The Political Landscape of Arabia

Around the year 500, five powers ruled the Arabian Peninsula: the dam-fed kingship of Himyar in the south, and four kingdoms bound to the empires beyond it, ruling the tribes on behalf of Persia and Rome. Within a century and a half, every one of them was gone.

This film traces how that happened: the fall of Himyar, the client kings of the north, the Persian east, and the corridor of the Hijaz that answered to none of them. Geography set the stage. Political decisions determined the ending.