11. Christian Robin, RdA, p. 88: “Ce rejet du polythéisme est radical et définitif.”
12. For the Jewish inscriptions of South Arabia, see the detailed analysis by Christian Robin, “Ḥimyar et Israël,” CRAI 2004, pp. 831–908.
13. For the seal see Robin (previous note), pp. 891–892, and for Beth She‘arim p. 836.
14. G. W. Nebe and A. Sima, “Die aramäisch / hebräisch / sabäische Grabin-schrift der Lea,” Arabian Archaeology and Epigraphy 15 (2004), 76–83.
15. C. Conti-Rossini, “Un documento sul cristianesimo nello Yemen ai tempi del re Ṣarāḥbīl Yakkuf,” Rendiconti dell’ Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei, Classe di Scienze morali, storiche e filologiche, ser. 5, 19 (1910), pp. 705–750, with the Ethiopic text followed by an Italian translation on pp. 747–750. Cf. A. F. L. Beeston, “The Martyrdom of Azqir,” Proc. Seminar for Arabian Studies 16 (1985), 5–10, reprinted in A. F. L. Beeston at The Arabian Seminar and Other Papers, ed. M. C. A. Macdonald and C. S. Philips (Oxford, 2005), pp. 113–118.
16. Christian Robin, “Joseph, dernier roi de Ḥimyar (de 522 à 525, ou une des années suivantes),” Jerusalem Studies in Arabic and Islam 34 (2008), 1–124. See the many papers on Najrān in Juifs et chrétiens en Arabie aux Ve et VIe siècles: Regards croisés sur les sources, ed. J. Beaucamp et al. (Paris 2010).
17. See Th. Noeldeke, Geschichte der Perser und Araber zur Zeit der Sasaniden, aus der arabischen Chronik des Tabari (Leiden, 1879), pp. 174–175 with n. 1 for the Arabic, with MarAr for the Greek, A. Moberg, The Book of the Ḥimyarites (Lund, 1924) for the Syriac, and A. Bausi with A. Gori, Tradizioni orientali del Martirio di Areta (Florence, 2006), for the Ethiopic.
18. Fergus Millar, “Rome’s Arab Allies in Late Antiquity. Conceptions and Representations from within the Frontiers of the Empire,” in Commutatio et contentio. Studies in the Late Roman, Sasanian, and Early Islamic Near East in Memory of Zeev Rubin, ed. H. Börm and J. Wiesehöfer (Düsseldorf 2010), pp. 199–226.
19. See the work by Gajda cited above in n. 3.
20. RIE vol. 1, no. 195, stone II., l. 24, p. 287.
21. A. Moberg, The Book of the Ḥimyarites (Lund, 1924).
22. Marina Detoraki has meticulously reviewed and documented these sources MarAr, pp. 13–43. See also I. Shahîd, The Martyrs of Najrān (Brussels, 1971).
23. David G. K. Taylor, “A Stylistic Comparison of the Syriac Ḥimyarite Martyr Texts Attributed to Simeon of Beth Arsham,” in Juifs et chrétiens en Arabie (cited in n. 16 above), pp. 143–176.
24. See the Appendix to this volume on “Nonnosus,” as well as my article, “Nonnosus and Byzantine Diplomacy in Arabia,” for the Festschrift in honor of Emilio Gabba, Rivista Storica Italiana 124 (2012), 282–290.
25. John of Ephesus included a life of Symeon in his Lives of the Eastern Saints: Patrologia Orientalis 17, fasc. 1, ed. E. W. Brooks (1923), pp. 137–158. The quotation is on p. 140, which also reveals that Symeon went often to al Ḥīra, converted many of the Arabs there, and persuaded them to build a church.
Chapter 7
1. Cf. Iwona Gajda, Le royaume de Ḥimyar à l’époque monothéiste (Paris, 2009), pp. 73–81, with Theod. Anagnost., Kirchengeschichte (ed. Hansen 1995), p. 157, with which cf. p. 152.
2. A. Moberg, The Book of the Ḥimyarites (Lund, 1924), p. 3b. G. Hatke, in his doctoral thesis, suggests a connection with Jacob of Serūg’s reference to persecution of Christians in his letter to the Christians of Ḥimyar: Africans in Arabia Felix: Axumite Relations with Ḥimyar in the Sixth Century C.E. (Ph.D. dissertation, Princeton, January 2011) p. 113. Cf. Jacob Sarugensis, Epistulae, ed. Olinder (Louvain, 1952), pp. 87–88.
3. RIE vol. 1, no. 191, pp. 271–274.
4. Lines 34–35 of the inscription mentioned in the previous note give the commander’s name as Ḥayyān (hyn), and the surviving summary of the relevant chapter (now lost) in the Book of the Ḥimyarites names the commander of the first expedition as Ḥyōnā (ḥywn’): A. Moberg, The Book of the Himyarites (Lund, 1924), pp. 3 and ci. Cf. Iwona Gajda, Le royaume de Ḥimyar à l’époque monothéiste (Paris, 2009), p. 80.
5. A. Dillmann, Lexicon Linguae Aethiopicae (Leipzig, 1865), col. 1174.
6. MarAr ch. 27, with Detoraki’s note 164 on p. 256. Justin’s words about the enemy were kata tou musarou kai paranomou Hebraiou, and for their annihilation he uses the phrase eis teleion aphanismon kai anathema. This was strong language to arouse the Ethiopians to do what they were inclined to do anyway. But they doubtless welcomed military support even from Chalcedonian Christians.
7. MarAr § 32.
8. In her book cited in n. 1 above, p. 92, Gajda quotes and discusses the South Arabian inscriptions that mention the chain, and she considers the Arabic testimony on p. 94. Fundamental for modern discussions of the chain of Maddabān is A. F. L. Beeston, “The Chain of al Mandab,” in On Both sides of al Mandab. Ethiopian, South Arabic and Islamic studies presented to Oscar Löfgren on His 90th birthday (Stockholm, 1989), pp. 1–6.
9. RIE vol. 1, no. 195, pp. 284–288. See Fig. 4, for the upper fragment. For a South Arabian inscription also mentioning the death of the king of Ḥimyar, see Gajda (n. 1 above), pp. 107–108.
10. I am much indebted to George Hatke, for his meticulous analysis of the biblical allusions in this inscription: Africans in Arabia Felix: Axumite Relations with Ḥimyar in the Sixth Century C.E. (Ph.D. dissertation, Princeton, January 2011), pp. 378–382.
11. MarAr § 28.
12. On this king, see Gajda (n. 1 above), pp. 112–115. Procopius, Wars 1. 20. 3.
13. I. Shahîd, “Byzantium in South Arabia,” Dumbarton Oaks Papers 33 (1979), pp. 25–94. G. Fiaccadori, “Gregentios in the Land of the Homerites,” in A. Berger (ed.), Life and Works of Saint Gregentios, Archbishop of Taphar (Berlin, 2006), pp. 48–82.
14. I. Guidi, “La lettera di Simeone vescovo di Beth Arsam,” Rendic. Accad. Lincei (Ser. 3) 7 (1881), 2 [Syriac].
15. I. Shahîd, The Martyrs of Najrân (Brussels, 1971), pp. iii-1v [Syriac].
16. G Ryckmans, Le Muséon 66 (1953), nos. 507 and 508, pp. 285–287 and 296–297. A. Jamme, Sabaean and Hasaean Inscriptions from Saudi Arabia (Rome, 1966), no. 1028, p. 39.
17. Cf. Philostorgius, Kirchengeschichte (ed. Bidez-Winkelmann), 3. 4.
18. MarAr § 38.
19. P. Yule, “Ẓaphār. Capital of Himyar,” Archäologische Berichte aus dem Yemen 11 (2007), 477–548. See also the context provided in P. Yule, Ḥimyar. Spätantike im Jemen / Late Antique Yemen (Aichwald, 2007).
Chapter 8
1. Procop., Wars I. 19. 1,
2. Procop., Wars I. 20. 9, on Justinian’s desire to involve the Ethiopians in the silk trade in order to disadvantage the Persians who were profiting from it. Justinian recruited the Ethiopians against the Persians because of their shared religion (dia to tês doxês homognômon). Iotabê (Procop., Wars I. 19. 3–4) was most probably Tiran, although no ancient remains have been discovered there and amphibious landings would have been difficult. On the history and location of the island, P. Mayerson, “The Island of Iotabê in the Byzantine Sources: a Reprise,” BASOR 287 (1992), 1–4.
3. Julianus’ embassy: Procop., Wars I. 20. 9. For a full account of the family and diplomatic activity of Nonnosus, see the Appendix to the present volume as well as G. W. Bowersock, “Nonnosus and Byzantine Diplomacy in Arabia,” Rivista Storica Italiana 124 (2012), 282–290. The basic Greek text of Nonnosus may be found in FHG IV, pp. 178–180.
4. Cf. I. Shahîd, “Byzantium and Kinda,” Byzantinische Zeitschrift 53 (1960), 57–73, and the Appendix below.
5. FHG IV, p. 178–180, with the elephants in excerpts preserved in Photius and the meeting with the negus in Malalas.
6. L. Oeconomos, “Remarques sur trois passages de trois historiens grecs du Moyen Age,” Byzantion 20 (1950), 177–183, on Malalas’ account of Nonnosus in Axum, 177–178 with plate 1.
7. Procop., Wars I. 19. 10–13. Procopius says that Abū Karib was appointed “phylarch of the Saracen
s in Palestine,” by comparison with Nonnosus’ description of Qays as receiving “the hegemony of the Palestines [plural]” (FHG IV, p. 179).
8. CIH no. 541. A good photograph of this impressive stone appears in RdA, p. 90.
9. For a comprehensive analysis of Abraha’s career in the half century before Muḥammad’s birth, see Lawrence Conrad, “Abraha and Muḥammad: Some Observations Apropos of Chronology and Literary topoi in the Early Arabic Historical Tradition,”BSOAS 50 (1987), 225–240.
10. This is the inscription from Bir Mureyghān known as Ryckmans 506, for which see J. Ryckmans, in his article “Inscriptions historiques sabéennes de l’Arabie centrale: Inscription de Muraighān,” Le Muséon 56 (1953), 339–342, with comment by A. F. L. Beeston, in BSOAS 16 (1954), 391–392. A new Murayghān inscription was discovered in 2009 and is still unpublished: cf. Christian Julien Robin in his entry on Arabia and Ethiopia in the Handbook of Late Antiquity edited by Scott Johnson (Oxford, 2012), p. 287. It apparently claims that Abraha extended his authority over new territories in northeastern, northern, and northwestern Arabia and asserts that he had expelled the son of the Naşrid king of al Ḥīra.
11. Procop., Wars I. 20. 13.
12. One might also consider another year than 570 for the Prophet’s birth: cf. L. Conrad, “Abraha and Muḥammad: Some Observations Apropos of Literary ‘Topoi’ in the Early Arabic Historical Tradition,” BSOAS 50 (1987), 225–240, with reflections on the number 40 as a topos to explain the interval between 570 for Muḥammad’s birth and 610 for the mab‘ath.
13. Axum appears on an inscription as the king’s son ’[k]sm, CIH 541, ll. 82–83. In Ṯabari he is called Yaksum: Th. Noeldeke, Geschichte der Perser und Araber zur Zeit der Sasaniden (Leiden, 1879), p. 219, where a coin with a Greek legend Iaxômi is adduced in n. 3.
14. Contemporary or near-contemporary sources for this period are lacking, particularly after the termination of Procopius’ Wars. For a review of the Arabic tradition and Theophanes, see I. Gajda, Le royaume de Ḥimyar à l’époque monothéiste (Paris, 2009), pp. 150–156.
15. For Arab paganism as mentioned in the Qu’rān, see the incisive, but controversial, analysis by Patricia Crone, “The Religion of the Qur’ānic Pagans: God and the Lesser Deities,” Arabica 57 (2010), 151–200. Her paper is indebted to the equally controversial thesis of G. R. Hawting’s The Idea of Idolatry and the Emergence of Islam (Cambridge, 1999), which considers the kuffār (non-believers) and mushrikūn (sharers) as aberrant monotheists, although they have long been understood to be pagans or polytheists. Both Hawting and Crone believe that these terms express condemnation of certain monotheists by other ones. Crone explicitly examines the Quranic mushrikūn without reference to the subsequent tradition—an interesting experiment but arguably not the most fruitful way to handle surviving testimony. Memory, even if corrupted or invented, is important for writing history. Both the Qur’ān and the subsequent tradition clearly acknowledge the existence of many gods before and during the time of Muḥammad. Current debate concentrates, not without circularity, on whether these gods were ranked in a hierarchy with Allāh on top. Even if they were this would be a strange kind of monotheism.
16. On all this see my Jerusalem lectures in memory of Menachem Stern, Empires in Collision in Late Antiquity (Hanover, 2012).
Chapter 9
1. Iwona Gajda, Le Royaume de Ḥimyar à l’époque monothéiste (Paris, 2009), p. 152.
2. Sophronius, Anacreont., no. 14, ll. 61–64.
3. See F. M. Donner, Muhammad and the Believers. At the Origins of Islam (Harvard, 2010).
4. Wim Raven, “Some Early Islamic Texts on the Negus of Abyssinia,” Journal of Semitic Studies 33 / 2 (1988), 197–218. Irfan Shahîd, “The Hijra (Emigration) of the Early Muslims to Abyssinia: The Byzantine Dimension,” in To Hellinikon: Studies in Honor of Speros Vryonis, Jr., ed. J. S. Allen et al., vol. 2 (New Rochelle, 1993), pp. 203–213.
5. Irfan Shahîd, The Arabs in Late Antiquity: Their Role, Achievement, and Legacy, American University of Beirut, Jewett Chair of Arabic: Occasional Papers (Beirut, 2008), ed. R. Baalbaki, pp. 27–28.
6. For this suggestion, see M. Lecker, “Were the Ghassānids and the Byzantines behind Muḥammad’s hijra?” in the forthcoming publication, ed. Christian Robin, of the proceedings of a conference on “Cross Perspectives of History and Archaeology on the Jafnid Dynasty” (Paris, 12–13 November 2008).
7. Gerald Hawting, The Idea of Idolatry and the Emergence of Islam. From Polemic to History (Cambridge, 1999). Patricia Crone, “The Religion of the Qur’ānic Pagans: God and the Lesser Deities,” Arabica 57 (2010), 151–200.
8. Uri Rubin, “Ḥanīfiyya and Ka‘ba,” JSAI 13 (1990), 85–112.
9. But in her paper “Angels versus Humans as Messengers of God,” in Revelation, Literature, and community in Late Antiquity, ed. P. Townsend and M. Vidas (Tübingen, 2011), pp. 315–336, she regularly refers to the mushrikūn as polytheists.
10. For the Persians in this period see now Greg Fisher, Between Empires: Arabs, Romans, and Sasanians in Late Antiquity (Oxford, 2011).
11. Cf. Antti Arjava, “The Mystery Cloud of 536 CE in the Mediterranean Sources,” Dumbarton Oaks Papers 59 (2009), 73–93, and Christian Julien Robin in Handbook of Late Antiquity, ed. Scott Johnson (Oxford, 2012), p. 305.
Appendix
1. The surviving texts in Greek, as summarized and paraphrased by Photius, are still most conveniently examined in C. Müller, FHG IV, pp. 178–180. The present appendix, is an abbreviated and revised version of a paper in honor of Emilio Gabba in Rivista Storica Italiana 124 (2012), 282–290.
2. PLRE II. Abramius 2, p. 3.
3. Procop., Wars I. 20.
4. Ps. Zacharias, Hist. Eccles. VIII. 3.
5. For early pre-Islamic Arabic, see the rich dossier assembled in ed. M. C. A. Macdonald, The Development of Arabic as a Written Language, Supplement to the Proceedings of the Seminar for Arabian Studies 40 (Oxford, 2010).
6. Müller, FGH IV, p. 178. For a picture of a comparable ceremony, L. Oeconomos, “Remarques sur trois passages de trois historiens grecs du Moyen Age,” Byzantion 20 (1950), 177–183. See Fig. 6 in this volume.
7. This must be the devastation by eastern nomads that Procopius of Gaza mentions in his Panegyric of Anastasius 7 (pp. 9–10 Chauvot), written between 498 and 502.
8. Cf. I. Kawar (Shahīd), “Byzantium and Kinda,” Byz. Zeitschr. 53 (1960), 57–73. Id., Byzantium and the Arabs in the Fifth Century (Washington DC, 1989), pp. 127–129. Ogaros’ Semitic name was Ḥujr, Badicharmos’ name was Ma‘dīkarib: C. J. Robin, “Les Arabes de Ḥimyar, des ‘Romains’ et des Perses (IIIe–VIe siècles de l’ère chrétienne),” Semitica et Classica 1 (2008), 167–202, particularly 178. It is hard to accept Robin’s view (p. 178) that the father of Ḥujr was not Ḥārith, the phylarch of Ḥujrid Kinda, but a hypothetical homonym of the Ghassān.
9. PLRE II. Euphrasius 3, p. 425. The name in Greek could, it may be suggested, be analogous to the name Firatli in Turkish.
10. Procop., Wars I. 17. 44, reprised in Evagr., HE IV. 12. Cf. PLRE II, p. 1120 (Timostratus), p. 611 (Ioannes 70).
11. David G. K. Taylor, “A Stylistic Comparison of the Syriac Himyarite Martyr Texts,” in ed. J. Beaucamp, F. Briquel-Chatonnet, and C. J. Robin, Juifs et chrétiens en Arabie aux Ve et VIe siècles: Regards croisés sur les sources (Paris, 2010), pp. 143–176, particularly p. 144. For Ramla, I. Kawar (Shahīd), “The Conference of Ramla,” Journal of Near Eastern Studies 23 (1964), 115–131.
12. Procop., Wars I. 17. 40 (Alamoundaros, Πέρσαις … πιστός, plundered the lands from the boundaries of Egypt to Mesopotamia), 46 (neither δοῦκεζ nor φύλαρχοι could resist).
13. Malalas, Chron. 18. 16 (Bonn pp. 434–435).
14. MarAr §25 confirms Nonnosus on this treaty.
15. The name of the son is Mαυíαζ, not Mavia (as in Müller’s Latin translation), which would be a woman’s name (Arabic Māwiyya), but Mu‘awiyya.
16. Robin (n. 8 above) shows that he must have been a grandson.
17. The Greek formulation of the hegemony of Qays is carefully phrased: αὐτὸς τὴν Παλαιστινῶν ἡγεμονίαν παρὰ βασιλέως ἐδέξατο, πλῆθος πολὺ τῶν ὑποτεταγμένων αὑτῷ σὺν αὑτ ῷ ἐπαγόμενος (FHG IV, p. 179).
18. For Abūkarib, Procop., Wars I. 19. 10–13, and P. Petra IV. 39, l. 165 [ὁ] φύλαρχ[ο]ς Ἄβου Xήρηβος.
19. Procop. Wars I. 20. (Hellestheaios). MarAr §1, 2, 27, 29, 32, 34 35, 37–39 (Elesbaas).
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