1 Judaism in Late Antiquity
This chapter treats some general developments in Judaism in late antiquity, though the key theme is Judaism in Arabia.1 The next chapter puts forward a lengthier discussion of late antique Christianity than what is offered here of Judaism. This is not to prioritize Christianity. My main topic in this book is the social makeup and identity of the seventh-century CE followers of the prophet Muḥammad, who emphasized strident monotheism and the importance of the law. Since these aspects are conceived to be important to the late antique Jews, but not necessarily to the late antique Christians (a somewhat mistaken view, I suggest), the treatment in the next chapter, on Christianity and Christians, requires more space.
Second Temple Judaism (up to 70 CE) was characterized by its great variety: the Qumran movement, Jesus movement, Pharisees, and Sadducees are only some examples of the groups that formed it. The same is true of post-Second Temple Judaism (as well as all groups, whatever the historical period), though, during the late antique centuries, one form, namely rabbinic Judaism, rises to become dominant. Rabbinic Judaism develops side by side and contemporary with Christian Judaism.2 Even their scriptures grew concurrently, the Mishnah and the New Testament being supplemented, as it were, to the Hebrew Bible during the second century CE: “Both the New Testament and the Mishnah gradually became the proposed keys: either the prophecies of the Hebrew Bible were announcing the coming of the Messiah, or they were to be understood as the Law of Israel, to be interpreted through the rabbinic authorities.”3 An important aspect to note here is the Jews’ social categorizations vis-à-vis the Christians. According to Edwin Broadhead, rabbinic Judaism and Christianity became “definable entities” between 250 and 350 CE, though some people still lived “between synagogue and church.”4 That is to say, blurred lines continued, in some cases, after that.5
After the destruction of the Second Temple by the Romans in 70 CE, and more generally the first and second Jewish wars in 66–73 and 132–135 CE (the Bar Kokhba revolt), the Jewish community in Palestine was in dire straits. Anti-Jewish coercion and legal restrictions in the Roman empire were rather common, both before and after the adoption of Christianity as the official state religion in the fourth century. For instance, in late antiquity, Jews were barred from living in Jerusalem, until the Persians (614 CE), and later the Arabian believers (ca. 635 CE), conquered Jerusalem and let Jews back in6—though it is difficult to say if this ban was always enforced in practice.
The temple in ruins, sacrifices halted, and the priests without function, two important new developments, sometimes in tension, should be noted starting in the second century CE: 1) the rise of the rabbis and rabbinic interpretive tradition;7 2) the emergence of synagogues as the principal places of communal worship.8 The distinctive characteristic in rabbinic Judaism was its production of a (somewhat) novel interpretive tradition, referred to as the “Oral Torah,” though its solely oral phase appear to have been somewhat short.9 The Mishnah was edited in the beginning of the third century;10 it does not survive as such but forms the backbone of the two Talmuds: the Palestinian (ca. 400 CE) and the Babylonian (ca. 500 CE).11 The Babylonian Talmud (the Bavli or simply “the Talmud”) is the longer and more famous one. However, the corpus of rabbinic literature is actually much bulkier than the Talmuds, copious as they are. Rabbinic literature comprises both narrative and legal elements (and much more besides). It is diverse and multivocal through and through.12 Though there is some agreement about the date of the final redaction of the Palestinian and Babylonian Talmuds, this does not mean that, by the sixth century, the rabbinic form of Judaism had eclipsed all others (though it certainly was the dominant one); Martin S. Jaffee has suggested that rabbinic Judaism “did not finally succeed until well after 650 CE.”13 And, it has to be remembered, in the eighth century CE, the Karaite movement emerges to question and reject the authority of the Talmud.
As the two Talmuds indicate, rabbinic learning revolved around two centers: Palestine and Babylonia. In the former, the patriarchate held sway until the early fifth century, disappearing for unknown reasons. In Babylonia, the exilarchate lasted longer. It thrived under the Umayyad dynasty (661–750 CE) and lasted until the later Middle Ages. Rabbinic learning in Babylonia was cultivated in the academies of Sura, Pumpedita, and, later, Baghdad.14
Though the rise of rabbinic literature and the interpretive tradition marks a clear shift in the history of Judaism, there were certain “basic markers” of Jewish social identity, as Jaffee calls them, throughout antiquity and late antiquity, present in all forms of Judaism. There were in particular four central markers, which many, and probably most, Jews espoused and practiced and which also caught the attention of outsiders: 1) monotheism; 2) dietary restrictions; 3) male circumcision; 4) the Sabbath.15 These markers of identity served as signals to in- and outsiders of the presence, beliefs, and practices of the Jews, wherever they might live.
2 The Arabian Context
2.1 Introduction
Though the wider context of late antique Judaism(s) is important, it is the Arabian environment that I will concentrate on here.16 Our main source for pre-Islamic Arabian Jews and Judaism is (perhaps unsurprisingly) epigraphy: inscriptions engraved by Arabian Jews themselves. There is little in the way of other (contemporary) sources; though, for instance, Greek and Syriac historiography can be used as supplementary evidence. The main regions where Jews are attested are northwestern Arabia (the Ḥijāz and nearby areas) and Yemen in the south, where the Jewish kingdom of Ḥimyar was the main political force of late antiquity.
The late antique Jews were not monolithic in linguistic terms. In the wider Near East, they spoke and wrote, for instance, Aramaic and Greek. Though Jewishness was understood in ethnic terms, the concept of one unifying language was not entailed (though Hebrew as a written language was held in reverence).17 In Arabia, they spoke or wrote Greek, Aramaic, Arabic, and Sabaic. According to the evidence at hand, the Bible (the Tanakh or the New Testament) was not translated into Arabic or South Arabian languages before Islam. For many Arabian Jews and Christians, then, the Bible could be accessed through religious scholars only, who would translate the scripture orally and ad hoc, for instance in congregation.18 As Sydney Griffith reconstructs the situation in Arabia before Islam:
Texts of the scriptures or of portions of them would normally have been in the possession of synagogues, churches, shrines, and monasteries, or in the hands of rabbis, priests, and monks, rather than in private hands. Aramaic, Syriac, and Arabic-speaking Jews and Christians would thus have heard scriptural passages proclaimed in the course of the celebration of the liturgies in their places of study and worship, followed by songs and homilies that unfolded the meaning of the texts for the congregants … Given the level of writing in Arabic in pre-Islamic times, and the lack of surviving, written texts of translations of the Bible or of the Christian homiletic literature, or, for that matter, of any kind of literature, including pre-Islamic Arabic poetry, one is left to conclude that knowledge of their contents normally spread orally among Arabic-speaking peoples. Originally Hebrew, Aramaic, Greek, or Syriac-speaking rabbis, monks, and Christian clergy must have transmitted the biblical and homiletic literature orally in Arabic, perhaps even functioning within traditions of oral translation.19
However, there were definitely some (though perhaps not many) lay Jews and Christians that could, in addition to the religious scholars, read Hebrew, (a form of) Aramaic, Ethiopic, or (less likely) Greek texts of the Bible.20
It has to be pointed out that the categories of “canonical” and “non-canonical” books of the scripture functioned differently in late antiquity than in many modern communities. To begin with, the Ethiopian Christians considered (and consider) the Book of Jubilees, for example, as part of the canon.21 First Enoch was also canonical in the Ethiopic Orthodox Church.22 Moreover, even communities that would have perhaps considered some books, such as the Jubilees or the Protoevangelium of James, non-canonical, used them extensively (however, “non-canonical” books were not translated into Arabian languages either).
2.2 Judaism in Northwestern Arabia
Judaism and Jews came early to north Arabia.23 The most important (and the only solid) evidence is formed by the epigraphic corpus. It does not naturally take us far, for instance, as regards the exact beliefs and practices of these Arabian Jews, but this is the limit of historical inquiry that we have to accept. Islamic-era Arabic historiography, and other non-contemporary literary evidence, can only be used as a secondary source. Reconstructions based on it have to be treated as preliminary and tentative.24
In an article, Robert Hoyland has dealt with the northwestern Arabian inscriptions written or commissioned by Jews; their Jewish identity is deduced by Hoyland either on the basis of onomastics, language (Hebrew), or specifically Jewish content in the texts.25 The dates of the inscriptions range from the first century CE to the fourth (though some might be Islamic-era); the adduced inscriptions number 31 altogether.26 The evidence is not meager, by the standards of Arabian epigraphy at least. Many of the texts surveyed by him are short, but some are longer. For instance, one Nabataean Aramaic epitaph dated to 42–43 CE and found in Hegra (modern Madāʾin Ṣāliḥ) reads:
This is the tomb which Shubaytu son of ʿAliʿu, the Jew (yhwdyʾ), made for himself and for his children and for ʿAmirat, his wife. They may be buried in it by hereditary title. And no stranger has the right to be buried in it, and if any of the children of Shubaytu mentioned above or their legal heirs seeks to write for this tomb a deed of gift or any document, he will have no share in this tomb. And this was on the first day of Ab, the third year of King Maliku, King of the Nabataeans. ʿAbd ʿObodat son of Wahballahi made it [i.e., the tomb and/or the inscription].27
A later epitaph from Dedan (later known as al-ʿUlā) is an example of an inscription where the Jewish identity of the family in question has to be deduced from their names. It simply reads: “This is the stele which Yaḥyā son of Simon has built for his father Simon who died in the month of Sīwan of the year 201 [307 CE].”28 Nonetheless, it (and other similar inscriptions) proffer significant proof of the presence of Jews in different parts of Arabia.
A funerary stele, dated to 203 CE, from Tayma was built for “the headman” (rʾš) of that town. On the basis of his name, he can be classified as Jewish. The text reads:
This is the memorial of Isaiah Neballaṭa son of Joseph, the headman of Tayma, which ʿImram and ʿAšmw, his brothers, erected for him in the month of Iyar of the year 98 of the province [of Arabia].29
The text indicates that Jews not only lived in western Arabia but rose to important positions. Another text from Hegra dated to 356–367 CE mentions individuals bearing Jewish names as headmen of both Hegra and Dedan. As Hoyland remarks, the two inscriptions “are very important texts for north Arabian Jewry, for they imply that some of them at least were members of the elite of this society. Since the texts are separated by more than 150 years, we can also assume some stability for this office.”30 Another text (a graffito) from Dedan reads: “Blessing to ʿAṭūr son of Menaḥem and rabbi Jeremiah” (rb yrmyh).31
The evidence surveyed by Robert Hoyland is very important indeed, though some of the inscriptions are undated or contain only names. In addition to the inscriptions treated by Hoyland, in 2018 Laïla Nehmé published an important dated (303 CE) Nabataeo-Arabic inscription (UJadhNab 538). Evidence adduced above showed the presence of Jewish groups and individuals in al-Ḥijāz. Nehmé’s inscription shows that some of them were Arabic-speaking. I quote the text in its original and in translation:32
1 bly dkyr šly br ʾwšw2 bṭb w šlm mn qdm3 mry ʿlmʾ w ktbʾ dnh4 ktb ywm ḥg5 ʾl-pṭyr šnt mʾt6 w tšʿyn w šbʿ
1 Yea! May Shullay son of Awshū2 be remembered in well-being and may he be safe in the presence of3 the Lord of the world, and this writing4 he wrote the day of the feast5 of the unleavened bread, year one hundred6 and ninety-seven [303 CE].
Figure 2
Inscription UJadhNab 538
photograph by Farīq al-Ṣaḥrāʾ/Abdullah Al-Saeed, reproduced with permission
What is important to note is that even though the rest of the inscription is written in Aramaic, the words referring to “feast of the unleavened bread” (i.e., the week connected to the Passover) are in Arabic (ḥajj al-faṭīr).33 I would suggest that we can infer two things on the basis of the text: a) Shullay son of Awshū was Jewish and b) Arabic was his spoken language, although he knew how to write Nabataean Aramaic. Late antique inscriptions in the Nabataean script are often a mixture of Arabic and Aramaic, and this text engraved by Shullay son of Awshū is no exception.
The epigraphic record suggests that Jews settled in northwestern Arabia early, in late antiquity if not before. By 303 CE, some Arabian Jews had adopted Arabic as the language, or at least one of the languages, that they spoke and wrote.34 Unfortunately, the evidence available presently does not take us further. However, I would posit that though the dated epigraphic evidence does not postdate the fourth century, there is not necessarily any good reason to suppose a reduction of the number of Jews in the region: as we will see in the next subsection on poetry, and in chapter 6 on the “Constitution” of Medina, these texts suppose and suggest the existence of Arabic-speaking Jewish groups in Medina and elsewhere in northwestern Arabia in the sixth-seventh centuries, as does the Qurʾān. Below, Judaism in Yemen is treated too; the extant evidence from this area is much more extensive and allows for a more detailed reconstruction.
2.2.1 Arabic Poetry and North Arabian Jews
In the corpus of pre-Islamic Arabic poetry, there are a number of poems that are attributed to individuals that are identified as Jewish. In the previous chapter, I discussed the authenticity of this corpus, which is a debated question, though most scholars agree that some of the poems are, indeed, authentic. Arabic poetry will be used in this and the next two chapters as a sort of secondary evidence: its authenticity and dating are not as secure as those of inscriptions and the Qurʾān but, arguably and in contrast to Arabic prose literature, it contains some poems, or at least verses, that reliably stem from the pre-Islamic era. As was noted above in the previous chapter, the information provided in Arabic poetry aligns rather well with material remains and the Qurʾān.
Of the (purportedly at least) Jewish poets that composed Arabic poetry, the best-known is undoubtedly al-Samawʾal ibn ʿĀdiyāʾ.35 Concerning the Arabic Jewish poets, Robert Hoyland claims that they are “comparable in sentiment and style to pre-Islamic Arabic poetry in general, and lack any specific historical detail or concrete religious expression.”36 As for the latter (religious expression), this is definitely not true, since there is a large amount of that in al-Samawʾal’s surviving collection of poems. Unfortunately, the question of the authenticity of al-Samawʾal’s corpus is problematic. This is in particular the case as regards his poem no. 2,37 which contains much pondering on death and the afterlife. It has been suggested that the poem was penned by a later Muslim scholar, perhaps a descendant of al-Samawʾal.38
Hypothetically, I proceed with the notion that poem no. 2, and other poems by al-Samawʾal as well, are authentic, though they in all likelihood changed their form over the centuries of transmission. Let me reiterate a few basic facts that are borne out by the epigraphic corpus: There were a number of Jews living in Arabia; some of these Jews were Arabic-speaking; moreover, one might suppose that some of these Jews also pondered the afterlife. The Jewish Arabic poet al-Samawʾal and his poetry fit very well in this context. I should note, however, that my reconstruction of Arabian Judaism and Jews is not dependent on the singular example of al-Samawʾal, though, if authentic, his poems cast interesting and needed light on the thoughts of Arabic-speaking Jews.
As Hoyland, quoted above, perhaps hints at, some of al-Samawʾal’s poems contain similar heroic sentiments that were common to many pre-Islamic Arabic poets. For instance, he boasts that he and his fellow tribesmen crave death in battle, natural death being an anathema.39 He furthermore notes that he feeds and treats his guests magnanimously,40 thus representing the virtue of muruwwa,41 present in different exemplars of the pre-Islamic poetic corpus.
Al-Samawʾal’s poem no. 2, as already mentioned, represents a rich discourse on the afterlife. Though the last lines of the poem are somewhat suspect as to their authenticity,42 there are, I would argue, no specific reasons why the bulk of the poem could not be genuine. In the poem, al-Samawʾal notes, for example, that “my life is dependent on the fact that I will die” (wa-ḥayātī rahnun bi-an sa-amūtū). However, “after life, a dead person will be resurrected” (thumma baʿda l-ḥayāti li-l-baʿthi maytū)43 Concerning himself, al-Samawʾal propounds: “I have become certain that I will be resurrected after I die, even if my bones will decay.”44 Of his fate in the hereafter, the poem is not certain, because he confesses that his sins are many.45 The language of the poem in verses 1–15 does not seem to me to be Qurʾānically inspired, and the lines could, for this reason too, be genuine.
Lines 16–21 of the poem are suspicious and could indeed be forged by a later Muslim author.46 They name-drop different figures and items of Jewish (and Christian, and Muslim) sacred history, such as Solomon, David, Torah, and the ark (al-tābūt). They look like they have been composed by someone who did not know much about Judaism but wanted to give the poem some extra “Jewish” flavor. Particularly suspicious is the mention of “the disciples of John [the Baptist].”47 This phrase makes more sense if it is a forgery made by a Muslim author who knew that, in his/her day, Jews did not accept Jesus but who thought that they accepted John. The verse is difficult to attribute to a genuine Jewish author. Line 19 is interesting, as it mentions al-ifrīs who rebelled against God. The former is interpreted by the commentator of the Dīwān as Satan, known in Qurʾānic Arabic as al-iblīs.48 Though it would be tempting to take the peculiar appellation al-ifrīs to support the authenticity of this line, it rather seems that it is simply constructed from the Qurʾānic al-iblīs, with some sound changes (b becomes f, and l becomes r). In other poems, there is little in the way of religious expression; though, in one verse, al-Samawʾal swears by God, Allāh.49
The corpus of Arabic poetry composed by Jewish authors is rather thin and may contain poems that are inauthentic. In the next chapter, there will be a longer discussion of Christian poets, of whom there were more than the Jewish ones. More abundant still are the gentile poets, from whom many poems and collections of poems have survived. These will be discussed in chapter 4.
2.3 The Rise of Ḥimyar
Yemen, the only part of the Arabia Peninsula able to sustain dry-farming and with vast natural resources,50 was a rather affluent place in antiquity and late antiquity. Culturally and linguistically, pre-Islamic Yemen was different from the more northern parts of the peninsula: for the most part, the Yemenites spoke and wrote South Arabian languages (most importantly Sabaic) whereas the inhabitants of the north spoke North Arabian languages. The two language bundles are part of the Semitic family, but they are not very closely related: alongside Ethiopic, South Arabian forms the South Semitic subdivision, while Ancient North Arabian languages and Old Arabic are part of Central Semitic.51 Though the late antique South Arabian inscriptions are written in Sabaic, it appears that this was a prestige literary register: people spoke different dialects of Ancient South Arabian languages, but the evidence on them is at the moment unclear. There were also Arabic-speaking communities in Yemen.52 It should be remarked that no South Arabian texts on parchment or papyri survive from the period under discussion, though one supposes that these writing materials were also used in Yemen.53
The Yemenites did not view themselves as Arabs before the coming of Islam and neither should the modern scholarship call them that. Though the Sabaic inscriptions refer to ʾʿrb, “Arabs” or “nomads,” they are always groups that live outside Yemen proper. (To be sure, it was suggested in the introduction to this book that the term “Arab” was not necessarily used as an endonym by north Arabians in pre-Islamic times.) What is more, the Yemenites formed political units and states much earlier than they appear in the north. Their income was secured because Yemen produced, for instance, frankincense and myrrh, valuable products in antiquity that were transported to, for instance, Rome.54 The trans-Arabian trade is intimately tied to the utilization of the camel as a pack animal.55
In antiquity, there were various kingdoms in the south, but for the era under discussion in this book—late antiquity—the kingdom of Ḥimyar56 is the principal one. Around 300 CE, it had vanquished other political powers in Yemen and ruled over much of south Arabia.57 It was the first time that south Arabia was ruled by a single kingdom.58 The Yemenite kingdom of Ḥimyar is characterized by its close, and sometimes hostile, relationship with the kingdom of Axum in Ethiopia that had converted to Christianity by the 340s.59 The extent to which Christianity also spread to some parts of Yemen this early can only be speculated; firm evidence of Christians in the south is difficult to find before the late fifth century (see the next chapter). However, interestingly and for reasons that we do not yet have a clear grasp of, towards the end of the fourth century, Yemen, or at least its ruling class, adopted Judaism.60 New religious vocabulary was borrowed from Aramaic and Hebrew, such as āmēn (“amen”), shālôm (“greetings,” literally, “peace”), and ṣalōt (“prayer”).61 This might have been to draw contrast to and form a distinct identity from the Christian Ethiopia. From that point onward, all surviving evidence from Yemen is monotheist, though it is naturally possible that the switch from polytheism to monotheism was much more piecemeal among the population than the extant data would suggest.
Before this, the Yemenites were polytheist, worshipping, among others, ʿAthtar, the sun goddess Shams and the moon god Almaqah.62 The South Arabian deity Wadd is mentioned in the Qurʾān (71:23) along with other, unidentifiable deities, so it is possible that traditional South Arabian religions were practiced among (the minority of) the Yemeni population until the life of Muḥammad, even though they vanish more or less completely from the South Arabian inscriptions that are dated between 380 and 560.63 (And note that Q 71:23 projects the worship of Wadd to the community around Noah.) There have been some suggestions in scholarship that there was a henotheistic development already in the third century, with Almaqah becoming the chief deity above all other gods, but the evidence of this is currently slight.64
2.4 Judaism in Yemen
Discerning the religious affiliations in late antiquity in Yemen is very difficult. All of our inscriptional evidence (including graffiti) is monotheist, but what sort of monotheists were the Yemenites?65 The (somewhat scant) evidence that there is points toward Judaism: God is called “God of Israel,” for instance.66 Some inscriptions (surveyed below) mention synagogues. One inscription, which concerns the foundation of a graveyard, explicitly mentions that the graveyard is to be used only to bury Jews (ʾyhdn),67 not gentiles (ʾrmym).68 However, this inscription is a rare example of policing the border between different groups: for the most part, it appears that people with different identities and backgrounds were joined together in their acceptance of Raḥmānān (“the Merciful” or “Loving”), also called Ilān (“God”) or Baʿl (“Lord”), as the one God.69 Perhaps it is the specifically funerary context that should be understood as the background of this text. Be that as it may, I will take the late Sabaic epigraphic corpus as evidence for Judaism in the region, though it has to be remembered that in all likelihood not every writer of these inscriptions, let alone the Yemeni populace at large, identified as Jewish. But some certainly did.
How did the kingdom of Ḥimyar convert to Judaism, if, as seems probable, that is what they did? How did they envision themselves as part of the wider Jewish world? Were there Jews in Yemen before their conversion? We do not know with certainty.70 However, it has to be remembered that conversion to Judaism was, in antiquity and late antiquity, a relatively simple affair. As mentioned in the Babylonian Talmud (Jevamot 47a–47b), a convert should be taught the basis of the Torah, she or he should be baptized, and (in the case of male proselytes) he should take the circumcision. After this she or he should be considered fully and totally Jewish, just like someone who had been born so. However, there were also rabbinic voices that preferred those born as Jewish to the proselytes in certain contexts.71
Interestingly, the Jewish literary sources written outside Yemen do not mention a Jewish community there.72 Understanding why this is so would require more research. However, the Yemenite Jews did have contacts with the wider Jewish world, as epigraphic finds from Palestine attest.73 Three inscriptions are important in this regard:74
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One epitaph, probably from Palestine though its exact origin is uncertain, contains three languages: Hebrew, Aramaic, and Sabaic. The Aramaic part notes that this is the grave of Leah, daughter of Yehūda. The Hebrew part contains prayers of Biblical inspiration. The Sabaic part is concise, invoking Rḥmnn.
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An important, though brief, Greek inscription was found at the necropolis of Beth Sheʿarim, a village in Palestine. It reads homêritôn, “of/for Ḥimyarites,” indicating that Yemeni Jews were buried there. The inscription has been dated to the third or (more likely) fourth century.
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A fifth-century Hebrew epitaph found in Zoara, Jordan, mentions Ywsh br ʾWfy, “who died in Ẓafār, the land of the Ḥimyarites” and whose body was brought to Zoara to be interred there. This is a significant piece of evidence of Jews travelling to Yemen from the north.
These inscriptions notwithstanding, with the evidence at hand it is impossible to say what sorts of Jews the Arabian ones were. What role did the Talmud and rabbinic learning play in their lives? We do not know.75 The three inscriptions mentioned above do indicate that the South Arabian Jews had contacts with Palestine, and perhaps rabbinic learning was also transmitted through these contacts, but this is somewhat speculative.76
The evidence that I examine in what follows is mostly epigraphic and in Sabaic. The epigraphic corpus contains non-commissioned graffiti, as well as building inscriptions and commemorative inscriptions. I focus here on the Sabaic inscriptions that are dated (either by their writers or, paleographically, by modern scholars) from the fourth to the sixth century CE. Only a few non-Sabaic inscriptions pertaining to late antique Judaism in Yemen have been found. One such inscription is a Greek text found at the port of Qāniʾ (nowadays known as Biʾr ʿAlī). The text invokes God with the formula eis Theos, and then mentions a hagios topos, a “sacred place,” a phrase that usually designates a synagogue.77 A Hebrew inscription has been found near Ṣanʿāʾ. However, due to its fragmentary nature, the exact interpretation of its contents is uncertain.78 These inscriptions are also important for the fact that they speak to the diversity of languages used in Yemen.
A number of Sabaic private building inscriptions invoke God. One such inscription, commissioned apparently by elite members of the society, reads:
1 […]md and his wife Mrṯdt2 and their son ʿfzlm, assistants to the3 king,79 constructed, laid the foundations and completed4 their gyrt-construction Tkrb,80 by the help of ʾln [God],5 master of heaven, and with the help of their lord6 Ḏrʾʾmr ʾymn,81 in the month of ḏ-Ḫrf–7 n of the year four hundred and
It is very common in the building inscriptions to note that the construction was carried out with the help of God. The inscription also attests a common way of depicting God as the “master of heaven” (bʿl-s¹myn). Another reads:
1 ʿbdkllm and his wife ʾbʿly, daughter of ʾlh[…]-2 … and their sons Hnʾm and Hʿll of the clan of Qwlm [or, Fwlm] built3 and completed their house Yrs³ with the help of Rḥmnn [Raḥmānān]. He built it
God helps, and in Him one finds solace. Though graffiti are somewhat rare in the late South Arabian corpus, siglum Ha 11 can be adduced as such. The inscription is somewhat awkwardly written, with some mistakes and repetition. The inscription appears to mention two different people, assumedly brothers, Ḥgr bn S¹lmt and Mrṯdm bn S¹lmt. The graffito begins: “Ḥgr ibn S¹lmt; may Rḥmnn listen to his prayer (l-ys¹mʿn Rḥmnn ṣlt-s¹).” About Mrṯdm, the brother, the text only notes that he “made the pilgrimage (ḥg),” which is not a rite commonly mentioned in the inscriptions of the monotheist era.84
It was mentioned above that many of the inscriptions in the late Sabaic corpus are generally monotheist, without proclaiming any specific religious affiliation. However, some inscriptions specifically mention “Israel” or other Jewish markers. Should the “generally monotheist” inscriptions also be classified as “Jewish”? Perhaps, though the issue cannot be decided here. Peoples’ beliefs and identities in late antique Yemen could have been diverse: though some monotheists considered themselves Jewish, others perhaps did not. Some could have self-identified as God-fearer.85 In any case, let me present some of the inscriptional evidence that contain explicit Jewish identifications.
The inscription with the siglum Ibrahim al-Hudayd 1 is dated to 580 of the Ḥimyarite era, which corresponds to 470 CE. It is a construction text, stating that the building was put up with “the help and the power of their Lord ʾln [God], the Master of the heavens and of the earth, and with the help of their tribe [or: people, s²ʿb-hmw]86 of Israel.” Later in the inscription, God is also called Raḥmānān. A somewhat different picture emerges in CIH 543, which appears to mention Raḥmānān and Israel’s God as two different divine beings.87 The text begins: “May bless and be blessed, the name (s¹m) of Rḥmnn, who is in heaven, and Israel and their god (w-Ys³rʾl w-ʾlh-hmw), the lord of the Jews.”88 However, all other evidence points toward the notion that Raḥmānān is simply the attribute or divine name of God. I think it makes sense to suggest that the inscription does not mention two different divine agents; this only seems so because of the somewhat cumbersome syntax.
An interesting example of an attempt to construct and maintain group boundaries is the important inscription MAFRAY-Ḥaṣī 1, a rather long inscription of 15 lines. The text is not dated, unfortunately. It mentions the setting up of a graveyard “near this rock, down to the border of the arable area, to bury in it the Jews (ʾyhdn), with the assurance to avoid burying with them non-Jews (ʾrmym), this in order to fulfill their obligations towards the Jews.” Toward the end of the text, it doubles down by mentioning “the prohibition and the threat of the Lord of Heaven and Earth to avoid burying a non-Jew on these plots.”89 MAFRAY-Ḥaṣī 1 undergirds the idea that the inhabitants of the Ḥimyarite kingdom were not all seen as Jewish, though even the gentiles had adopted monotheism (or so the surviving evidence suggests). The tendency, in this text, to police borderlines is rare in South Arabian inscriptions and might have to do with the particular burial context here.
The construction of the famous synagogue (mkrb) called Bryk in the capital of the kingdom, Maʾrib, is mentioned in a few inscriptions.90 (The synagogue is not extant and the stones on which the inscriptions were found have been reused in more modern buildings.) A fifth-century construction text notes that the synagogue was built for God, the Lord of heaven and earth, so that He might “give them the honour of his name [or: reverential fear of his name, ṣbs¹ s¹m-hw], and the safety of their persons, their privileged members, and their vassals in war and peace (b-ḍrm w-s¹lmm). In the month of Ḫrfn of the year five hundred forty-three [= 433 CE]. Peace, peace [s¹lwm w-s¹lwm], synagogue Bryk.”91 This and other such inscriptions show the formal organization of Judaism in Yemen. Other words are used for synagogues as well. Another inscription mentions a kns¹t, probably a reference to a synagogue.92 One inscription mentions ms¹gd, a place of prostration93 (a word cognate with the Arabic masjid, later meaning “mosque”). Above, it was noted that a Greek inscription refers to a synagogue with the phrase hagios topos.
In some inscriptions, the belief in (and hope for) the afterlife surfaces. This is not surprising, given that many (most?) Yemenites were Jewish. One inscription, which is unfortunately fragmentary, shows this clearly. The text is either a prayer to Raḥmānān or a building inscription in which the prayer occurred. I quote lines 1–2 and 5–6 of the text:94
1 [… …] may He forgive their sins and may He accept their offering [… …]2 [… …] and in the far and present world and the patron of [… …]5 [… …]Rḥmnn [Raḥmānān], goodwill of their lords, the kings [… …]6 [… …] and pestilence, sickness, drought and [… …]
The phrase in line 2, “in the far and present world” (b-ʿlmn bʿdn w-qrbn) indicates, in passing, the belief in the hereafter.95 However, since the text is fragmentary, the exact meaning of this is difficult to decipher.
Another text appears to corroborate the notion of the hereafter in late antique Yemen. It is a building inscription, commemorating the construction of houses by “ʿbdm Brrn and his wife ʾbs²ʿr and their sons and daughters … and their servants.” This, the text says, was achieved with “the grace of Raḥmānān” (b-zkt Rḥ[mnn]).96 The interesting bit comes in lines 6 and 7, which ask “the Lord of heaven” to “save them from all harm” and that He “grant them a good death” (mw[t ṣdqm]). Though “a good death” does not necessarily entail the idea of the afterlife, one assumes that it is implied. The text is dated by its writer to year 542 of the Ḥimyarī era, that is, 432 CE.
2.5 The Wars between Yemen and Ethiopia
The sixth century witnessed a number of wars between (Jewish) Yemen and (Christian) Ethiopia. According to the epigraphic evidence, both sides saw fighting as religiously sanctioned and invoked the help of God as having procured victory on the battlefield. In 518 or thereabouts, the Ethiopian Negus (king) raided Yemen. This only led to a short Ethiopian occupation at first. However, the Ethiopians appear to have built churches and endeavored to promote Christianity.97
The staunchly Jewish Ḥimyarite king Yūsuf Asʾar Yathʾar (r. 522–525), known in later Arabic tradition as Dhū Nuwās, “the one with a swinging lock of hair,” fought against the Ethiopians and their Christianizing trend. In 523, he even attacked and massacred Christians in Najrān and other places.98 The massacres of Christians in Najrān are reported in various historiographical works. The eighth-century Syriac Chronicle of pseudo-Dionysius of Tel Mahre narrates the following about them:
After some time the Himyarite Jews waxed stronger. When the Christian king whom the king of the Ethiopians had established there died, (the Jews) chose a king from among themselves over the people of the Himyarites and in bitter wrath slew and destroyed all the Christian people there, men, women, young people and little children, poor and rich.99
While we naturally have to take this with a grain of salt (like all late antique persecution stories), the information about the persecution and massacres are attested well enough to contain some historical truth.100 It is not only (often much later) literary works that we have to resort to, but, in fact, king Yūsuf’s army commander, called S²rḥʾl Yqbl, commissioned inscriptions celebrating his deeds. The famous inscription Ja 1028 mentions the following (the inscription is fully extant and I quote it in toto):101
1 Might, the God, to whom belong the heavens and the earth, bless the king Yusuf ʾs¹ʾr Yṯʾr, the king of all the tribes, and might [God] bless the qayls [commanders] …2 Lḥyʿt Yrḫm, S¹myfʿ ʾs²wʿ, S²rḥʾl Yqbl, S²rḥbʾl ʾs¹ʿd, the sons of S²rḥbʾl Ykml, of the clan of Yzʾn and Gdnm,3 the supporters of their lord, the king Yusuf ʾs¹ʾr Yṯʾr, when he burnt the church, killed the Abyssinians in Ẓafār, and moved a war against ʾs²ʿrn, Rkbn, Fr–4 s¹n, and Mḫwn, and brought the war (against) the defence of Nagrān. He reinforced the chain of Mandab, they were with him. And he sent them with an army. What the king has managed5 to get in this expedition as spoils, amounted to twelve thousand deaths, eleven thousand prisoners, two6 hundred ninety thousand camels, cows and small animals.102 This inscription was written by the qayl S²rḥʾl Yqbl of Yzʾn, when he was in guard against Nagrān7 with the tribe of Hamdān, citizens and nomads, and the assault troops of ʾzʾnn and the Arabs [ʾʿrb] of Kinda, Murād, Madhḥig, while the qayls, his brothers, with the king, were mounting guard8 on the coast against the Abyssinians, while they were reinforcing the chain of Mandab. That is all what they mentioned in this inscription: deaths, boot[y], garrison service and all (what happened) in only one expedition;9 then they came back to their houses thirteen months later. Might Rḥmnn bless their sons S²rḥbʾl Ykml and Hʿn ʾs¹ʾr, the sons of Lḥyʿt10 and Lḥyʿt Yrḫm, the son of S¹myfʿ, and Mrṯdʾln Ymgd, the son of S²rḥʾl, of the clan of Yzʾn. The month of Mḏrʾn of the six hundred11 thirty-three [523 CE]. For the protection of the heavens and the earth and of the strength of the men was this inscription against those who would harm and degrade. Might Rḥmnn, the Highest,12 protect it against all those who would degrade. This inscription was placed, written, executed in the name of Rḥmnn. Tmm of Ḥḍyt placed. By the Lord of Jews. By the Highly Praised.
A number of significant details are mentioned in this inscription: it links the massacres of the Christians, and the burning of their church, to the general war against Ethiopia (Abyssinia). The warfare in general is described as having been in defense of God and Judaism. These events led to a new, and much more vigorous, Ethiopian attack on Yemen in 525, in which the army of Yūsuf was defeated, and another campaign in 530.103 Notably, the Byzantines helped the Ethiopians in the invasion.104 The campaign of 530 CE is remembered in an important inscription, CIH 621, which I quote:105
1 S¹myfʿ ʾs²wʿ and his sons fils, S²rḥbʾl Ykml and Mʿdkrb Yʿfr, sons of Lḥyʿt2 Yrḫm, those of Klʿn, ḏ-Yzʾn, Gdnm, Mṯln, S²rqn, Ḥbm, Yṯʿn,3 Ys²rm, Yrs³, Mkrbm, ʿqht, Bs³ʾyn, Ylġb, Ġymn, Yṣbr4 S²bḥm, Gdwyn, Ks³rn, Rḫyt, Grdn, Qbln, S²rgy, banū Mlḥm5 and their tribes Wḥẓt, ʾlhn, S¹lfn, Ḍyftn, Rṯḥm, Rkbn, Mṭlft–6 n, S¹ʾkln, S³krd and the kabirs and the governors of S¹ybn ḏ-Nṣf wrote this inscription in the7 fortress of Mwyt, when they repaired its walls, its gate, its cisterns and its routes of entry,8 when they are fortified in it, when they came back from the land of Abyssinia, and the Abyssinians sent the army9 to the land of Ḥimyar, when they killed the king of Ḥimyar and his ʾqwl, Ḥimyarites and Raḥbanites.10 The month of Ḥltn of the six hundred forty.
The end of the era of the Ḥimyarite rulers had come. The Ethiopian and Christian presence in Yemen was strengthened and the Ḥimyarite dynasty was supplanted. As will be seen in the next chapter, though Christians were present in Yemen before the Ethiopian occupation, their numbers probably swelled because of it. The Ethiopian influence is also present in other ways too: Ethiopic words (in particular those having to do with religion), one assumes, are borrowed into Arabian languages during this era, many of them eventually appearing in the Qurʾān.106
In the 540s–550s, Yemen was ruled by a king of Ethiopian origins called Abraha. He launched many campaigns on parts of Arabia, celebrating his deeds in inscriptions.107 One expedition was remembered later in Islamic tradition as “the year of the elephant” (ʿām al-fīl), even though there is no contemporary evidence that Abraha raided Mecca, as the Arabic literature recounts. The Islamic tradition claims that Muḥammad was born in that year but this does not seem to be anything other than a confluence of two events that were later deemed highly significant.108 However, one Sabaic inscription commissioned by Abraha, Murayghān 3, notes that he attacked and conquered Yathrib (later, Medina) or at least its hinterlands.109 Perhaps this is the raid later remembered as “the year of the elephant” and as having included an attack on Mecca as well. Indeed, the Sabaic inscriptions evidence many attempts by the South Arabian kings and commanders to control the Arabic-speaking (and possibly other) groups of the north and use them as auxiliary forces.110
Abraha is the last ruler of Yemen mentioned in the pre-Islamic epigraphic record, though his sons might have ruled after him for some time.111 The political upheavals of the sixth century ultimately led to a situation where other foreign powers also tried to wield influence in Southern Arabia. During Khosrow I (r. 531–579), Sasanid Persia was able to conquer areas in Eastern Arabia, reaching regions in Yemen as well.112 By 575, the Persians had conquered the whole of Yemen and expelled the Ethiopian troops. Of the Persian era, we unfortunately know very little because the epigraphic evidence, for some reason, becomes silent: we only know the events from later Arabic historiography, with only a few mentions in more contemporary Byzantine historiography.113 The sixth-century wars were, it seems, taxing to the population of Yemen, leading to impoverishment and a fall in the literary culture that lasted until the early Islamic period, when a new culture and literature, expressed in Arabic, emerges. However, there is nothing to suggest that Jewish or Christian communities would have suffered during the Sasanid rule. Though Ethiopian troops were driven out, the local Christian populations survived. On the eve of Islam, Yemen was possibly majority Jewish, with a sizeable Christian minority.
3 Conclusions
In this chapter, I have argued for well-documented Jewish presence in both the south and the north in late ancient Arabia, though we have a somewhat small amount of information on their more detailed outlook. It is, at the moment, impossible to say, for instance, what rabbinic learning and literature, or the law, exactly meant for them. In any case, the presence of Jews and, by extension, Jewish beliefs and practices are a significant factor when reconstructing the background of Muḥammad’s community. Many concepts and ideas present in the Ḥimyarite inscriptions are later encountered in the Qurʾān, which adopts and echoes them, most significantly the divine name al-Raḥmān. As has been noted, the Ḥimyarite Jewish community had (at least) some connections to the Palestinian Jewish community, so these people, and their ideas, must have travelled through al-Ḥijāz. Moreover, some Arabic-speaking groups of central and northern Arabia were in direct contact with the Ḥimyarites.
As suggested in chapter 6, the “Constitution” of Medina evidences the presence of Arabic-speaking Jews in Medina114 and categorizes them as part of the community of the believers. Moreover, later evidence from Islamic times, such as the Gaonic responsa, indicate that Jews still lived in Wādī al-Qurā, near Medina, at the beginning of the second millennium CE.115 Hence, the presence of Jews in and around Medina is rather well attested in different sources. If the Meccan passages of the Qurʾān really stem from Mecca, then Jews were living in that town, too, as chapter 5 will elaborate.
The fall of Ḥimyar in the sixth century, or the mission of Muḥammad in the seventh, did not mean the end of Jews and Judaism in Arabia, though political and power relations naturally changed. While the longevity of Judaism (and Christianity) will be dealt with in more detail in chapter 8, it has to be presently remarked that Jewish communities have continued to exist in Yemen up to the present day.116
Though I use the words “Judaism” and “Jews” in what follows, I am aware that both words have been problematized in recent scholarship when discussing a religious group in antiquity and late antiquity. Esler, Conflict and identity, 62, opines that the word “Jews” should be avoided and, instead, “Judeans” be used, noting: “This is not simply a question of nomenclature, since it goes to the heart of how the identity of the people was understood by themselves and by their contemporaries.” Esler suggests that the group that called itself “Judeans” should be understood as ethnically rather than religiously construed. Boyarin, Judaism 12, also notes that the concept “Judaism”—the religion of the Jews—is a modern one, not found in antiquity or the Middle Ages: “In general, users of the language who utilize ‘Judaism’ to refer to something that persists from Moses Our Rabbi to Moses Mendelssohn are indeed willy-nilly speaking normatively. They have an idea of that of which Judaism consists, believe that a certain essence can be traced in all forms of the alleged ‘religion’ throughout this history and that, therefore, even if ‘Judaism’ be a modern term, it picks out some unique thing in the world.” Perhaps surprisingly, though Boyarin problematizes (and suggests avoiding) the word “Judaism” when discussing the pre-modern era, he does not take issue with “Jews.” While I, in general, agree with the arguments presented by Esler, Boyarin, and others, here and elsewhere I use the words Jews and Judaism (and other perhaps anachronistic terms). In my usage, “Jews” refer to those people who self-identified as Judeans or Israelites; “Judaism” is the (vague and varied) collective of practices and beliefs that many if not most Jews held dear. It is my opinion that sometimes (often) we as scholars have to utilize words and concepts that are, to some degree, anachronistic. Words such as “identity,” “ethnicity,” “religion,” and “Judaism,” when defined and used in a lucid manner, can be concepts that bring analytical rigor to the issue at hand. For this question, see also in Jaffee, Early Judaism 9–15.
Stroumsa, The making of the Abrahamic religions 36.
Stroumsa, The making of the Abrahamic religions 185.
Broadhead, Edwin K., Jewish ways of following Jesus: Redrawing the religious map of Antiquity, Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2010, 236. This will be discussed in more detail in the next chapter.
Stroumsa, The making of the Abrahamic religions 103, 110.
Avni, The Byzantine-Islamic transition 125.
Jaffee, Early Judaism 82, notes that, in the place of the Temple service, “in rabbinic communities, a host of ritual practices was developed and accepted as received tradition, part of what it meant to live in continual conversation with the covenantal obligations imposed by the Torah.”
Jaffee, Early Judaism 46, 155–159, 176.
Jaffee, Early Judaism 55. The idea of the second revelation or some interpretive corpus of speech to understand the Torah is, however, also present in the Qumran texts or, for that matter, the Book of Jubilees.
Jaffee, Early Judaism 48.
For a recent and highly readable introduction, see Wimpfheimer, Barry S., The Talmud: A biography, Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press, 2018.
Stroumsa, The making of the Abrahamic religions 112–118. Idem 36 emphasizes the change by calling rabbinic Judaism “a real mutation of the religion of Israel.”
Jaffee, Early Judaism 18.
Abate, Elisabetta, “ ‘Until his eyes light up’: Talmud teaching in Babylonian Geonic Yeshivot,” in Jens Scheiner and Damien Janos (eds.), The place to go: Contexts of learning in Baghdād, 750–1000 C.E., Princeton NJ: Darwin Press, 2014, 527–555; Jaffee, Early Judaism 48–51.
Jaffee, Early Judaism 132–133.
For an introduction, see Newby, Gordon D., A history of the Jews of Arabia: From ancient times to their eclipse under Islam, Columbia SC: University of South Carolina Press, 1988. The book is, however, somewhat obsolete by now.
Jaffee, Early Judaism 34–37, 125.
See Griffith, Sidney H., The Bible in Arabic: The scriptures of the “people of the book” in the language of Islam, Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press, 2013, 41–53, for a detailed discussion of the extant evidence. In addition, it should be noted that few late antique people could read or write any language. Tannous, The making of the medieval Middle East, 35–36, notes that oral instruction and aural learning were the most important medium of Christian instruction and access to the Bible.
Griffith, The Bible in Arabic 42–43.
Griffith, The Bible in Arabic 46.
As noted by Dost, An Arabian Qurʾān 30, the Book of Jubilees and the Book of Enoch were much read books in Ethiopia. Moreover, they are important subtexts to the Qurʾān, which interacts with and echoes them.
Shoemaker, The apocalypse of empire 16.
For an overview, see Bar-Asher, Meir M., Jews and the Qurʾan, trans. E. Rundell, Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press, 2021, 8–19.
For a suggestion that the Medinan Jews were “orthodox” followers of the Talmud, see, e.g., Mazuz, Haggai, The religious and spiritual life of the Jews of Medina (The Brill reference library of Judaism 38), Leiden: Brill, 2014. However, as Mazuz’s treatment is based (solely) on non-contemporary sources, his arguments cannot be taken at face value. Bar-Asher, Jews and the Qurʾan 15–16, hypothesizes that Medinan Jews were descendants of the cohanim or priests who settled in Arabia after the destruction of the Second Temple. Such a suggestion has to be taken with a grain of salt, to say the least.
Hoyland, “The Jews of the Hijaz.”
Hoyland, “The Jews of the Hijaz” 93–104.
Hoyland, “The Jews of the Hijaz” 93–94.
Hoyland, “The Jews of the Hijaz” 94.
Hoyland, “The Jews of the Hijaz” 95.
Hoyland, “The Jews of the Hijaz” 96.
Hoyland, “The Jews of the Hijaz” 101.
Nehmé, Laïla, The Darb al-Bakrah: A caravan route in North West Arabia discovered by Ali I. al-Ghabban: Catalogue of the inscriptions, Riyadh: Saudi Commission for Tourism and National Heritage, 2018, 185.
It is naturally true that the word ḥg, in the sense of “feast,” is Hebrew; Nehmé, Darb al-Bakrah, 98. But, I would suggest, it is probable that the word was already used in Arabic among Jews in this sense.
The Qurʾān, incidentally, received quite a few loan words from Hebrew and Aramaic, which suggests that at least some of the Jews of Western Arabia used those languages (Aramaic as a spoken and written language and Hebrew as a written language). See Bar-Asher, Jews and the Qurʾan 59.
For a collection and short analysis, see Jawād ʿAlī, Al-Mufaṣṣal fī Taʾrīkh al-ʿArab qabl al-Islām, Beirut: Dār al-ʿIlm lil-Malāyīn, 1976–1978, ix, 768–791.
Hoyland, “The Jews of the Hijaz” 93.
Al-Samawʾal, Dīwān, ed. Wāḍiḥ al-Ṣamad, Beirut: Dār al-Jīl, 1996, 82–88.
For the debate, see Bar-Asher, Jews and the Qurʾan 19–21; Hirschberg, Joachim Wilhelm, Der Dīwān des as-Samauʾal ibn ʿĀdijāʾ, Crakow: PAU, 1931; Kowalski, Tadeusz, “A contribution to the problem of authenticity of the Dīwān of al-Samauʾal,” in Archiv Orietální 3 (1931), 156–161.
Al-Samawʾal, Dīwān 71, 73.
Al-Samawʾal, Dīwān 89.
On muruwwa, see Bravmann, The spiritual background 1–7.
Al-Samawʾal, Dīwān 87–88, that is, lines 16–21 of the poem.
Al-Samawʾal, Dīwān 83; literally: “a dead person belongs to resurrection.”
Al-Samawʾal, Dīwān 85.
Al-Samawʾal, Dīwān 86.
Al-Samawʾal, Dīwān 87–88.
Al-Samawʾal, Dīwān 87.
Al-Samawʾal, Dīwān 88.
Al-Samawʾal, Dīwān 99. The reader should note that in chapter 4 I suggest that the gentile pre-Islamic poets, for instance, also swear by God, Allāh. Rather than polytheism, their poems indicate gentile monotheist beliefs.
Donner, The early Islamic conquests 11–12.
See Macdonald, “Reflections on the linguistic map”; al-Jallad, “The linguistic landscape.”
Gajda, Le royaume de Ḥimyar 173.
As also noted by Hughes, “South Arabian ‘Judaism’ ” 34.
See, e.g., Bowersock, Glen Warren, Roman Arabia, Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 1983; Crone, Meccan trade. See also the inscription siglum Ag 2 in CSAI, which mentions the extraction of marble for the king’s palace.
Bulliet, Richard W., The camel and the wheel, Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 1975.
Though the ruling dynasty (and, more generally, the people) of Yemen is known as Ḥimyar in Greek and Arabic literature and modern scholarship, they rarely called themselves that in the surviving inscriptions; Gajda, Le royaume de Ḥimyar 188–189.
Prioletta, Alessia, Inscriptions from the southern highlands of Yemen: The epigraphic collections of the museums of Baynūn and Dhamār (Arabia Antica 8), Rome: L’Erma di Bretschneider, 2013, 51–70.
Gajda, Le royaume de Ḥimyar 10–13, 37–38.
Bowersock, Glen Warren, The throne of Adulis: Red Sea wars on the eve of Islam, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013, 67. Naturally, the process of Christianization was slow. The elite probably converted first, with the non-elite members of the society slowly, over centuries, embracing the new faith.
For these complex and somewhat murky developments, see Gajda, Le royaume de Ḥimyar; “Quel monothéisme en Arabie du Sud ancienne?” in Joëlle Beaucamp, Françoise Briquel-Chatonnet and Christian J. Robin (eds.), Juifs et chrétiens en Arabie aux Ve et VIe siècles: regards croisés sur les sources, Paris: Association des amis du Centre d’histoire et civilisation de Byzance, 2010, 107–120; Robin, Christian J., “Arabia and Ethiopia,” in Scott F. Johnson (ed.), The Oxford handbook of late antiquity, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012, 247–332, and “Ḥimyar, Aksūm.”
Robin, “Ḥimyar, Aksūm” 129.
Jamme, Albert, “Le panthéon sud-arabe préislamique d’après les sources épigraphiques,” Le Muséon 60 (1947), 57–147; Hoyland, Arabia and the Arabs 140–141. The importance of astral deities in north Arabia is a debated question; interestingly, however, Q 53:49 calls God “the Lord of Sirius,” which might show an archaic vestige of such beliefs.
Hughes, “South Arabian ‘Judaism’ ” 32–33, discusses the evidence suggesting the longevity of forms of polytheism in Yemen and warns against supposing that all South Arabians became monotheists overnight in 380 CE.
See Gajda, Le royaume de Ḥimyar 223, for discussion.
For a careful analysis, see Gajda, Le royaume de Ḥimyar 13–14, 39–41, 239–247. See also the recent article by Hughes, “South Arabian ‘Judaism.’ ”
But see chapter 4 for the possibility that some of the people could be classified as God-fearers.
The word “Jews” is indicated with different formulations in the Sabaic inscriptions. One inscription (Ry 515 in CSAI) has hwd, while another (CIH 543) has yhd.
MAFRAY-Ḥaṣī 1, discussed below.
In one text God is called rḥmnn mtrḥm, which can be compared to the basmala’s word pair al-raḥmān al-raḥīm. See Fa 74 in CSAI. For a comprehensive list of designations used to refer to God in the late antique Sabaic inscriptions, see Gajda, Le royaume de Ḥimyar 224–232.
For possible scenarios of conversion in the kingdom of Ḥimyar, see the recent study Grasso, Valentina A., “A late antique kingdom’s conversion: Jews and sympathisers in South Arabia,” in Journal of Late Antiquity 13/2 (2020), 352–382.
Fowden, Garth, Empire to commonwealth: Consequences of monotheism in late antiquity, Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press, 1993, 68.
Gajda, Le royaume de Ḥimyar 243.
Bar-Asher, Jews and the Qurʾan 12–13.
They are analyzed in Gajda, Le royaume de Ḥimyar 246; Hughes, “South Arabian ‘Judaism’ ” 30–32, on which studies my discussion is based.
Hughes, “South Arabian ‘Judaism,’ ” cautions us against treating the South Arabian Jews (and, as an extension, other late antique Jews) as religiously (rabbinically) normative. Bar-Asher, Jews and the Qurʾan, 13, notes that “it remains unkown which form of Judaism the Jews of Ḥimyar practiced.”
One “rabbi Jeremiah” was mentioned in an inscription from Dedan, adduced above. Naturally, “rabbi” is a rather general title of honor, so far-reaching conclusions should not be made on the basis of that inscription alone.
Gajda, Le royaume de Ḥimyar 40; Jaffee, Early Judaism 188. The inscription has been paleographically dated to the latter half of the fifth century. Sabaic inscriptions attest to synagogues in Yemen already in the fourth century: Gajda, Le royaume de Ḥimyar 46.
See Gajda, Le royaume de Ḥimyar 245–246, for discussion.
The king at the time of writing of this inscription was Thaʾrān Yuhanʿim (r. 324–375); Fisher, Greg (ed.), Arabs and empires before Islam, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015, xxvii.
The edition notes that gyrt might refer to a “ ‘construction to produce plaster’ (<GYR) or, less likely, ‘guest house’ (<GWR).” Tkrb refers to the name of the building or its locality.
This is a human being, not a reference to God.
B 8457 in CSAI.
CIH 6 in CSAI.
Ha 11 in CSAI. As the edition in CSAI notes, the language of this inscription is not standard Sabaic and should perhaps be classified as something else linguistically since it has the suffix pronoun -s¹ (“his”). I wonder, though, if the word ḥg could, in the Jewish context of Yemen, have meant something other than what it did in the pre-monotheist era. Supposing that Mrṯdm was a Jew or a God-fearer, which is naturally anything but certain, the verb ḥg might have denoted to him, for example, “to celebrate Passover.” See above for the Nabataeo-Arabic inscription which mentions ḥg ʾl-ptyr, “the feast of the unleavened bread.”
See Gajda, Le royaume de Ḥimyar 244–245 and chapter 4 of the present work.
The word s²ʿb denotes social groups of varying sizes; see Gajda, Le royaume de Ḥimyar 177. Hence, the CSAI translation of Ibrahim al-Hudayd 1 should be modified here.
Gajda, Le royaume de Ḥimyar 232.
Robin, “Ḥimyar, Aksūm” 133. I quote the translation in CSAI.
MAFRAY-Ḥaṣī 1 in CSAI. For an analysis, see also Gajda, Le royaume de Ḥimyar 233–234. As she notes, this inscription is replete with loanwords from Hebrew or Judeo-Aramaic languages. For example, the word gzr derives from the Hebrew gāzar or Aramaic gəzar; hymnt derives from the Aramaic hēymanûtâ.
Both the word used for synagogue (mikrāb) and its name Bryk, “blessed,” are borrowed from Aramaic: Robin, “Ḥimyar, Aksūm” 136. Though note that Gajda, Le royaume de Ḥimyar 46, 236–237, remarks that the word mkrb does not necessarily always denote a synagogue. It could also refer to other places of worship used by gentile monotheists. As Gajda notes, a number of mkrbs are attested in inscriptions.
Ry 534+MAFY/Rayda 1 in CSAI.
Inscription siglum YM 1200, mentioned by Gajda, Le royaume de Ḥimyar 71. She notes that the word is probably derived from post-Biblical Hebrew (kenēset) or Aramaic (kenīshtā), both signifying “synagogue.”
Gajda, Le royaume de Ḥimyar 236, 238. The inscription reads: ʾmn ʾmn w-ḏn bytn ms¹gdn, “Amen, amen, this house is a place of prostration.”
CIH 539 in CSAI.
Cf. the Arabic al-ākhira and al-dunyā.
ZM 5 + 8+10 in CSAI. One wonders, though, if the word zkt should be understood as “alms” (as in Arabic) or “merit” (as in certain Aramaic texts), i.e., the houses are constructed with or as alms dedicated to God. Another building inscription (Gar AY 9d) has the same phrase, b-zkt Rḥmnn, while another (Gar Bayt al-Ashwal 1) has b-zkt mrʾ-hw, “with the zkt of their Lord.” These three are the only occurrences of the word zkt in the Sabaic texts, as far as I know. The context in all three is commemorating a construction of a building or buildings, so the meaning of “alms” would work very well. If this is correct, the Arabic zakāt would have been borrowed through Sabaic and not from a form of Aramaic.
Bowersock, The throne of Adulis 87–93; Gajda, Le royaume de Ḥimyar 79–81.
There is a bulky literature on these events. See, e.g., Brock, Sebastian P. and Susan Ashbrook Harvey, Holy women of the Syrian Orient. Berkeley CA: University of California Press, 1998, 100–121; Beaucamp, Joëlle, Françoise Briquel-Chatonnet and Christian J. Robin (eds.), Juifs et chrétiens en Arabie aux Ve et VIe siècles: regards croisés sur les sources, Paris: Association des amis du Centre d’histoire et civilisation de Byzance, 2010; Beaucamp, Briquel-Chatonnet and Robin, “La persécution des chrétiens de Nagrān et la chronologie ḥimyarite,” in ARAM 11–12 (1999–2000), 15–83; Gajda, Le royaume de Ḥimyar 82–109.
Pseudo-Dionysius of Tel Mahre, Chronicle, part III, trans. Witold Witakowski, Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 1996, 52.
See, e.g., the sources discussed in Shahîd, Irfan, The martyrs of Najrân: New documents, Bruxelles: Société des Bollandistes, 1971.
Ja 1028 in CSAI.
Another inscription, Ry 508, in CSAI, written in the same year but a different month, gives a somewhat divergent number of deaths and spoils: “The number of all that the armies of the king killed and captured was of thirteen [thousand] deaths and nine thousand five hundred prisoners, two hundred eighty thousand camels, cows and goats.”
Bowersock, The throne of Adulis 96–97. It has recently been suggested on the basis of hydroclimate records that the fall of the Ḥimyarite dynasty was preceded by serious droughts in Yemen, see Fleitmann, Dominik et al., “Droughts and societal change: The environmental context for the emergence of Islam in late antique Arabia,” in Science 376 (2022), 1317–1321.
Sarris, Empires of faith 140, 263–264.
CIH 621 in CSAI.
See Kropp, Manfred, “Beyond single words: Māʾida–Shayṭān–jibt and ṭāghūt: Mechanisms of transmission into the Ethiopic (Geʿəz) Bible and the Qurʾānic text,” in Gabriel Said Reynolds (ed.), The Qurʾān in its historical context, London: Routledge, 2007, 204–216.
Bowersock, The throne of Adulis 111–118; Robin, “Ḥimyar, Aksūm,” 150–171.
Conrad, Lawrence I., “Abraha and Muḥammad: Some observations apropos of chronology and literary topoi in the early Arabic historical tradition,” in BSOAS 50/2 (1987), 225–240.
Murayghān 3 in CSAI: “The king ʾbrh [Abraha] zybmn, king of Sabaʾ, ḏu-Raydān, Ḥaḍramawt, Ymnt, of their Arabs (w-ʾʿrb-hmw) of Ṭwdm and Thmt, wrote this inscription when he came back from the country of Mʿdm [Maʿadd], when he took possession of the Arabs of Mʿdm, from Mḏrn, he drove out ʿmrm, son of Mḏrn, and he took possession of all the Arabs (w-s¹tqḏw kl ʾʿrb) of Mʿdm, Hgrm, Ḫṭ, Ṭym, Yṯrb and Gzm.” Abraha’s title in this inscription, zybmn, appears as zbymn in others, so zybmn could be a slip of the engraver; see Gajda, Le royaume de Ḥimyar 120. As Gajda notes, this title should probably be understood as z-b-ymn, “who is in Yemen.”
Retsö, The Arabs in antiquity 552–562.
Gajda, Le royaume de Ḥimyar 148.
Daryaee, Touraj, Sasanian Persia: The rise and fall of an empire (International Library of Iranian Studies 8), London: I.B. Tauris, 2009, 31.
For nuanced discussions, see Gajda, Le royaume de Ḥimyar 149–167; Shoshan, Boaz, “The Sasanian conquest of Ḥimyar reconsidered: In search of a local hero” in Mette Bjerregaard Mortensen et al. (eds.), The study of Islamic origin: New perspectives and contexts (Judaism, Christianity, and Islam—Tension, transmission, transformation 15), Berlin: De Gruyter, 2021, 259–273.
For later Islamic-era texts on the Jews of Medina, see, e.g., Lecker, Muslims, Jews and pagans; Mazuz, The religious and spiritual life; Munt, Henry, The holy city of Medina: Sacred space in early Islamic Arabia, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014, 44–46.
Mazuz, The religious and spiritual life 109–116; Munt, Henry, “ ‘No two religions’: Non-Muslims in the early Islamic Ḥijāz,” in BSOAS 78/2 (2015), 249–269, at 261. For more on this, see chapter 8.
In a sad development during the current Yemeni civil war, the Houthis have, according to news articles, apparently expelled the last Yemeni Jews.