From antiquity onwards, the lower Red Sea coast of Arabia (Tihamah) has generated a body of historical documentation which is difficult to interpret without a working knowledge of human geography of the region, its people and its place names. The Tihamah Gazetteer has been created to assist scholars to identify over six hundred place names and tribal territories known from written sources. These sources are drawn primarily from the medieval period, the era that provides the richest corpus of extant texts about the region. Nevertheless, the remarkable historical continuity in this part of the world allows us to consult written material which extends as far back as the middle of the first millennium BC. Even as this Gazetteer is reaching completion, new and important Sabaean inscriptions are coming to light on Tihamah. The Tihamah Gazetteer exists to provide a tool for the analysis of texts so that the history, culture and geography of the region can be better understood.