The cautious conversion of the kings of Ḥimyar to monotheism in the fourth century CE was influenced by the beliefs of a local Jewish community. This chapter clarifies the relationship between South Arabian Jews and Jewish sympathizers and offers an interpretative framework for the monotheism of fourth- and fifth-century Ḥimyar, which contextualizes the choice of South Arabia’s elites to become Jewish sympathizers. The process of conversion to monotheism also shares features with the first stage of Christianity in Aksūm and the Graeco-Roman world, as well as the henotheism of pre-Islamic North Arabia. It argues that the Ḥimyarite kings’ cautious conversion follows a broad Late Antique trend which aimed to ease the transition for their subjects and/or to assume a neutral position towards the developments of the surrounding empires. In the brand-new kingdom of Ḥimyar, the cult of a single, institutionalized and translocal deity provided a strong mechanism for establishing identities that were reshaped in a wider syncretistic framework through a sociopolitical exploitation of cults characteristic of the broader late antique world.

This chapter aims to analyse the interactions between Jews and Christians in sixth-century South Arabia, offering some reflections on the broader Late Antique socio-economic and political map. The first part reconstructs the spread of Christianity in South Arabia and the events leading to the massacre of the Christians of Najrān in 523, presenting a comprehensive analysis of this period through a reading of literary and epigraphic material. It argues that economic reasons were the main motivations behind the negus’s invasion of South Arabia and that faith was exploited as a casus belli. Conversions tended to be the cumulative result of socio-economic networks and migrations, as the exchange of ideas followed that of resources. As such, the depiction of the massacre of Najrān as a ‘religious slaughter’ reflects more the ‘religious’ character of the available literary sources than the actual unfolding of the events. The second part of the chapter focuses on the Red Sea Christianities. It examines the religious allegiances of the Aksūmite negus Kālēb and the Ḥimyarite king Abraha, shedding light on the several stages involved in the Christianisation of these two regions and reconstructing the events that led to the collapse of Ḥimyar.