Ḥimyar, kingdom of
Ḥimyar, kingdom of
- Yosef Yuval Tobi
Summary
The beginning of the Ḥimyari kingdom is reckoned at 110 bce, when the tribe of Ḥimyar split off from the Qatabān kingdom in the western Ḥaḍramawt, located in the southern Arabian Peninsula, and established its own capital in Ẓafār, located in southeast of our time Yarim. Starting in the 1st century ce, there were incessant conflicts between the kingdom of Ḥimyar and the kingdom of Sheba, whose seat of government was Ma’rib, until the year 175, when the Ḥimyarites completely conquered the kingdom of Sheba. They had taken over Qatabān some hundred years earlier. The religion of the kingdom, as in all other kingdoms in South Arabia at the time, was polytheist, but during the 4th century, the effects of monotheism began to take hold. No later than 384, King Malkīkarib Yuha’min (r. 375–400) had adopted Judaism as the state religion. The kingdom of Ḥimyar remained in a state of constant war with the Christian kingdom of Axūm in Ethiopia, on the western shore of the Red Sea, while the Ethiopians succeeded in even occupying militarily the city of Ẓafār for a short time. The tension between the two kingdoms reached its peak during the time of As’ar Yath’ar’s reign (more commonly known as Yūsuf Dhū Nuwās) (517–525), who acted ruthlessly against the Christians in his kingdom, especially those in Najrān. Because of this action, the army of Axūm invaded Yemen in 525 at the request of the Christian Byzantine emperor, bringing an end to the Jewish kingdom of Ḥimyar. In 531, Abraha the Ethiopian took over the reins of government in Yemen and expanded his kingdom’s realm of influence further north towards the central part of the Arabian Peninsula. A short time following his death, Persia wrestled control of the kingdom, with the assistance of Sayf Dhū Yazan, who, according to tradition, was one of the descendants of Joseph Dhū Nuwās. In 629, Yemen fell entirely to the armies of Islam.
Keywords
Subjects
- Jewish Studies
- Near East
The Rise of the Kingdom of Ḥimyar, c. 110 bce–4th Century ce
According to Yemeni genealogical writings, the kingdom of Ḥimyar is named after its founding father, Ḥimyar the son of Saba.’ The name, however, is also widely used to represent a tribe by that name, or a confederation (shaʻb) of ancient South Arabian tribes. The territory of this tribe has also come to be known by the eponym of Ḥimyar, whose center was in the mountainous district of Yāfiʻ, in the southeast of Yemen, near Abyan, the delta of wādi Banā’, whose waters empty into the Indian Ocean, near the port city of Shuqrah (Map 1).
The kingdom had its beginnings in 110 bce, when the tribe of Ḥimyar separated itself from the kingdom of Qatabān and adopted the Sabaean language, which differed from the Ḥimyaritic tongue, although it was from the same group of Old South Arabian languages. The first capital city of the kingdom of Ḥimyar was Ẓafār, whose ruins are found in Jabal Mudawwar, in a town by that name situated only a few kilometers from the city of Yarīm, wherein is the citadel of Raydān, by which appellation the kings of Ḥimyar were also named.
Less than one hundred years after its founding, the kingdom of Ḥimyar began to spread beyond its borders into the territories of the adjoining kingdoms that preceded it chronologically. In about 25 bce, the Ḥimyarites conquered the ancient kingdom of Saba’, which was thought to represent the South Arabian bed of civilization, and which had previously controlled the area during the entire first millennium bce (based on archaeological records, at least from the 10th century), with its capital city of Maryab (today, Ma’rib = مأرب).1 This was after the kingdom of Saba’ had become very weak as a result of the Roman invasion (under Aellius Gallus) in South Arabia in 25 bce. This military operation completed the political and commercial process of diverting spice trafficking (primarily in frankincense and myrrh2)from the transcontinental trade routes, which had been under the control of Saba’, to the maritime routes, the principal port of which was in Qānīʼ (modern Bi’r ʻAlī =بير علي), situated along the shores of the Indian Ocean, in the country of Ḥaḍramawt, far from the hegemony of the kingdom of Saba.’3 Nevertheless, such a foothold was not stable, and the struggle between the two kingdoms continued for many years. The first kingdom of Ḥimyar fell apart c. 100 ce, when the kingdom of Saba’ succeeded in throwing off the yoke of the government of the Ḥimyarites. From that time, until c. 275 ce, both kingdoms existed alongside each other in perpetual hostility, manifested in the fact that the kings of Saba’ bore the prestigious title of “the kings of Saba’ and Dhū-Raydān” (the word Raydān representing the original Ḥimyarite kingdom), and the kings of Ḥimyar adopted the same title, at least from the time of King Yāsir Yuhaṣdiq.4
Around 175 ce, the kingdom of Ḥimyar conquered the kingdom of Qatabān, and by c. 290 had taken over the kingdom of Ḥaḍramawt. However, even before this, c. 275, the Ḥimyarites reconquered the kingdom of Saba.’ Thus, for the first time in the history of South Arabia, the entire country was under one central government. As a result, the kings of Ḥimyar expanded their honorary title—“the kings of Saba’ and Dhū-Raydān and Ḥaḍramawt and Yamnat.” With the expansion of the kingdom in the 5th and 6th centuries, towards central Arabia and westward, the honorary title was again expanded to include “the kings of Saba’ and Dhū-Raydān and Ḥaḍramawt and Yamnat and their Arab tribes in the mountains and in the plain” (wa-a‘rābī-hīm ṭawdum wa-tihāmat). In the time of Yūsuf Dhū Nuwās’, the honorary title was reduced to “the king of all the tribes” (ash‘bān) or in its more simplistic form, “the king of Ḥimyar,” which refers to all the districts of the kingdom. The political unification also had far-reaching implications culturally: the Sabaean language, which had already been adopted by the Ḥimyarites, was introduced from that time on throughout the entire unified kingdom. Likewise, a standard calendar system was introduced. Overall, the signs of unification were felt throughout all aspects of life. For example, architecture and iconography began to show the influence of Hellenistic culture.
In the period following political unification in the 3rd century ce, the kingdom of Ḥimyar, which was a way station between India, the Arabian Peninsula, East Africa, and the Mediterranean countries, endeavored to maintain good relations with the Roman Empire, which ruled the Mediterranean. Ḥimyarite shipping vessels brought ivory, the most important commodity in Rome, from East Africa, while caravans travelled over land across the wide expanses of the Arabian Peninsula, carrying frankincense and other wares from Ḥaḍramawt and India to the coastal cities in the eastern Mediterranean, and from there to Rome. The Periplus of the Erythraean Sea, dated to between 40 and 70 ce, offers testimony to the effect that there were good relations between the Roman Empire and the kingdom of Ḥimyar in the time of “Charibael, lawful king of two tribes” (Ḥimyar and Saba’), whose seat of government was in Ẓafār and who showed fidelity with the emperors of Rome by maintaining permanent ambassadors and by offering presents.
Jewish Monarchy, 375–525 ce
Approximately one hundred years following the unification of the kingdoms of Ḥimyar and of Saba’ there began a religious revolution that aimed to overcome differences between the kingdom’s earlier subjects, who had now become integrated in the various domains of the united kingdom. Before unification, each of the earlier kingdoms had had its own religion and rich and varied pantheon. As emerges from archaeological evidence, the Ḥimyarite government brought an end to idolatry and adopted the Jewish version of monotheism no later than 384 ce, during the reign of King Malkīkarib Yuha’amin (375–400). In fact, religious reform had already begun in the days of King Tha’ran Yuhanʻim (324–375), whose reign was marked by political stability and economic development.5 The most significant hallmark of this process was that the many stone inscriptions documenting the names of the kings and their exploits—such as the dedicatory inscription of Malkīkarib Yuha’amin and his two sons, Abūkarib and Dhara’’amar, of 384 ce—no longer mentioned the names of idols but the name of “the Merciful One, the God of heaven” or “the God of the heavens and the earth.”6 Not long before, Malkīkarib Yuha’amin had established a house of prayer which was called mikrāb, having named it by the Judeo-Aramaic name, Barīk (“blessed”).7
In this manner, Judaism became the official state religion and spread mainly among the ruling circles and upper class. It appears that the great reforms in the area of religion were made in the days of King Abūkarib Asʻad (c. 400–440), the son of Malkīkarib Yuha’amin. The three dedicatory inscriptions that were discovered in Ẓafār, the capital of Ḥimyar, and in other places reveal that Ẓafār not only had a Jewish community with a synagogue, and that the Ḥimyarite government adopted Judaism, but also that the king saw himself as part of the people of Israel.8
The adoption of Jewish monotheism by the Ḥimyarite government was most likely influenced by the presence of the Jewish communities that were scattered throughout the kingdom.9 At least from the beginning of the 3rd century there is evidence that there were in the kingdom of Ḥimyar established Jewish communities, which sent their dead to be buried in the prestigious cemetery at Beth Sheʻarim in the Lower Galilee. Moreover, there was a Jewish synagogue in the important port city of Qāniʼ.10 Thus, the Christian priest and missionary, Theophilus (3), who was sent to Ḥimyar as ambassador by the Emperor Constantius II (r. 337–361) in order to convert its inhabitants to Christianity, tells of Jews he met from older local Jewish communities. According to the historian Philostorgius, who describes the journey of Theophilus in Ḥimyar, the only objection of the Ḥimyarite ruler in Ẓafār had to changing his religion to Christianity was the Jews, whom he called “insane” and “stiff-necked.”11 From these anecdotes, it appears that idolatry ceased to be practiced, and that the elite strata of the Ḥimyarite society who abhorred it sought a more personal religion. The struggle was, therefore, between Judaism and Christianity, with the Jewish communities having the upper hand, because the rulers of Ḥimyar preferred to adopt Judaism for political reasons. It is worth noting that, in converting to Judaism, the rulers of Ḥimyar also drew after them many Arab tribes, the chief of whom was the powerful Kinda tribe. This tribe, whose place of origin is in Ḥaḍramawt, served as agent to the kingdom of Ḥimyar, and established a kingdom whose hegemony extended to central Arabia, and whose chief city, Qaryat al-Fāw, was an economic, religious, political, and cultural hub.12
Christian Robin, an expert on South-Arabic inscriptions, has even explained the use of the title of “Israel” in the dedicatory inscriptions as going beyond the internal affairs of the local Jewish community and reflecting rather the adoption of Judaism as the state religion in the kingdom of Ḥimyar.13 He points out that religious reforms were enacted by Abūkarib Asʻad precisely at a time when the Jews in Palaestina had lost all hope of re-establishing an independent political entity in their own country, after the death of the Emperor Julian in 363 and the triumph of Christianity. It was at this time also that the institution of the Jewish Patriarchate ceased to exist, with the death of Gamliel VI in 425 and formal abolition of the office in 429.
The Persecution of Christians and the War with the Kingdom of Axūm
There is still no doubt that the spread of Judaism as the state religion not only stemmed from the internal developments within the kingdom of Ḥimyar but also was influenced by external relations with the kingdom’s powerful neighbors, especially Axūm in northern Ethiopia, on the African side of the Erythrean Sea, opposite South Arabia.14 In the wake of the Edict of Milan, which granted formal tolerance of Christianity and all religions in the Roman Empire in 313, the kingdom of Axūm—being the closest power to the kingdom of Ḥimyar, and its biggest competitor in trade between the Roman Empire and India in the Far East—adopted Christianity as the state religion around 340, during the reign of King ʻAzānah II (320–360), though it had been under the influence of Judaism since its inception c. 100 ce. It was around this time that within the kingdom of Ḥimyar there began to emerge a trend to shun idolatry. In dedicatory inscriptions dating from the mid-4th century, inscribed in the Sabaean tongue and script, there appears for the first time an appeal unto the “God of Heaven” rather than unto gods of idolatry.
The relations with the kingdom of Axūm, which since the end of the 2nd century ce used to periodically invade the Tihāma, along the coast of the Red Sea in the western region of South Yemen, became more and more tense. After their complete eviction from the western territories of the kingdom of Ḥimyar c. 270, the Axūmites never ceased their attempts to regain control of these areas. This policy intensified after Christianity was adopted as the state religion in Axūm. In inscriptions written in the Ge‘ez language (the classical Ethiopian language) but deliberately in the Sabaean script, which was in use in the kingdom of Ḥimyar, ʻAzānah (the first Christian king in Axūm) openly declared his political and military accomplishments, while giving unto himself not only the title of the king of Axūm but also the king of Ḥimyar, Saba’, Dhū-Raydān, Tihāma, and Ḥaḍramawt—titles in which the kings of Ḥimyar had taken pride. This interfaith tension between the kingdom of Ḥimyar and the Christian world grew even worse with the division of the Roman Empire in 395 and the establishment of the Christian Eastern Empire, whose capital was Byzantium. From that time, the Byzantines worked in various ways to gain control over the lucrative incense trade, as well as the trade route to India. Since they were unsuccessful in conquering the Arabian Peninsula, except a few strategic positions in North Arabia, they tried to accomplish this by spreading Christianity in Arabia, just as they had done in Ethiopia.15 However, it was precisely around this time that the kingdom of Ḥimyar expanded its own areas of influence towards the western and central regions of the Arabian Peninsula, until at length its own dominion extended almost as far as half of the territory of the Peninsula.
In response to this activity of Ethiopia, which was not hidden from the eyes of the kings of Ḥimyar, Abūkarib Asʻad embarked on conquests in central Arabia. According to Arab tradition, when Abūkarib came on his leg of the journey to Yathrib, Jewish tribes in the city assisted him in his battle, and due to the influence of the city’s two Jewish sages, Kaʻb and Asʻad, he and his entire army adopted the Jewish religion. At his behest, the two sages accompanied him on his return trip to the capital city, Ẓafār. After being persuaded by way of a fiery ordeal, the people of Ḥimyar no longer resisted the king’s initiative and were pleased to convert to Judaism.
At the same time, owing to the work of missionaries sent to Arabia by the Byzantine kingdom and with the support of the kingdom of Axūm, Christian influence in South Arabia flourished. It would appear that, because of this, the Ḥimyarite government began to deal severely with the Christians, although more likely for political rather than religious reasons. This is based on the writer of the known Christian source, entitled Martyrium d’Azqīr. The writer, a missionary named Azqīr who worked and built a church in Najrān in the third quarter of the 5th century ce, during the reign of king Shuriḥbi’il Yakkuf (465–485), was delivered into the hands of Jewish merchants travelling by caravan and brought to trial before the king in Ẓafār. According to Martyrium d’Azqīr, Jewish rabbis were involved in the trial. Azqīr was sentenced to die, along with another thirty-eight Christians, including priests, celibates, and bishops.16
Not long afterwards, two Byzantine merchants were executed in Ḥimyar; based on Christian sources it was done as revenge for the killing of Jews by the rulers in Christendom. Although towards the end of the 5th century the majority of the Arabian Peninsula had been subjugated to the kingdom of Ḥimyar, the kingdom of Axūm conquered it and set up kings on its behalf and even established churches in Ẓafār. It is not surprising then that from the reign of Marthad’ilān Yanūf (c. 500–515) and the Christian, Maʻdikarib Yaʻfur (519–522), one doesn’t find any Jewish inscriptions in Ḥimyar. Moreover, it seems that in the time of Maʻdikarib Yaʻfur a military alliance was made between Ḥimyar and Byzantium, such that when he went forth to war against the city of Kutha in Mesopotamia, allies of Byzantium stood beside him.
With the death of Maʻdikarib Yaʻfur in 522, Yūsuf As’ār Yath’ar rose to power (he is known also by the appellation Joseph Dhū Nuwās, namely, the one with the curls), even though several years beforehand he had already tried to overthrow the Christian potentate in his capital, Ẓafār.17 Starting in 523, Dhū Nuwās began working vigorously for the restoration of Judaism as the state religion by removing the Christian churches in Ẓafār, in Makhāwān (Mocha), and in other places, or by turning them into synagogues and by forcing Judaism upon the Christians. Hundreds of Christians met their death in Najrān and Ẓafār. Dhū Nuwās, who wanted to make an alliance with the kingdom of Persia, sent a special envoy to the political conference held in 524 in Ramlah, in the principality of Ḥīrah, in order to make known his exploits against the Christians. Likewise, he sought to mobilize the Jews in the Land of Israel (at that time under Byzantine rule) to join a Ḥimyarite, Persian, and Jewish coalition against Christian Byzantium and its ally, the kingdom of Axūm.
The Decline of the Kingdom of Ḥimyar, 525–530 ce
News of Dhū Nuwās’s actions against the Christians in his country quickly spread and stirred up great wrath among Christians outside of Yemen, as related in a detailed account written by Simeon of Beth Arsham, who was present at the Ramlah conference, and with him, Abramius, the representative of Byzantine emperor Justin. Indeed, the reaction was swift. The Ethiopian Negus, Kālēb Ellā Aṣbaḥā, went forth in an all-out war against Dhū Nuwās in the name of all Christians in the world. The two armies met near the Strait of Bāb al-Mandab, where Dhū Nuwās expected the Ethiopian fleet. Dhū Nuwās’s army was completely crushed, while he himself was killed in battle, either in 525 or 530 ce. In any event, Ellā Aṣbaḥā quickly took control of the entire country and in 531, he made Sumuyāfaʻ Ashwaʻ, one of the local inhabitants, the king of Ḥimyar. Churches were rebuilt in Ẓafār and in other places, while Christianity spread in the country.18
In 531, Abraha the Ethiopian, who commanded the army of Axūm during the conquest of Ḥimyar, deposed Sumuyāfaʻ Ashwaʻ and declared himself the independent ruler. The various attempts by Ellā Aṣbaḥā to remove the recalcitrant military commander were of no avail. As a devout Christian, Abraha worked for the disposal of Judaism and what remained of idolatry in Ḥimyar and became known, inter alia, for the grand church that he built in Ṣanʻā’, where he established his capital. He also worked to obtain economic prosperity for the country by, for example, renovating the great dam in Ma’rib, which had been cracked in the mid-5th century and had seriously set back local agriculture ever since. As someone who saw himself as the heir of the great kings of Ḥimyar, he took upon himself the title, “the king of Saba’, Dhū-Raydān, Ḥaḍramawt and Yamnat, and their Arab tribes in the mountains and in the plain,” and went as far as central Arabia in his journeys of conquest.19 A few years after his death c. 565, a pro-Persian faction conquered the country. Persian armies under the command of Wahrīz, who was sent to Ḥimyar, assisted Sayf Dhū-Yazan—who, according to tradition, was the grandson of Joseph Dhū Nuwās—in evicting the Axūmites from the country. By many accounts, Yemen turned into a vassal state of the Persian Empire, until it was conquered again by the Muslim armies of Muḥammad in 529 ce.
In this manner, Yemen became part of the northern Arab-Islamic world in terms of its political, linguistic, religious, and social orientation, while losing almost completely its ancient Sabaean-Ḥimyarite legacy. Relics of its past history remain, carved upon rock and upon wooden rolls, exposed and deciphered by researchers since the early 20th century. These make up a reliable source for reconstructing its history and culture.
Archaeological Research
Until the middle of the 19th century, knowledge concerning ancient South Arabia was based either on partial or unreliable sources, such as biblical texts, inscriptions written in ancient Semitic languages composed outside of South Arabia, and especially oral traditions preserved and documented in medieval historical and geographical books composed by the Arabians. Throughout the second half of the 19th century, European scholars who arrived in Yemen during the period of Ottoman control, of whom the most well known are Joseph Halévy and Eduard Glaser, copied many Sabaean inscriptions that completely altered knowledge on South Arabia. Following Yemen’s reinstatement of the Zaydi dynasty, at the end of the First World War, the act of unveiling ancient inscriptions came to an end in that country, and work was not renewed until after the Republican Revolution in Yemen in 1962. Since then, dozens of European scholars have visited Yemen and have uncovered thousands of inscriptions in the different South-Arabic languages, by which the research on South Arabia has taken a giant leap.20 Most of the inscriptions are dedications to the gods. However, they contain invaluable information not only on politics and religion but on almost all facets of life, including family life and the social status of women.21 Another revolution in social research related to South Arabia occurred when old inscribed South Arabian sticks and palm-leaf stalks began to arrive in the academic centers in Europe—first Leiden, and afterwards other places. These sticks and palm-leaf stalks were used for writing in the pre-Islamic period.22 In recent years, there was established at the University of Pisa, under the guidance of Alessandra Avanzini, a large digital database, the Corpus of South Arabian Inscriptions (CSAI), which includes some 7,500 inscriptions from South Arabia, nearly half of those that have been discovered in South Arabia.
Primary Texts
- Philostorgius. Kirchengeschichte. Edited by Joseph Bidez and Friedhelm Winkelmann. Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, 1972.
Links to Digital Materials
Bibliography
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- Bowersock, G. W. “The New Greek Inscription from South Yemen.” In Qāni’, le port antique du Ḥaḍramawt entre la Méditerranée, l’Afrique et l’Inde. Edited by J. F. Salles and A. Sedov, 393–396. Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols, 2010. A slightly modified version of the article can be found in J. S. Langdon, ed. To Ellenikon: Studies in Honor of Speros Vryonis, Jr., vol. 1, pp. 3–8. New Rochelle, NY: A. D. Caratzas, 1993.
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- Gorea, Maria. “Les classes sacerdotales (mišmarôt) de l’inscription juive de Bayt Ḥāḍir (Yémen).” In Le Judaïsme de l’Arabie Antique. Edited by Christian Julien Robin, 297–329. Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols, 2015.
- Korotayev, Andrey V. Pre-Islamic Yemen Socio-Political Organization of the Sabean Cultural Area in the 2nd and 3rd Centuries AD. Wiesbaden, Germany: Harrassowitz, 1996.
- de Maigret, Alessandro. “La route caravanière de l’encens dans l’Arabie préislamique.” Chroniques yéménites, 11, 2003.
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- Robin, Christian. “Nagrān vers l’époque du massacre: notes sur l’histoire politique, économique et institutionnelle et sur l’introduction du christianisme (avec un reéxamen du Martyre d’Aazkir.” In Juifs et chrétiens en Arabie ve et vie siècles: regards croisés sur les sources. Edited by Joëlle Beaucamp, Françoise Briquel-Chatonnet, and Christian Robin, 39–106. Paris: Association des amis du Centre d’histoire et civilisation de Byzance, 2010.
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- Ryckmans, Jacques. “On Some Problems of South Arabian Epigraphy and Archaeology.” Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 14.1 (1952): 1–10.
- Ryckmans, Jacques. “Inscribed Old South Arabian Sticks and Palm-leaf Stalks: An Introduction and a Palaeographical Approach.” Proceedings of the Seminar for Arabian Studies 23 (1993): 127–140.
- Salles, J. F., and A. Sedov, éds. Qāni’: Le port antique de Ḥaḍramawt entre la Méditerannée, l’Afrique et L’Inde, Fouilles Russes 1972, 1985–89, 1991, 1993–94. Lyon: Brepole, 2010.
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- Yule, Paul. “Ẓafār, Capital of Ḥimyar, Ibb Province, Yemen.” ABADY 11 (2007): 477–548.
Notes
1. Andrey V. Korotayev, Pre-Islamic Yemen Socio-Political Organization of the Sabean Cultural Area in the 2nd and 3rd Centuries AD (Wiesbaden, Germany: Harrassowitz, 1996).
2. Alessandro de Maigret, “La route caravanière de l’encens dans l’Arabie préislamique.” Chroniques yéménites [Online], 11, 2003.
3. J. F. Salles and A. Sedov, eds., Qāni’: Le port antique de Ḥaḍramawt entre la Méditerannée, l’Afrique et L’Inde, Fouilles Russes 1972, 1985–89, 1991, 1993–94 (Lyon: Brepole, 2010); and G. W. Bowersock, “The New Greek Inscription from South Yemen,” in Qāni’, le port antique du Ḥaḍramawt entre la Méditerranée, l’Afrique et l’Inde, eds. J. F. Salles and A. Sedov (Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols, 2010), 393–396.
4. M.‛A. Bāfaqīh, L’unification du Yémen antique: La lutte entre Saba’, Himyar et le Hadramawt de Ier au IIIème siècle de l’ère chrétienne (Paris: Bibliothèque de Raydān 1, 1990).
5. Christian Robin, “Le roi ḥimyarite Tha’ran Yuhan‘im (avant 325–v. 375): stabilization politique et reforme religieuse,” Jerusalem Studies in Arabic and Islam 41 (2014): 1–96.
6. Christian Robin, “Quel Judaïsme en Arabie,” in Le Judaïsme de l’Arabie Antique, ed. Christian Robin (Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols, 2015), 124.
7. Robin, “Quel Judaïsme en Arabie,” 123.
8. Robin, “Quel Judaïsme en Arabie,” 175.
9. Iwona Gajda, Le royaume de Ḥimyar à l’époque monothéiste (Paris: Mémoires de l’Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres), 2009.
10. Joseph Patrich, “Bět kěneset yěhūdĭ qādūm bě-‘īr ha-nāmāl qāni’ śe-bě-tēmān,” Qadmōniyyōt 142 (2011): 102–106; Yosef Yuval Tobi, “The Jewish Community in Ḥāṣī, South Yemen, in the Light of Its Makrab Ṣūrī’el and Cemetery,” in Le Judaïsme de l’Arabie Antique, ed. Christian Robin (Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols, 2015), 373–385. See also Maria Gorea, “Les classes sacerdotales (mišmarôt) de l’inscription juive de Bayt Ḥāḍir (Yémen),” in Le Judaïsme de l’Arabie Antique, 297–329.
11. Christian Robin, “Le Judaisme de Ḥimyar,” Arabia 1 (2003): 103–104.
12. Christian Robin, “Le Judaisme de Ḥimyar.”
13. Robin, “Quel Judaïsme en Arabie,” 207–210.
14. G. W. Bowersock, The Throne of Adulis: Red Sea Wars on the Eve of Islam (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013).
15. Irfan Shahid, Byzantium and the Arabs in the Sixth Century, vol. I, Part 1: Political and Military History; Part 2: Ecclesiastical History (Washingon, DC: Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, 1995).
16. Christian Robin, “Nagrān vers l’époque du massacre: notes sur l’histoire politique, économoque et institutionnelle et sur l’introduction du christianisme (avec un reéxamen du Martyre d’Aazkir),” in Juifs et chrétiens en Arabie ve et vie siècles: regards croisés sur les sources, eds. Joëlle Beaucamp, Françoise Briquel-Chatonnet, and Christian Robin (Paris: Association des amis du Centre d’histoire et civilisation de Byzance, 2010), 39–106.
17. Paul Yule, “Ẓafār, Capital of Ḥimyar, Ibb Province, Yemen,” ABADY 11 (2007): 477–548; Paul Yule and Katharina Galor, “Ẓafār: Once a Centre of Jewish Life,” in Ben ‘Ever La-‘Arav 6, (a Collection of Studies Dedicated to Prof. Yosef Tobi on the Occasion of His Retirement, eds. Ali A. Hussein and Ayelet Oettinger (Haifa: University of Haifa, 2014), xxxv–lxxx.
18. Norbert Nebes, “The Martyrs of Najrān and the End of the Himyar: On the Political History of South Arabia in the Early Sixth Century,” in The Qurʾān in Context, eds. Angelika Neuwirth et al. (Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill, 2010), 25–60.
19. Christian Robin, “Abraha et la reconquête de l’Arabie déserte: un réexamen de l’inscription Ryckmans 506 = Murayghan 1,” Jerusalem Studies in Arabic and Islam 39 (2012): 1–93.
20. Jacques Ryckmans, “On Some Problems of South Arabian Epigraphy and Archaeology,” Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 14.1 (1952): 1–10; and Walter W. Müller, Sabäische Inschriften nach Ären datiert. Bibliographie, Texte und Glossar (Wiesbaden, Germany: Harrassowitz Verlag, 2010).
21. Mohammed Maraqten, “Women’s Inscriptions Recently Discovered by the AFSM at the Awam temple/Mahram Bilqïs in Marib, Yemen,” Proceedings of the Seminar for Arabian Studies 38 (2008): 231–250.
22. Jacques Ryckmans, Inscribed Old South Arabian Sticks and Palm-leaf Stalks: An Introduction and a Palaeographical Approach. Proceedings of the Seminar for Arabian Studies 23 (1993): 127–140; and Abraham J. Drewes and Jacques Ryckmans, Les inscriptions sudarabes sur bois dans la collection de l’Oosters Instituut conservées dans la bibliothèque universitaire de Leiden, eds. Peter Stein and Harry Stroomer (Wiesbaden, Germany: Harrassowitz Verlag, 2016).