Qataban

For the language, see Qatabanian language.

Late Kingdom of Qataban (light blue) not long before its fall in the 2nd century CE.

Bronze lion with a rider made by the Qatabanians circa 75-50 BCE.

Qataban or Katabania (Arabic,مملكة قتبان) was an ancient Yemeni kingdom. Its heartland was located in the Baihan valley. Like some other Southern Arabian kingdoms it gained great wealth from the trade of frankincense and myrrh, incenses which were burned at altars. The capital of Qataban was named Timna and was located on the trade route which passed through the other kingdoms of Hadramaut, Sheba and Ma'in. The chief deity of the Qatabanians was Amm, or "Uncle" and the people called themselves the "children of Amm".

It was the most prominent Yemeni kingdom in the 2nd half of the 1st millennium BCE, when its ruler held the title of the South Arabian hegemon, MKRB.

Bibliography

• Alessandro de Maigret. Arabia Felix, translated Rebecca Thompson. London: Stacey International, 2002. ISBN 1-900988-07-0
• Andrey Korotayev. Ancient Yemen. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995. ISBN 0-19-922237-1.
• Andrey Korotayev. Pre-Islamic Yemen. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag, 1996. ISBN 3-447-03679-6.
• Andrey Korotayev. Socio-Political Conflict in the Qatabanian Kingdom? (A re-interpretation of the Qatabanic inscription R 3566) // Proceedings of the Seminar for Arabian Studies 27 (1997): 141–158.