Charibael

A relief of an armed, armored, and crowned figure from the ruins of Zafar, Yemen, described as the seat of the kingdom of Charibael in the Periplus of the Erythraean Sea. Charibael (, He is said to dwell in Saphar and to maintain friendship with the Roman emperors by means of "continual embassies and gifts". (Mocha) and "Saua" (Taiz) in "Mapharitis" through a "vassal-chief" named "Cholaebus" (Kula'ib). His realm included "Ocelis" at the Bab-el-Mandeb and the ruins at "Eudaemon Arabia" but to exert little control beyond it, with the rest of the coast of the Arabian Sea peopled by nomads and fishermen, the "Frankincense Country" of "Eleazus", The Periplus credits Charibael with indirect dominion over the major ports of Azania, the present-day Somali and Swahili coasts, through his vassals at Mocha.

He is also probably the monarch responsible for the destruction of the port of Eudaemon Arabia (Aden) In the 19th century, Müller and Dittrich emended "Caesar" to "Elisar", shows that the army proceeded overland and was successfully misled and sabotaged by the Nabataean patriot Syllaeus before reaching any of the southern ports. Pliny explicitly names the furthest point reached as "Caripeta", usually taken after Forster as a scribal error for a previously mentioned "Cariata", the Qaryatayn near Ibb in the Yemeni highlands. Pliny further explicitly states in the same passage that no other Roman force had reached so far into Arabia as late as the time of his composition of the Natural History, now usually placed well after the Periplus.

Identification

Since Glaser's 19th-century work with Arabian inscriptions, Charibael is usually identified with the Karibʾīl Watar Yuhan'im who ruled Himyar sometime between AD40 and 70. The issue is muddied by two factors. First, the rulers of Himyar and Sabaʾ both employed the title "king of Sabaʾ and Dhu Raydan"; the title was also assumed by Hadhramauti invaders around the time. The existence of such competing claims is even implied by the phrasing of the Periplus that calls Charibael the "lawful" king, in probable distinction to less powerful rivals. Second, the inscriptions have revealed five different Karibʾīls during the 1st century. Thus, the Periplus’s "Charibael" is sometimes identified as Karibʾīl Bayān, son of Dhamarʿalī Dharib and king of Sabaʾ during the 80s.