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Qahtani (Arabic: قحطان; transliterated: Qahtan) refers to al Aribah' or the Semites who inhabited Yemen.

Medieval Arabs traditions have maintained Qahtan as the origin of the Arabs. According to their own tradition, the legendary forefather of all South Arabians is Qahtan and his 24 sons. Qahtan can be identified with the Biblical Joktan, a descendant of Shem (first son of Noah) of the fourth generation. Among the sons of Qahtan are famous names like A'zaal (believed by Arabs to have been the original name of Sana'a, although its current name is attested since the Iron Age) and Hadhramaut. Another son is Ya'rub and his son Yashjub is the father of Abd Shams, who is also called Saba. All Yemeni tribes, trace their ancestry back to this Saba, either through Himyar or Kahlan, his two sons.

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A study by the controversial Kamal Salibi connects Israel and the biblical events to Yemen instead of Palestine and Egypt, he depended on linguistic evidence from rural dialects in Yemen and old villages names that has close similarity to biblical names and outnumbers those found in the North. Most modern historians continue to believe that the state of Israel described in the Bible was located in the Levant and not Arabia.

The First groups of Semites that moved North already developed the early Semitic names derived from triliteral and sometimes a quadriliteral verb root that will first appear in Early now extinct East Semitic languages Akkadian (Assyrian and Babylonian) names and villages. And a more closer connection with Central Semitic Family that evolved into: Aramiac, Phoenician, Hebrew, Nabatean that was very closely related to the Southern Semitic group Minaean, Sabaean, Qatabanian, Awsanian, Hadhramaut, Himyarite.

Names in the Bible and recorded history that correspond with names of villages and places in modern Yemen and Asir in Southern Saudi Arabia).

• Adeem, Yadoom , Damt from the verb D/a/m (to last)
• Aram, Arm, Yareem, Maryama from the verb A/r/m (to stand above)
• Yafe'e, Mayfa'a, Ayfo'o from the verb Y/f/a (to grow)
• Aden Settled, Yahosn Lost
• Thobhan, Mathbah Slaughtered,
• Yomin, Yamant South/Blessed
• Yahir to destroy
• Yaghshom, Ghashm to rain
• Yaslih to fix/leak
• Marbad , Arbad the verb R/b/d to spread

The early Semites who managed to build civilizations in Mesopotamia and Syria slowly lost their [olitical absolute domination of the ancient Near East due to internal turmoil and constant attacks by new nomadic Semitic and non-Semitic groups which climaxed with the arrival of the Medians to the east of Mesopotamia and the Neo Babylonians. Although the Semites lost political control the Aramaic language continued to be the lingua franca of Mesopotamia and Syria. Thus, Aramaic eventually lost its day to day use with the defeat of the Persians and the arrival of the Hellenic armies in 330 BC.

Tthe Ghassanids were the latest major non-Islamic Semitic migration out of Yemen to the north/ They revived the Semitic presence in the then Roman Nabataean controlled Syria. They settled mainly the Hauran region and they spread from there to modern Lebanon, Palestine and Jordan. They took the governership of Syria from the Nabataeans and completely Arabicized the Nabataean Aramaic language.

Between the 7th and the 14th century, the Arabs had forged an empire that extended their rule from Spain and southern France in the west, to western China in the east. During that time, Arabs, including Qahtanite tribes, spread over these lands and mixed with their native populations while keeping their identity clear. It is not unlikely to find Arabs of Qahtanite descent as far away as Morocco or Iran and many can trace their lineage to a very accurate level. Among the most famous examples of Qahtanite Arabs is the social scholar Ibn Khaldun who was born in Tunisia to a family that immigrated from Islamic Spain (Al-Andalus).

• Abdulaziz Almsaodi, Ancient Yemeni Studies.
• John Simpson, Treasures from Ancient Yemen
• Qahtan in the Arab History