Dhū Nuwās and the Martyrs of Najrān in Islamic Arabic Literature until 1400 AD

Lasse Løvlund Toft

doi:10.46586/er.13.2022.9461

Abstract

The last king of Ḥimyar, Yūsuf Asʾar Yathʾar (reign 522–525 AD), is famously known as the Jewish persecutor of the Christians of South Arabia, most notably the ones in Najrān, who were martyred in the autumn of 523 AD. In Islamic literature, the king was known as Dhū Nuwās and became associated with the aṣḥāb al-ukhdūd “the People of the Trench” mentioned in Q85:4–10. The article surveys the Islamic Arabic literature about Dhū Nuwās and the Martyrs of Najrān from its beginnings until the fifteenth century AD, and tries to establish literary relationships between the sources as well as literary typologies in the rich and overwhelming literature. Throughout the survey, attention is given to how different Muslim writers have dealt with the Pre-Islamic ‘Abrahamitic’ past of Arabia in forming the Islamic narrative of history.

Highlights

The last king of Ḥimyar, Yūsuf Asar Yathar, is famously known as the Jewish persecutor of the Christians of South Arabia, most notably the ones in Najrān, who were martyred in the autumn of 523 AD
In 522, the Ḥimyarite king Yūsuf Asar Yathar, later known as Dhū Nuwās in the Islamic tradition, initiated military campaigns against those Axumites who were in Yemen and their Ḥimyarite Christian allies who resided in his kingdom and beyond
From very early on in the development of Qurānic exegesis, the events of the persecution and massacre of the Christians of Najrān were associated with the enigmatic sentences in Q85:4– 10, here cited from Arberry’s translation: Slain were the Men of the Pit, the fire abounding in fuel, when they were seated over it and were themselves witnesses of what they did with the believers

Summary

Pioneered by Axel Moberg

Moberg (1925, 137–50); Moberg (1930); Hirschberg (1939–1949, 321–38); Binggeli (2007, 173–74); Sizgorich (2010, 125–47); La Spisa (2010, 234–36); La Spisa (2017, 318–40). The passage is included in a list of kings with the heading “Kings of Yemen,” the sequence of the royal correspondence agrees with Kitāb al-tījān and Ibn Qutayba, and the duration of Dhū Nuwās’ reign is given as 68 years in agreement with Ibn Qutayba This harmonization of sources is probably whyAbd Allāh is presented as a missionary who ‘had come to Yemen,’ as is the case with the missionary from the house of Jafna, instead of a native Najrānī boy, as in Ibn Isḥāq. This theme of a civil strife in Najrān between Jews and Christians is echoed in a tradition in al-Ṭabarī’s exegetical work Jāmial-bayānan tawīl al-Qurān (XXX, 132): “Bashar related from Yazīd from Saīd on authority of Qatāda thatAlī ibn Abī Ṭālib [...] was saying: ‘They (the people of the Trench) were people in the towns of Yemen, whose believers and unbelievers were fighting with each other (iqtatala). Ibn al-Athīr (d. 1233) transmits this version of the story on authority of IbnAbbās.115

Conclusions

23. Wiesbaden