Zabbai was a Palmyrene man who lived in the third century, and likely was a member of the Palmyrene nobility. Nothing is known about him other than the reference in

Queen Zenobia Septimia Zenobia (Palmyrene Aramaic: , , vocalized as ; AD 240 – c. 274) was a third-century queen of the Palmyrene Empire in Syria. Many legends surround her ancestry; she was probably not a commoner and she married the ruler of the city, ...

's Palmyrene name recorded in Palmyrene inscriptions, sptymy'btzby, which translates as Septimia Daughter of Zabbai. Zenobia's Palmyrene name might hint at her family origins, and might tie with the medieval tradition recorded by medieval Persian scholar

Al-Tabari ( ar, أبو جعفر محمد بن جرير بن يزيد الطبري), more commonly known as al-Ṭabarī (), was a Muslim historian and scholar from Amol, Tabaristan. Among the most prominent figures of the Islamic Golden Age, al-Tabari ...

that she was the daughter of an Arab

sheikh Sheikh (pronounced or ; ar, شيخ ' , mostly pronounced , plural ' )—also transliterated sheekh, sheyikh, shaykh, shayk, shekh, shaik and Shaikh, shak—is an honorific title in the Arabic language. It commonly designates a chief of a ...

. However, it is also possible that Zenobia may not have been Zabbai's daughter, with the inscription implying that she belonged to a family whose ancestral head was Zabbai. Another man named Zabbai from this time in Palmyrene history is one of Zenobia's generals, who along with

Zabdas Zabdas was a 3rd-century Syrian general who led the forces of Queen Zenobia of Palmyra during her rule as regent of her son Vaballathus and her subsequent rebellion against the Roman Emperor under the short-lived independent Palmyrene Empire. He ...

, fought in her campaigns in the west. It is possible that general Zabbai be of the same family clan of Zenobia whose ancestral head was Zabbai, and he might be the Zabbai mentioned in Palmyrene inscriptions, as names such as Zabdas, Zabbai and Zebeida derive from the same Semitic name which means "given or gift", and were all translated into Greek as the name "Zenobia".

References

3rd-century Romans Year of birth unknown Year of death unknown Palmyrene Empire 3rd-century people {{AncientRome-bio-stub