Holocaust In Yemen ..

From its introduction to Nadjrâne, the christianity had to undergo assaults of masters that reigned on the yémen ; they had probably to consider that the new religion brought in their States a ferment of disintegration, against which their threatened authority had necessarily to react. In Sanaa, Dhou-Nowâs , the restorer of the hymiarite magnitude , was converted to judaism, that he tempted to impose on his subjects. Following Ibn -al - Kalbi(102), the murder of two Jews, perpetrated by residents of Nadjrâne provides to Dhou-Nowâs the pretext that he waited to attack the city, that finishes by rendering, after a long siege, on the faith of an oath that lent Dhou-Nowâs to insure to residents the safe life and the integrity of their goods. But hardly was he in possession of the place, that the king divested them their wealth and gave them the choice between the judaism and the death. Nadjranites preferred the death. In the woodshed, lighted to the bottom of a long ditch ( okhdoud ) filled with combustible materials, Christians were precipitated. Others perished by the sword. The number of victims, according to Ibn-Ishâq(103), would have increased to twenty thousand persons, men, women and children. The terror that this act of cruelty inspired in Arabia, has reverberated later in the Koran (Sourat 85, 4-8)(104). It had to be the cause of the foreign intervention in the Yémen and to cost to Dhou-Nowâs the loss of his throne. With the instigation of the basileus, that provides it ships, an army of seventy thousand Abyssins, ordered by Aryât, beside of which was found already Abraha, the Axoumite of the chronic Muslims, crossed the Red Sea to 525 and conquit the Yémen. AT THE END OF a last battle that delivered his troops, Dhou-Nowâs, beat and desperate, pushed his horse in the sea and he drowns in. The hymiarite empire ended with him. Aryât, to insure his domination on the Yémen and Nadjrâne, made shave walls of cities and weigh on residents a regime of iron, that finishes by making them regret the time where the yémen was governed by princes of their race. Shaken by unceasing revolts of their subjects, the domination of Abyssins was elsewhere of courte duration. It is in this interval that places the attempt of the abyssin chief , Abraha al Achram, successor of Aryât, to conquer the territory of Mecca. A church, constructed in Sanaa, had to divert to its profit the great movement of pilgrimage, that attracted all years to the Black Stone Arabs of the Peninsula. To throw the discredit on this church, that risked to bankrupt its compatriots, a Mecquois soiled it with garbages, Abraha swore to destroy the Kaaba. The expedition that it directed, to the head of the elephant that it climbed, was stopped ahead the holy City; his army was knocked, according to authors, a rain of stones that carried in their beaks of Ababill birds (1O5). The Koran has preserved in its verses the echo of the indignation that raised Mecca against the abyssine threat (Sourate. 105, 1 and next.)(lO6).
*********************************************************
102. CAUSSIN OF PERCEVAL, op. cit., p. 128 and s. 103. IBN HISHAM, op. cit., t. I, p. 35. 104. For details, see. CAUSSIN OF PERCEVAL, t. I, p. 129 and next. ; M.MOBERG, The Book of Hymiarites, p. XXIV-LX111, where one will find the indication of sources, with an abundant bibliography; v. also, MAR EPHREM BARSAUM, Kitab ach -Chouhad? al-Himiariyine (The book of hymiarite martyrs ), pulled aside the Review of the Arabic Academy of Crowned, Crown, 1948; and, especially, JACQUES RYCKMANS, The persecution of hymiarte Christians to the 6th century, Istambul, 1956. A recent work brings new clearness: IRFAN SHAHID, The Martyrs of Nagrân. New documents, Brussels, 1971 (critics and additions of Walter W. Müller, in Oriens Christianus, t. 58, 1974, p.179 and next.) -to judgement of Of Lacy O'Ley , the motive of this persecution was that Christians of Nadjrâne appeared favorable to the influence of the Ethiopie, that Dhou - Nowas combatted bitterly and that Aréthas (al - Hareth), the sayyed (governor) of the city was an agent of the Négus (Arabia before Muhammad, p.145), what appears controuver the attitude taken by contemporary Koreichites, whose horror has been expressed by the Koran, despite the knowledge that they had that the intervention of Ethiopians had been provoked by atrocities whose Jewish monarch had rendered guilty, as well as tells it clearly Ibn I, p. 36); a very developed account is provided by IBN KATHIR, has Bidayat wanihayat (The beginnings and the ends), Cairo, 1932, t. II, p.129 and s. 105. The history of Abraha and the war of the Elephant ( Harb al File) had been related in detail by Ibn Ishâq (Ibn Hishâm, I, p.43 and s.). 106. TAHAHUSSEIN has made some, in his allaa Hamescha-el-Sira(In margin of the Sira), in the style that is personal to him, the moving account; in witch he coincided the event with the birth of the Prophet.