Travel Guide Chaboua

The capital of the South Arabian Kingdom of Hadramawt, located in the Armah Wadi Wadi, west of Hadramawt Wadi, 380 km from Marib, was strategically built at the crossroads of several caravan routes. Chaboua was living in taxes imposed on caravans and salt from its mines at the bottom of the mountain. It was effectively defended by a triangle of cliffs surmounted by ramparts and, in front of the city itself, by a huge wall wall. Chaboua was known to the ancient Greeks under the name Sabota. According to Pliny, the whole incense was carried back from camel to Sabota, whose entry was possible only by one door. One tenth of the loading was to be given to the priests of some sixty temples in the city. It was forbidden for caravans, under death penalty, to borrow other tracks to avoid the city. The kingdom of Hadramawt was often at war with its immediate rival, the Saba Kingdom, and the town was repeatedly attacked. In 1974, the French Archaeological Mission began excavations, and then continued them in the 1980 s. In a site of ruins of 57 hectares, we were able to discover the remains of a magnificent palace that was burned and partially destroyed by the Sabéens in 220 BC, and then rebuilt. The archaeologist Jean-François Breton and his team also updated painted decorations on walls of walls, pillars to surmontés surmounted by sculpted capitals and mosaics demonstrating the opulence and refinement of Chaboua. However, other parts of the city, buried under the villages of Matha and Al-Hajar, cannot be searched today.