The origin of the Sabaean Kingdom is uncertain. Kenneth Kitchen dates the kingdom to around 1200 BCE, while Israel Finkelstein and Neil Asher Silberman write that "the Sabaean kingdom began to flourish only from the eighth century BCE onward". Originally, the Sabaeans were one of the "shaʻbs" (), "communities", on the edge of the Sayhad desert. Very early, at the beginning of the 1st millennium BC, the political leaders () of this tribal community managed to create a huge commonwealth of shaʻbs occupying most of South Arabian territory and took the title , “Mukarrib of the Sabaeans”.