The land of Arabia might at first seem an unlikely home for world conquerors, since huge distances and vast desert expanses had kept it divided into petty kingdoms, ephemeral chiefdoms, and isolated oasis communities for centuries, but this began to change around the year ad 300. The kingdom of Himyar, based in southwest Yemen, managed to subjugate the various principalities around it to become the dominant force in South Arabia. Its leaders made two rather dramatic policy decisions. First, they broke with the past by rejecting the old pagan gods and converting to monotheism: no pagan inscriptions have been discovered that postdate 380, bringing to an abrupt
MAP 2.1 The Arabian Peninsula.
End a 1,300-year-old tradition of polytheism, among the ruling elite at least. Judaism seems to have been the preferred variety of monotheism, though some favored Christianity, especially those with close links to Christian Ethiopia on the other side of the Red Sea. Second, they used the combined resources of their realm to expand northward and succeeded in bringing under their sway many of the Arab tribes of central and north Arabia. Some they chastened by conquest, as is reported in triumphal terms in a number of royal inscriptions, but many they wooed with subsidies and titles. A fifth-century chief of the tribe of Kinda won just such an accolade for the loyal military support that he gave to Himyar and he proudly celebrated this honor by having his name etched on a rock, in the south Arabian alphabet, together with the title “King of Kinda.” He and his descendants became so powerful that they attracted the attention of Byzantium and Persia, who vied with each other to draw them over to their side.2
The ascendancy of the Himyarite monarchy was, however, challenged by the Christian Ethiopian kingdom, which invaded Yemen on the pretext of defending the Christians of that land against the oppression of the ruling clan of the Himyarites, who were mostly Jews. It achieved a resounding victory in this venture and this ushered in nearly half a century of Ethiopian tutelage over Arabia (ca. 525—72). Much of this period was dominated by one particular Ethiopian general, named Abraha (ca. 535—65), who strove to present himself in the manner of a Himyarite king (Figure 2.1), adopting all the old royal titulature and writing official statements in the local prestige language. He also maintained, and even extended, south Arabian domination over the lands to the north, as is recorded in a number of inscriptions that boast at length about his victories. In the latest text, from the 550s, he tells us that he now controlled towns right across Arabia, including Medina (ancient Yathrib), and had driven the prince of the tribe of Lakhm back to his camp at Hira in southwest Iraq. The most famous text, which commemorates the repair of the dam of Marib (Figure 2.2) and the consecration of a church in the same city in 548, suggests that he had genuine political clout, for it records how envoys from Ethiopia, Byzantium, Persia, and three Arab vassal states had arrived to pay their respects.
Abraha's kingdom of Arabia did not endure long, however. The sons were not able to sustain their father's triumphs and ruled no more than a few short years. A local Himyarite prince came to power with Persian support, but when he was killed by disgruntled Ethiopians, the Persians decided to impose direct rule. This occurred sometime in the early 570s and heralded the end of the south Arabian civilization that had flourished for more than a millennium and a half. Presumably the half century of Ethiopian domination followed by
FIGURE 2.1 Stone relief from Zafar, capital of Himyar in Yemen, depicting a Himyarite king with crown and staff; ca. fifth-sixth century ad. © Paul Yule.
Another half century of Persian rule had a deleterious effect on the ancient culture, for, though Yemen was a major supplier of troops to the Arab armies, very little of its long tradition of literature and history became a part of the Islamic worldview beyond the haziest of recollections.3 Not long after the Persians took charge of south Arabia, in 582, the Byzantine emperor Maurice cast off the tribe of Ghassan as an imperial ally and exiled its chief. For a couple of decades this left the field open to the tribe of Lakhm, based in southern Iraq. Its chief endeavored to exert his authority as far afield as west Arabia and he evidently achieved some success, for east Christian sources describe him as “king of all the Arabs in the Persian and Byzantine empires.”4 However, his conversion from paganism to Christianity in 594 made him suspect to his Persian masters, especially when the emperor Khusrau sought to launch an all-out war against Byzantium, and so he had the Lakhmid chief poisoned and appointed a Persian official to keep the Arabs in check. The Persian Empire
FIGURE 2.2 Dam of Marib, capital of Saba/Sheba in Yemen, northern sluice system. © American Foundation for the Study of Man.
Now claimed the whole of Arabia, but it is unlikely that they were in full control of anything more than the southwestern tip and the eastern coast, and even this might have been fairly tenuous, given how much of Persia's military resources were tied up with its war against Byzantium.
Unfortunately, our contemporary sources offer almost no information at all on Arabia in these crucial decades. Later Muslim writers suggest that in the absence of any political direction from neighboring states a number of local leaders stepped in to fill the vacuum. Since the usual structures of political authority had broken down, these leaders were not from the ranks of the traditional holders of power; rather they claimed authority on religious grounds, arguing that they had been called by God to govern their people. None invoked pagan deities but presented themselves as monotheist leader-prophets,5 presumably influenced in different ways by the various versions of Christianity and Judaism that were by this time fairly well established in Arabia. Not surprisingly, it is one particular leader-prophet that we hear most about in later Muslim sources, namely, Muhammad, who was based in the central west Arabian settlement of Mecca. He was of little consequence to the outside world until after his death, and so we have no contemporary external sources to elucidate his life; if we are to escape the sacralizing tendencies of later Muslim writers, we are therefore obliged to rely on what we can infer from his religious teachings enshrined in the Qur’an. These tell us that Muhammad sought to persuade his countrymen to adhere to the pure monotheism that had been established by Abraham, who was, he claimed, their ancestor. He initially attempted to spread his message solely by preaching, but he received a hostile reception from most of his fellow Meccans and had to make a journey in search of refuge (a hijra), ending up in the nearby oasis town of Medina. The time of peaceful preaching was over now, he decided, and it was time to use force to carry out what he perceived to be God’s will. He drew up an agreement with a number of groups in Medina to create a single community (umma) dedicated to “fighting in God’s path” (jihad fi sabil Allah), that is, in His cause, against His pagan enemies. All who promised to be faithful to the agreement were obligated to contribute to the war effort and to support the other members of the umma above anyone else.
After founding this polity at Medina in 622, Muhammad launched a number of raids against neighboring tribes and settlements with the aim of recruiting them to his mission. He also kept trying to win over the Meccans and he finally realized this objective by a mixture of warfare and diplomacy in 628. He sealed the deal by marrying the daughter of Abu Sufyan ibn Harb, who was one of the most powerful men of Muhammad’s tribe, namely Quraysh. After cementing the alliance between the Meccans and Medinans, Muhammad went on to bring a third town into their coalition: the fertile oasis of Ta’if, which was dominated by the tribe of Thaqif. This was achieved in 630 and together the three towns and their allied tribes made a formidable fighting force. It is difficult to be sure what Muhammad’s intentions were at this point. Later Muslim authors and, following them, modern historians assume that he was bent on world domination from the beginning, but it is inherently unlikely that he expected to spread his message so far from the outset. Certainly the Qur’an suggests that he had more local objectives: God wanted him to “warn the mother of towns [assumed to be Mecca] and those who live around it” (42:7; cf. 6:92), and He gave him “an Arabic Qur’an” (12:2 and 43:3) in accordance with the general principle that He “has only ever sent a messenger with a message in the language of his own people so that he makes it clear for them” (14:4). Muhammad’s target audience, then, was, initially at least, the Arabic speakers of his own region. He was aware, though, of the wider world: his followers originally prayed facing Jerusalem and he knew that this was the world’s first monotheist sanctuary, and it may be that, having attracted many fighters to his cause, he now aimed to capture this cherished prize.6 Whether true or not, Muhammad’s west Arabian coalition did direct their efforts northward. They had already subjugated the nearby oases of Fadak and Khaybar in 628, but now they went much farther to the north, challenging the Byzantine Empire directly.
While Muhammad led this expedition to the north in 630, delegations were sent to other parts of Arabia inviting them to join forces with Muhammad. Medieval Muslim authors, in part wishing to play up the achievements of their prophet and in part striving to systematize their source material, claimed that these delegations succeeded, whether by diplomatic or military means, in winning all of the Arabian Peninsula to Muhammad’s rule by the time of his death in June 632, but that subsequently many of its tribes apostatized and seceded and had to be coerced to return to the fold by Muhammad’s successor, Abu Bakr. This rebellion of the Arabian tribes (Arabic: ridda), required at least a year (632—33) to quash, they say, and only then could the Arab conquests (Arabic: futuh) commence, in the twelfth year of Muhammad’s community (633—34). One could imagine that the tribes of southwest Arabia had begun to join the new movement already in Muhammad’s lifetime, especially when they saw how successful it was. But east Arabia is separated from the west by vast inhospitable deserts, including the aptly named Empty Quarter, and in any case, as we shall see further on, its tribes were already launching their own raids against Persia. It is more likely, then, that not that much of Arabia outside the western flank had been brought under the control of Muhammad’s forces by the time of his death. Abu Bakr’s task, therefore, was not to reconquer
Arabia, but simply to conquer it, or at least to win it over to the movement’s cause. Possibly he did not fully accomplish even this, for, according to a contemporary Armenian chronicle, only after the Arabs had invaded Syria and Iraq did “they then penetrate with royal armies into the original borders of the territory of Ishmael.”7
World History
