople in 395CE, which meant that a new overland route to India and China opened up through ancient Persia and Afghanistan. Added to this was the spread of Christianity across Byzantium in the fourth and fifth centuries CE, which hailed a major change from the previous pagan rituals that had relied on incense for its religious rites.
As develoments in the Western and Eastern Roman Empires took their toll on the international incense trade in the Yemen, internal transformations within the region also began to have their impact. The relatively sophisticated kingdoms and civilizations that had developed as a direct result of the boom in the incense and spice trades slowly began to deteriorate as the previous wealth that flooded into the region gradually dried up. This serious economic decline in the region brought about a re-nomadification of Southern Arabia as the former prosperous centres suffered from economic deprivation.8 Consequently, the highly-developed irrigated agricultural societies that sprouted out of the practical need to feed the booming economic centres also fell into rapid decline. The resultant effect was a complete cessation of market economies based on the luxury commodities of spice, silk and incense. As a consequence, what had previously been hailed by the other great civilizations as the ‘land of plenty’ quickly became the ‘land of empty’.
The northern highlands of the region had for many years been influenced by Byzantine Christianity, both from the Hellenistic world and the Abyssinian Empire. Yet, whilst Christianity had influenced the beliefs and culture of the northern Ḥimyarite kingdom, when the last Ḥimyarite sovereigns converted to Judaism, the situation for the majority Christians in the region of Najrān became that of religious persecution at the hands of the zealot Jewish king, Dhū Nuwwās, prompting an invasion by the Abyssinians around 518CE. Towards the south, the ancient prosperous kingdoms of Saba’, Ma˓īn, Qatabān, Awsān and Ḥaḍramawt, all evaporated as their