The A’adids established themselves in South Arabia (modern day Yemen), settling to the east of the Qahtan tribe.They established the Kingdom of A’ad around the 10th century BCE to the 3rd century CE.

Magan is attested as the name of a trading partner of the Sumerians. It is often assumed to be located in Oman.

The A ’ad nation were known to the Greeks and Egyptians. Claudius Ptolemy’s Geographos (2nd century CE) refers to the place by a Hellenized version of the inhabitants of the capital Ubar.

The Thamud were a people of ancient Arabia, either a tribe or a group of tribes, that created a large kingdom and flourished from 3000 BCE to 200 BCE. Recent archaeological work has revealed numerous Thamudic rock writings and pictures not only in Yemen but also throughout central Arabia.

They are mentioned in sources such as the Qur’an, old Arabian poetry, Assyrian annals (Tamudi), in a Greek temple inscription from the northwest Hejaz of CE 169, in a 5th-century Byzantine source and in Old North Arabian graffiti around Tayma.

They are mentioned in the victory annals of the Neo-Assyrian King, Sargon II (8th century BCE), who defeated these people in a campaign in northern Arabia. The Greeks also refer to these people as “Tamudaei”, i.e. “Thamud”, in the writings of Aristotle, Ptolemy, and Pliny. Before the rise of Islam, approximately between 400-600 CE, the Thamud totally disappeared.

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During Minaean rule (7th century BCE – 1st century BCE) the capital was at Karna (now known as Sa’dah). Their other important city was Yathill (now known as Baraqish). The Minaean Kingdom was centered in northwestern Yemen, with most of its cities laying along the Wadi Madhab.

Minaic inscriptions have been found far afield of the Kingdom of Ma’in, as far away as al-`Ula in northwestern Saudi Arabia and even on the island of Delos and in Egypt. It was the first of the Yemeni kingdoms to end, and the Minaic language died around CE 100.

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According to South Arabian tradition, the eldest son of Noah, Shem, founded the city of Ma’rib. During Sabaean rule (9th century BCE – CE 275), trade and agriculture flourished generating much wealth and prosperity.

The Sabaean kingdom is located in what is now the Asir region in southwestern Yemen, and its capital, Ma’rib, is located near what is now Yemen’s modern capital, Sana’a.

During Sabaean rule, Yemen was called “Arabia Felix” by the Romans who were impressed by its wealth and prosperity. The Roman emperor Augustus sent a military expedition to conquer the “Arabia Felix”, under the orders of Aelius Gallus.

After an unsuccessful siege of Ma’rib, the Roman general retreated to Egypt, while his fleet destroyed the port of Aden in order to guarantee the Roman merchant route to India.

The success of the kingdom was based on the cultivation and trade of spices and aromatics including frankincense and myrrh. These were exported to the Mediterranean, India, and Abyssinia where they were greatly prized by many cultures, using camels on routes through Arabia, and to India by sea.

During the 8th and 7th century BCE, there was a close contact of cultures between the Kingdom of Dʿmt in northern Ethiopia and Eritrea and Saba. Though the civilization was indigenous and the royal inscriptions were written in a sort of proto-Ethiosemitic, there were also some Sabaean immigrants in the kingdom as evidenced by a few of the Dʿmt inscriptions.

Agriculture in Yemen thrived during this time due to an advanced irrigation system which consisted of large water tunnels in mountains, and dams.

The most impressive of these earthworks, known as the Marib Dam was built ca. 700 BCE, provided irrigation for about 25,000 acres (101 km2) of land and stood for over a millennium, finally collapsing in CE 570 after centuries of neglect.

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