So much for the oft-repeated allegation that jews are basically of european or eastern european origin and are INVADERS in the middle east. Yemen was one of the first nations to be converted by Muhammad’s followers in the seventh century C.E., and it has been a Muslim country ever since—now known as a refuge for al-Qaida and a regular source of global terror alerts, like this week’s scare about liquid explosives that shut down U.S. embassies across the Middle East. However, 1,500 years ago Yemen was ruled by a dynasty of Jewish kings. Their kingdom, called Himyar, lasted for 150 years and profoundly changed the course of Arabian political and religious history. Himyar’s memory was preserved for centuries by only a few inscriptions and stray mentions in later chronicles known to just a handful of experts, most of whom doubted the extent of the kingdom’s Jewish affiliation. Recently, though, Himyar’s history has come into focus, thanks to new discoveries in epigraphy and archeology. Now a new book by G.W. Bowersock, The Throne of Adulis, is making these discoveries available in English for the first time and shedding new light on the complicated conflicts among Jews, Christians, and pagans that shaped the Middle East before the arrival of Islam.
Posted on: Fri, 09 Aug 2013 23:50:15 +0000
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