The Conversion of Himyarite King Marṯad b. ʿAbd Kulāl and the Book of Ifrīqīs – Another Story of Monotheism in pre-Islamic Arabia

This paper contains an analysis of the story about the conversion to monotheism of the pre-Islamic Arab ruler Marṯad Ḏū al-Aʿwād, as is reported in the narrative-historical work Nihāyat al-irab fī aḫbār al-Furs wa-l-ʿArab , (“The end of yearning for stories about Persians and Arabs”) ascribed to al-Aṣmaʿī (d. 829 ca). This story includes a quotation from a phantom text titled Kitāb Ifrīqīs b. Ibrāhīm (“The Book of Ifrīqīs son of Ibrāhīm”), which stimulated Marṯad’s conversion by the foreseeing of the coming of the Muslim Prophet Muḥammad. The analysis of this story is also an occasion to reconsider the Arab-Muslim perception of the Himyarite kingdom in the second half of 5th century and the beginning of the 6th in light of historical and epigraphical data.