Shlomo Sand, The Invention of the Jewish People - Rafapal

196 THE INVENTION OF THE JEWISH PEOPLE
Dhu Nuwas's official name was Yusuf As'ar Yath'ar, and later Arabic traditions
also call him by the epithet "Masruk," probably meaning "long-haired."
He was famous for his flowing locks, and legends describe his heroic last battle
and how, riding his great white horse, he sank in the Red Sea. There is no doubt
about his Judaism, but it is not certain that he was of royal birth, nor exactly
when he ascended the throne. It was probably not much later than 518 CE, as
until that year the Himyarite capital was ruled by a viceroy, a protégé of the
Ethiopians, against whom Dhu Nuwas led a widespread revolt in the mountains.
He succeeded in capturing Zafar and consolidating his power over the
whole kingdom. The nobility supported him, and those who had not converted
to Judaism did so after his victory. One testimony states that Jewish sages came
from Tiberias to fortify the Mosaic faith when Dhu Nuwas was established on
the throne. 10
With Judaism again in power, the city of Najran, with its Christian
majority, rebelled again. The Himyarite king besieged it for a long time and
finally captured it. Numerous Christians perished in the battle, which served
Ela Asbeha, the king of Aksum, as a pretext to launch war against Jewish
Himyar. With the support and logistical assistance of the Byzantine Empire,
which provided the ships, Christian armies crossed the Red Sea, and in 525
Dhu Nuwas was defeated after a long, grim battle. The city of Zafar was
destroyed, fifty members of the ruling family were taken captive, and this
was the end of the Judaizing kingdom in the southern Arabian Peninsula. An
attempted rebellion, led by Sayf ibn Dhu Yazan, a descendant of Dhu Nuwas,
was crushed.
The Ethiopian-backed regime that succeeded the Jewish kingdom was of
course Christian, but in the 570s the region was conquered by the Persians. This
halted Himyar's complete Christianization, but the country did not become
Zoroastrian (this religion won few followers outside Persia). We know that the
Judaized community of Himyar persisted under the Ethiopian and the Persian
powers, because when the forces of Muhammad arrived in 629, the prophet
warned them in a letter not to force the local Christians and Jews to convert to
Islam. The type of tax imposed on the Jews reveals that many of them subsisted
on agriculture, but we have no way of estimating how many remained faithful
to their religion, or how many converted to the victorious religion. In all probability,
a good many of the Jews had earlier become Christian, and others
converted to Islam afterward. But, as noted earlier, a good many continued
10 See Hirschberg's article, "The Jewish Kingdom of Himyar," in Y. Yeshaiahu and Y.
Tobi (eds.), The Jews of Yemen: Studies and Researches, Jerusalem: Ben Zvi, 1975 (in Hebrew),
XXV.