Ẓafār (Arabic: ظفار), also Romanized Dhafar or Dhofar, is an ancient Himyarite site situated in Yemen, some 130 km south-south-east of today's capital, Sana'a, and c. 10 kilometres (6.2 mi) south-east of Yarim.

[2] It lies in the Yemeni highlands at some 2800 m. Zafar was the capital of the Himyarites (110 BCE – 525 CE), which at its peak ruled most of the Arabian Peninsula.

[3] For 250 years the tribal confederacy and allies' combined territory extended past Riyadh to the north and the Euphrates to the north-east.

The main sources consist of Old South Arabian Musnad inscriptions dated as early as the 1st century BCE.

The excavated finds are important as texts shed little light on the material culture and art of this age.

This church, likely built by missionary Theophilos the Indian, was destroyed by Dhu Nawas following the Himyarite conversion to Judaism.

It was later restored after Aksum's successful invasion on Himyar in 524.There is evidence that Zafar and settlement in general in the Yemenite highlands declined drastically in the 5th and 6th centuries.

[7] Ideally, the viability of the city correlates declines drastically just after a relief of a crowned man was erected in what the excavator terms the Stone Building Site.

On the other hand, D. Fleitmann has studied speleothems from al-Hootha cave in central Oman and has gathered information for megadroughts especially around 530.

The main architectural ruins at Zafar include tombs and on the south-western flank of the Husn Raydan a 30 x 30 m square stone court, as preserved, originally probably a temple, to judge from the accumulation of cattle bones which it contained.

The Husn Raydan and al-Gusr (standard Arabic: al-Qasr) 300 m to the north were once one fortification inside the city walls.

One assumes in terms of religions a mixture of Christians, Jews and polytheists in late pre-Islamic times.

The contemporary environment is vastly inferior to that which provided the resource base for the early Himyarite tribal confederation.

Despite some 500 mm precipitation per year, Water is scarce, upland soils are chronically eroded; the tree cover was eliminated perhaps in the empire period.

Given the exhaustion of natural resources, civil strife, epidemics and megadroughts the Himyarite period population declined especially in the 6th century.

Excavations at Ẓafār yielded 19 cultivated species including eight cereals, four oil and fibre plants, three pulses, three fruits and one spice.

In 1970, Italian orientalist Giovānnī Garbinī discovered a Sabaean inscription on a column in Bayt al-Ašwāl near Zafar [Dhofār], whereon is engraved a later writing in Assyrian (Hebrew) script which reads: "The writing of Judah, of blessed memory, Amen shalom amen.