Astronomer Karl Reinmuth discovered it at the Heidelberg Observatory in southwest Germany on 31 August 1929.
[4] It orbits the Sun in the outer asteroid belt at a distance of 2.7–3.6 AU once every 5 years and 8 months (2,073 days).
[8] Arabia is an assumed carbonaceous C-type asteroid,[3] while the measured albedos are rather typical for a stony composition (see below).
[5][6] In June 2008, Peter Caspari obtained a rotational lightcurve of Arabia from photometric observations at the BDI Observatory (E18) near Sydney, Australia.
Lightcurve analysis gave a rotation period of 15.225 hours with a brightness amplitude of 0.37 magnitude (U=3-).