Najrān and the fall of Yūsuf Asʾar Yathʾar
The last king of Judaizing Ḥimyar burned the church at Ẓafār and besieged Christian Najrān. A year or two later an Aksumite army made an end of him and of the kingdom.
In June–July 523 the inscriptions Ry 508, Ry 507 and Ja 1028—the campaign reports of the generals of Yūsuf Asʾar Yathʾar—record the burning of the church at Ẓafār, operations against Ashʿarān and Mocha, the blockade of Bāb al-Mandab, and the siege of Najrān. Ja 1028 tallies: a thousand killed, fifteen hundred taken prisoner, ten thousand head of cattle.
What happened at Najrān is known from the Christian side too, and early: the letter of Simeon of Beth Arsham, written weeks after the events; the Syriac Book of the Ḥimyarites, whose sole manuscript was found in 1920 inside the binding boards of a codex of 1469–70; the Greek Martyrium Arethae, on al-Ḥārith ibn Kaʿb, leader of Najrān's Christians; and the Qurʾān, Sūrat al-Burūj 85:4–8, "the people of the pit"—the Islamic memory of the burning of the Najrānites.
Four corrections, all needed. "Dhū Nuwās" is not a name but a nickname supplied by later Arabic tradition; in the inscriptions the king is Yūsuf Asʾar Yathʾar, the Syriac sources call him Masrūq, the Arabic also Zurʿa. He did not convert Ḥimyar to Judaism: the dynastic turn to monotheism precedes him by five reigns, and the first monotheistic inscriptions are of 384. The date is disputed: the Syriac dating "15 Tishri, Seleucid year 835" gives November 524, while Robin's epigraphic chronology, now the majority position among South Arabianists, moves everything back a year—the inscriptions are dated Ḥimyarite era 633, that is June–July 523. The range should be printed: the massacre 523 or 524; the fall of Yūsuf 525 or 530. And "twenty thousand martyrs" is a topos: the five-figure numbers come from hagiography, whereas Ja 1028, the king's own party's report and itself a boast, speaks of a thousand killed.
And a fifth: the story of Dhū Nuwās riding his horse into the sea and drowning is Ibn Isḥāq, eighth century, two hundred years after the fact, with obvious literary shaping. Neither the inscriptions nor the Syriac sources say anything of the kind.
Around 525–530 the Aksumite army of King Kaleb took Ḥimyar, and Jewish and Judaizing rule ended.
How we know
Sources
Documents of the period
- Inscription Ja 1028, Ḥimyarite era 633 — the tally of killed and captured from the king's own side
- The letter of Simeon of Beth Arsham — the earliest Christian testimony, weeks afterwards
- The Book of the Ḥimyarites (Syriac) — the sole manuscript, found in the binding of a codex of 1469–70
Scholarship
- C. J. Robin, the epigraphic chronology of Ḥimyar — the one-year shift back against the Syriac reckoning
Basis: documents and evidence.