Himyarite Kingdom

Himyar was a kingdom in the highlands of what is now Yemen, which by the late third century CE had united most of southern Arabia under its rule. Its kings, who ruled from Zafar, south of Sanaa, became the last great power of pre-Islamic South Arabia and were drawn into the rivalries of Rome, Persia and Aksum.

Southern Arabia was known to the Greeks and Romans as Arabia Felix, "fortunate Arabia", for its monsoon rains, its terraced farms and its wealth from frankincense and myrrh, aromatic resins burned in temples across the Mediterranean and the Near East. For a thousand years, the region was divided among kingdoms such as Saba, the biblical Sheba, famous for the great Marib dam; Qataban; Hadramawt, where frankincense grew; and Ma'in. They wrote in the South Arabian alphabet, known as musnad, on stone inscriptions.

The Himyarites emerged in the late second century BCE, around 110 BCE, in the highlands south of Saba, with their capital at Zafar. They competed with Saba for centuries. Around 25 BCE, a Roman expedition under Aelius Gallus failed to conquer the region. By about 280 CE, Himyar had annexed Saba, and around 300 King Shammar Yuhar'ish conquered Hadramawt, uniting southern Arabia. His successors took the title "King of Saba, Dhu Raydan, Hadramawt and Yamnat". Under kings such as Abu Karib As'ad, in the fifth century, Himyar extended its influence over the tribes of central Arabia.

Around 380 CE, the Himyarite kings abandoned the old gods, such as Almaqah, the Sabaean moon god, for monotheism. Inscriptions refer to one god, Rahmanan, "the Merciful", the "Lord of heaven and earth". Many in the ruling class adopted Judaism, and Jewish communities lived in Yemen, while Christianity spread through missionaries and trade, especially at Najran, an important Christian centre.

In the early sixth century, Yusuf As'ar Yath'ar, known in Arabic tradition as Dhu Nuwas, a convert to Judaism, seized power. Around 523, he attacked Aksumite garrisons and Christians, and besieged Najran, where many Christians were killed. The massacre became famous in Christian sources, and is often linked to a passage in the Quran about the "people of the ditch".

The Byzantine emperor Justin I encouraged the Christian king of Aksum, Kaleb, to intervene. Around 525, Kaleb invaded with a large army, defeated and killed Dhu Nuwas and installed a Christian Himyarite king. Soon after, Abraha, an Aksumite general, seized power and ruled Yemen independently. He repaired the Marib dam and built a great church at Sanaa. According to Islamic tradition, in the "Year of the Elephant", around 570, Abraha led an army with elephants against Mecca and was miraculously defeated, the year traditionally given for Muhammad's birth.

Around 570, a Himyarite prince, Sayf ibn Dhi Yazan, asked the Sasanian king Khosrow I for help against the Aksumites. A Persian force drove out the Aksumites, and Yemen became a Sasanian province. In 628, the Persian governor, Badhan, accepted Islam, and Yemen joined the Islamic state. The breaking of the Marib dam, mentioned in the Quran, came to symbolise the end of the old South Arabian civilisation, and Yemeni tribes migrated across Arabia.

Our maps show the Himyarite Kingdom on every map from 1 BCE to 500 CE. Its largest outline, about 470,000 square kilometres on the 1 BCE map, is just over half in today's Yemen and the rest in Saudi Arabia. The basemap places Mecca inside it, a much wider reach into the Arabian interior than Himyar's direct rule. Before it, the region is shown as Saba; by 600, as a Sasanian dependency.