Mukarrib (
Old South Arabian
Old South Arabian (or Ṣayhadic or Yemenite) is a group of four closely related extinct languages spoken in the far southern portion of the Arabian Peninsula. They were written in the Ancient South Arabian script.
There were a number of othe ...
: ,
romanized: ) is a title variously defined as "priest-kings" or "federators"; the mukarribs may have been the first rulers of the early
South Arabia
South Arabia () is a historical region that consists of the southern region of the Arabian Peninsula in Western Asia, mainly centered in what is now the Republic of Yemen, yet it has also historically included Najran, Jizan, Al-Bahah, and 'A ...
n states. Sometime in the fourth century BCE, the title was replaced by ''
Malik
Malik, Mallik, Melik, Malka, Malek, Maleek, Malick, Mallick, or Melekh ( phn, 𐤌𐤋𐤊; ar, ملك; he, מֶלֶךְ) is the Semitic term translating to " king", recorded in East Semitic and Arabic, and as mlk in Northwest Semitic du ...
'', typically translated as "king".
Scholarly interpretations
Stuart Munro-Hay writes that the title of mukarrib "indicates something like 'federator', and in southern Arabia was assumed by the ruler who currently held the primacy over a group of tribes linked by a covenant." Thus, mukarrib can be regarded as a South Arabian hegemon, the head of confederation of South Arabian sha`bs headed by "kings" ('mlk). In the 1st millennium BCE there was usually one mukarrib in South Arabia, but many "kings".
[E.g. Korotayev A]
Apologia for ‘the Sabaean cultural-political area’. ''Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies'', 57/3 (1994), 469-474.
/ref>
Joy McCorriston took a slightly different viewpoint:
See also
* List of rulers of Saba and Himyar
References
Bibliography
* Andrey Korotayev
''Ancient Yemen''. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995
{{ISBN, 0-19-922237-1.
Ancient history of Yemen
South Arabia
Titles in Middle East
Royal titles