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Abyssinians in Yemen
By Barnabas Yohannes
It has long been held that Muhammad was born in the
'Year of the Elephant', supposedly to have been either A.D. 570 or 571.
The 'Year of the Elephant' witnessed the assault on Mecca by the Abyssinians,
who came with elephants and were seemingly invincible. Abrahah or Abraham, the Abyssinian ruler of Yemen, was
seeking to destroy Mecca and its shrine, the Ka'bah,
which housed idols. A short surah (chapter) of the
Qur'an, titled the 'Surah of the Elephant', relates
that some kind of catastrophe befell the Abyssinians. Professor Hitti states that the Abyssinians were destroyed by an
epidemic of small-pox (See Hitti, History of the
Arabs, pp.152).
Long before Yemen was conquered by the Abyssinians,
Yemen had established close ties with Abyssinia, the kingdom occupying modern
Eritrea & Ethiopia. The Abyssinians later conquered Yemen from about
521 to 575, when they were defeated by the Persians. From Abyssinia,
Yemen learned Christianity.
This is what I found in some long forgotten and dust
covered books. In a place called Najran, the
people of Yemen used to worship a tall palm tree bowing down before it and used
to decorate their wives' jewelries to the tree. A Christian, named Foymigun, said to his master: “If I were to say a prayer to
God against this tree and if it were destroyed as a result of that, would you
recognize that your religion is false and my religion is true?” His master
agrees that he would. Then he gathered all the people of Najran together to witness the event. Fayman then went to his prayer room and asked God to
destroy the tree. So God sent a storm that tore it up by the root and threw it
flat on the ground. Thereupon, the people of Najran
adapted Christianity and his master encouraged them to follow the gospel until
they were over taken by the same fate that affected the Christians all over the
world during that time. That was how Christianity came to Najran, i.e., the Arab land.
It is narrated that Fayman
became so devout Christian he said prayers for the sick, the crippled, and the
disabled and they were healed.
When the Christians started to grow both in numbers
and prominence, this is the fate that affected them. As many Arab
writers, such as Ibn Ishaq,
relate the history, when the news of the increasing converts and widening in
influence of Christianity reached the king of Yemen, named Dhu
Nuwas, who was a Jew, he went to Najran
and ordered all its people that they must either convert to Judaism or be
killed. Upon their refusal to apostatize, the king dug a wide trench, set
it on fire and threw all the Christians one by one. If they tried to
escape from the fire, they were captured and killed by the sword.
According to the Ibn Ishaq,
20,000 of them perished in that manner.
This horrific event is also recorded in the Holy
Quran:
“In the Name of God, the Compassionate, the Merciful
By the star-bespangled Heaven!
By the promised Day!
By the witness and the witnessed!
Cursed the masters of the trench
Of the fuel-fed fire,
When they sat around it
Witnesses of what they inflicted on the believers!
Nor did they torment them but for their faith in God, the Mighty, the
Praiseworthy:
His the kingdom of the Heavens and of the Earth; and God is the witness
of everything.” --(Sura -The
Starry 85:5-9)
Out of all the Christians that were massacred in such ‘fuel-fed’ inferno, only
one person survived. His name was Daws Dhu Thalaban and he escaped on
his horse in the desert and could not be caught. He continued traveling
until he reached Caesar, the Roman emperor of Byzantium. Since the
emperor was a Christian, as he was, he told him what Dhu
Nuwas and his troops had done in Yemen and asked him
for aid. The emperor replied that Daws land was
very far, but that he would write a message to the King of Abyssinia who was
also a Christian, whose country was close to Yemen. The emperor wrote
such a message asking him to provide help and to seek revenge for Daws.
So, Daws took Caesar’s
letter to Negus (the king of Abyssinia). Negus replied and said that he
had enough troops but he needed a ship to cross the Red Sea. Caesar
supplied him with a ship and then Negus dispatched 70,000 troops with their
elephants from Abyssinia under the leadership of one of his deputy named Aryat, along with another sheriff named Abraham, al-Ashrem. The troops crossed over the Red Sea and
reached the shores of Yemen accompanied by Daws.
Dhu Nuwas came out to meet
them with his forces. When the Abyssinians and the Yemenis were engaged, Dha Nuwas and his men were
defeated. Dha Nuwas
immediately realized that disaster had fallen on himself and his people, so he
turned his horse to the Red Sea and beat it until it entered the water and took
him through the shallows and out to the depth of the sea where he
perished. The victorious Abyssinians entered Yemen and took control of it
which was common at those days.
At this point the historian, Ibn
Ishaq, records several poems by the Arabs detailing
these strange events. These poems are in fine, eloquent, vivid and
elegant in their own language, but we omit them here to avoid boring or wearing
the reader.
Ibn
Ishaq stated: “Aryat
remained in control of Yemen for some years, but Abraham challenged him and the
Abyssinian soldiers split into two sides. One side moved to attack the
other, but when the armies approached each other ready for the battle to begin,
Abraha sent a messenger to Aryat
suggesting that he was wrong to pit the Abyssinians against one another to the
ultimate damage of all, and, instead, they should meet alone in a battle; all
forces, then would be combined under the authority of the one victorious.
To this Aryat responded with agreement.
Abraham, a short, stocky man and a devout Christian,
then went out to fight Aryat, who was tall, handsome,
powerfully built, and bore a javelin. Behind Abraha
was a slave named Atwada protecting his rear. Aryat first struck out aiming at the top of Abraha’s head, but his javelin hit on the on the forehead
and slit his eyebrow, eye, nose, and lip; that was why he was known al-Ashram ( i.e., the cleft face in Arabic). Then Atwada advanced from behind and attacked and killed Aryat. The forces of Aryat
went to Abraha and all the Abyssinians in Yemen
became united under him. Abraha then paid the
relatives of Aryat for the blood of his
death.
When this news reached the Negus, he became furious
at Abraha, for he was attacked and killed his
commander without orders from him. Then the Negus swore an oath that he
would give Abraha no respite until he had trodden his
land and cut off his locks. So Abraha shaved
his head and filled a leather bag with Yemeni soil, which he sent to the Negus
with a message saying,
“O king, Aryat was merely
your slave as I am. We differ about your commands; everyone owes you
obedience. But I was stronger, more effective and more skillful than he
was in managing Abyssinian affairs. I’ve shaved my head completely when I
heard the king’s oath and have sent to him a bag of my countries soil, so that
he may tread it under his foot and so keep his oath.”
The message pleased the king when he receive it and
he sent him a message that Abraha should remain in
Yemen until further orders and see it was that Abraha
remained in Yemen.
Abraha
then built a magnificent church in Yemen and decorated it with fine jewelries
and beautiful paintings of saints. He invited all the Arabs to
come. Then one Arab who thought that the purpose of the church was to
compete with the Ka'bah in Mecca, crept in unnoticed
in the middle of the night and defecated there. Disgusted by this
action, Abraha decides to destroy Ka'bah
in order to revenge. When the Arabs heard that Abraha was approaching Mecca with all his troops and their
elephants (the tanks of those times), they sent an emissary and pleaded with
him not to destroy the Ka'bah. Abraha replied that his intention was not to fight with
them. His intention was only to destroy the Ka'bah.
The Arabs fearing for their lives fled to the nearby mountains. At that
time, a thick dust covered whirlwind carrying a lot of desert sand came from
the direction of the and turned the bright sunny day
light into an absolute darkness. Then there was a sudden outbreak of
smallpox disease. Few hours later, the Abyssinians started to get sick of
disease. Their fingers from their hands started to fall one by one.
Abraha and his troops retreated. Abraha’s fingers and limbs were also falling one by one
until he reached Yemen and died.
The Holy Quran relates what befell the Abyssinians
symbolically in the following words:
“In the Name of God, the Compassionate, the Merciful
Hast thou not seen how thy Lord dealt with the army of
the Elephant?
Did he not cause their stratagem to miscarry?
And he sent against them birds in flocks (ababils),
Clay stones did they hurl down upon them,
And he made them like stubble eaten down! “ -- (Sura - The Elephant 105)
These whole events took place from about the year
521 to 575. 575 was the year when the Abyssinians were defeated by the
Persians from Yemen. Today, if you go to some places in Yemen, you may
find some Geez writings there. That was the language that Abyssinians
used to teach the Yemenis Christianity. Just few years later, Islam came
by a storm and the Yemenis became Muslims.
We have seen how the Abyssinians failed to destroy
the Ka'bah. If we may believe traditions, it is very intriguing to read that
Mohammad has predicted that “a thin legged Abyssinian will demolish the Ka’bah.”
In Hadith, Bukhari Vol 2, as Narrated by Ibn Abbas, it is written that:
The Prophet said, "As if I were looking at him,
a
black person with thin legs plucking the stones of
the Ka'bah one after another. --(Book
26, Number 665:)
Also, as Narrated by Abu Huraira:
Allah's Apostle said, "Dhus-Suwa-iqatain
(the thin
legged man) from Abyssinia will demolish the
Ka'ba." --(Volume 2,
Book 26, Number 666:)
Salutations,
Barnabas A. Yohannes.
"So powerful is the light of unity that it can
illuminate the whole earth"
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