[20] I have abridged Ṭabarí, Annals, i, 231 sqq. Cf. also chapters vii, xi, xxvi, and xlvi of the Koran.
[21] Koran, xi, 56-57.
[22] See Doughty's Documents Epigraphiques recueillis dans le nord de l'Arabie, p. 12 sqq.
[23] Koran, vii, 76.
[24] Properly Saba’ with hamza, both syllables being short.
[25] The oldest record of Saba to which a date can be assigned is found in the Assyrian cuneiform inscriptions. We read in the Annals of King Sargon (715 b.c.), "I received the tribute of Pharaoh, the King of Egypt, of Shamsiyya, the Queen of Arabia, of Ithamara the Sabæan—gold, spices, slaves, horses, and camels." Ithamara is identical with Yatha‘amar, a name borne by several kings of Saba.
[26] A. Müller, Der Islam im Morgen und Abendland, vol. i, p. 24 seq.
[27] Nöldeke, however, declares the traditions which represent Kulayb as leading the Rabí‘a clans to battle against the combined strength of Yemen to be entirely unhistorical (Fünf Mo‘allaqát, i, 44).
[28] Op. cit., p. 94 seq. An excellent account of the progress made in discovering and deciphering the South Arabic inscriptions down to the year 1841 is given by Rödiger, Excurs ueber himjaritische Inschriften, in his German translation of Wellsted's Travels in Arabia, vol. ii, p. 368 sqq.
[29] Seetzen's inscriptions were published in Fundgruben des Orients, vol. ii (Vienna, 1811), p. 282 sqq. The one mentioned above was afterwards deciphered and explained by Mordtmann in the Z.D.M.G., vol. 31, p. 89 seq.