The four inscriptions published under reference Khor Rori I–4 by J. Pirenne in the Journal of Oman Studies I, 81–9, are of considerable interest in showing us a process of founding a daughter-city, which has parallels with the modes of Greek settlement. A party, or parties, of settlers (hwr) were sent out from Shabwa, the Hadramite metropolis, under the leadership of an individual named Abiyathaʿ S’LHN son of Dhamarʿali whose function resembled that of the Greek oikistes, but who had the title of ‘commander of the Hadramite gysʿ in the land of S’a’kalan’ (= Greek Sachalitis, general name of this part of the South Arabian coast). In military terminology, the South Arabian gysʿ was not an ‘army’ in the modern sense, but a smallish ad-hoc body made up of various elements and assigned to a specific role; its extended application to a body establishing a settlement would thus seem natural, and although such a body might be prepared to meet opposition, it is not necessary to infer that there was any such opposition (the site may well have been previously uninhabited), or that the settlement involved military conquest. The four inscriptions emanate from members of the body of settlers who were charged with the actual construction of the town.