A Late Antique Kingdom's Conversion: Jews and Sympathizers in South Arabia

This article delves into 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 in the Graeco-Roman world, as well as the henotheism of pre-Islamic North Arabia. I argue 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 reign of Ḥimyar, the cult of a single, institutionalized, and translocal deity provided a strong mechanism for establishing identities which were reshaped in a wider syncretistic framework through a socio-political exploitation of cults, as characteristic of the broader late antique world.