Page:EB1911 - Volume 23.djvu/1000

Rh  Collected editions of his works appeared at Antwerp in 1677-1678, and again at Madrid in 1789-1790; see also vol. xxv. of the ''Bibl. de'' ''aut. esp.'' (1853).  SAAZ (Czech Žatec), a town of Bohemia, Austria, 64 m. N.W. of Prague by rail. Pop. (1900) 16,168, mostly German. It lies on the Eger, which is spanned here by a suspension bridge, 210 ft. long, which is the oldest of its kind in Bohemia, having been constructed in 1826. It possesses several ancient churches, of which one is said to date from 1206, and a town hall built in 1559. Saaz is the centre of the extensive hop trade of the neighbourhood. In early times it was the seat of a royal count (Župan or gaugraf). A coat-of-arms was given to the inhabitants by Ladislaus for their courage during the storming of Milan; and the place is mentioned as a royal town under Ottokar II. From the outbreak of the Hussite Wars to the Thirty Years War Saaz was Hussite or Protestant, but after the battle of the White Mountain (1620) the greater part of the Bohemian inhabitants left the town, which became German and Roman Catholic.  SABADELL, a town of north-eastern Spain, in the province of Barcelona; on the river Ripoll and on the Barcelona-Saragossa railway. Pop. (1900) 23,294. The town has handsome modern public buildings, including the town hall, schools for primary and higher education, hospitals and theatres. Cloth, linen, paper, flour and brandy are manufactured, and there are iron foundries and saw-mills. About half the inhabitants are employed in the textile factories. Sabadell is said to be the Roman Sebendunum, but in Spanish annals it is not noticed until the 13th century.  SABAEANS. The ancient name of the people of (q.v.) was Saba (Saba’ with final hemza); and the oldest notices of them are in the Hebrew Scriptures. The list of the sons of Joktan in Gen. x. 26-29 contains in genealogical form a record of peoples of South Arabia which must rest on good information from Yemen itself. Many of these names are found on the inscriptions or in the Arabic geographers—Sheba (Saba’), Hazarmaveth (Ḥaḍramut), Abimael (Abime‘athtar), Jobab (Yuhaibib, according to Halévy), Jerah (Warāḥ of the geographers), Joktan (Arab Qaḥtan; waqata=qaḥata). On the other hand, the names of some famous nations mentioned on the inscriptions are lacking, from which it may be concluded that they did not rise to prominence till a later date. Saba’ (Sheba) itself, which was in later times the chief name, has in Gen. x. 28 a subordinate place; it was perhaps only a collective name for the companies of merchants who conducted the South-Arabian export trade (the root saba’ in the inscriptions meaning to make a trading journey), and in that case would be of such late origin as to hold one of the last places in a list that has genealogical form. Two other accounts in Genesis, originally independent, give supplementary information drawn from the Sabaean colonies, the stations and factories established to facilitate trade through the desert. The inscriptions of Al-‘Ola published by D. H. Müller show that there were Minaean colonies in North Arabia. Other South Arabs, and especially the Sabaeans, doubtless also planted settlers on the northern trade routes, who in process of time united into one community with their North-Arab kinsmen and neighbours. Thus we can understand how in Gen. xxv. 2-3 Sheba and Dedan appear among the North-Arab “sons of Keturah.” Again, the Sabaeans had colonies in Africa and there mingled with the black Africans; and so in Gen. x. 7 Sheba and Dedan, the sons of Raamah (Raghma), appear in the genealogy of the Cushites. With the Ethiopians Saba’ means “men,” a clear indication of their Sabaean descent.

The queen of Sheba who visited Solomon may have come with a caravan trading to Gaza, to see the great king whose ships plied on the Red Sea. The other biblical books do not mention the Sabaeans except incidentally, in allusion to their trade in incense and perfumes, gold and precious stones, ivory, ebony, and costly garments (Jer. vi. 20; Ezek. xxvii. 15, 20, 22 seq.; Isa. lx. 6; Job vi. 19). These passages attest the wealth and trading importance of Saba from the days of Solomon to those of Cyrus. When the prologue to Job speaks of plundering

Sabaeans (and Chaldaeans) on the northern skirts of Arabia, these may be either colonists or caravans, which, like the old Phoenician and Greek traders, combined on occasion robbery with trade. The prologue may not be historical; but it is to be presumed that it deals with historical possibilities, and is good evidence thus far.

The biblical picture of the Sabaean kingdom is confirmed and supplemented by the Assyrian inscriptions. Tiglath-Pileser II. (733 ) tells us that Teima, Saba’, and Ḥaipā ( = Ephah, Gen. xxv. 4 and Isa. lx. 6) paid him tribute of gold, silver and much incense. Similarly Sargon (715 ) in his Annals mentions the tribute of Shamsi, queen of Arabia, and of Itamara of the land of Saba’—gold and fragrant spices, horses and camels.

The earliest Greek accounts of the Sabaeans and other South-Arabian peoples are of the 3rd century Eratosthenes (276-194 ) in Strabo (xv. 4. 2) says that the extreme south of Arabia, over against Ethiopia, is inhabited by four great nations—the Minaeans (, ; Ma‘īn of the inscriptions) on the Red Sea, whose chief city is Carna; next to them the Sabaeans, whose capital is Mariaba (Mariab of the inscriptions); then the Catabanes (Qatabān of the inscriptions), near the Straits of Bāb-el-Mandeb, the seat of whose king is Tamna; fourthly, and farthest east, the people of Ḥaḍramut (Chatramotitae), with their city Sabota. The Catabanes produce frankincense and Ḥaḍramut myrrh, and there is a trade in these and other spices with merchants who make the journey from Aelana (Elath, on the Gulf of ‘Akaba) to Minaea in seventy days; the Gabaeans (the Gaba’ān of the inscriptions, Pliny's Gebanitae) take forty days to go to Ḥaḍramut. This short but important and well-informed notice is followed a little later by that of Agatharchides (120 ), who speaks in glowing terms of the wealth and greatness of the Sabaeans, but seems to have less exact information than Eratosthenes. He knows only the Sabaeans and thinks that Saba is the name of their capital. He mentions, however, the “happy islands” beyond the straits, the station of the Indian trade (§ 103). Artemidorus (100 ), quoted by Strabo, gives a similar account of the Sabaeans and their capital Mariaba, of their wealth and trade, adding the characteristic feature that each tribe receives the wares and passes them on to its neighbours as far as Syria and Mesopotamia.

The accounts of the wealth of the Sabaeans brought back by traders and travellers excited the cupidity of Rome, and Augustus entrusted Aelius Gallus with an expedition to South Arabia, of which we have an authentic account in Strabo (xvi. 4. 22). He hoped for assistance from the friendly Nabataeans; but, as they owed everything to their position as middlemen for the South-Arabian trade, which a direct communication between Rome and the Sabaeans would have ruined, their viceroy Syllaeus, who did not dare openly to refuse help, sought to frustrate the emperor's scheme by craft. Instead of showing the Romans the caravan route, he induced them to sail from Cleopatris to Leucocome, and then led them by a circuitous way through waterless regions, so that they reached South Arabia too much weakened to effect anything. But the expedition brought back a considerable knowledge of the country and its products, and the Roman leader seems to have perceived that the best entrance to South Arabia|Arabia was from the havens on the coast. So at least we may conclude when, a hundred years later ( 77, as Dillmann has shown), in the Periplus of an anonymous contemporary of Pliny (§ 23) we read that Charibael of Ẓafar, “the legitimate sovereign of two nations, the Homerites and Sabaeans,” maintained friendly relations with Rome by frequent embassies and gifts. Pliny's account of Yemen, too, must be largely drawn from the expedition of Gallus, though he also used itineraries of travellers to India, like the Periplus Maris Erythraei just quoted.

Nautical improvements, and the discovery that the south-west monsoon (Hippalus) gave sure navigation at certain seasons, increased the connexion of the West with South Arabia, but also wrought such a change in the trade as involved a revolution in the state of that country. The hegemony of the Sabaeans