Saba' may reasonably be identified as the Biblical Sheba. It is further referred to in the Surah called after its name: 34:15-20. It was a city in Yemen, said to have been 3 days Journey (~50 miles) from the city of San'a'. A German explorer, Dr Hans Helfritz, claims to have located it in what is now Hadhramawt territory. The famous dam of Ma'rib made the country very prosperous and enabled it to attain a high degree of civilisation. The Queen of Sheba therefore held her head high until she saw the glories of Solomon.
The Queen of Sheba (Balqis in Arabian tradition) possibly ruled over Abyssinia also. The Habasha tribe (after whom Abyssinia was derived) came from Yemen. The Abyssinians possess a traditional history called "The Book of the Glory of Kings" (Kebra Negast), which has been translated from Ethiopic into English by Sir E.A. Wallis Budge (Oxford, 1932). It gives an account of the Queen of Sheba and her only son Menyelek I, as founder of the Abyssinian dynasty.
The ancient religion of the people of Saba' (the Himyar or Sabaeans) consisted in the worship of the heavenly bodies, the sun, the planets, and the stars. Possibly the cult was connected with that of Chaldea, the homeland of Abraham.
Yemen had easy access to Mesopotamia and the Persian Gulf by way of the sea, as well with Abysssinia. That accounts for the Christians of Najran and the Jewish dynasty of kings (e.g. Dhu Nuwas, d. A.C. 525) who persecuted the Sabaeans in the century before Islam - also for the Abyssinian Christian Governor Abrahah in the year of the Prophet's birth, 570 A.C. Jewish-Christian influences were powerful in Arabia in the 6th century.
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