Religions of Ancient South Arabia From Polytheism to Monotheism in the Context of Political, Economic and Social Evolutions (Fourth–Sixth Centuries ce )

ABSTRACT The religions of South Arabia underwent major changes between the fourth and early seventh centuries. At the beginning of the fourth century, all the territories of ancient South Arabia were unified: the Ḥimyarite kings succeeded in unifying three ancient kingdoms, Ḥimyar, Sabaʾ and Ḥaḍramawt. A common language, the Sabaic, and a common era were adopted. As far as religion was concerned, the unity was more difficult to achieve. The Ḥimyarite kingdom did not have a strong centralized cult; the main gods of the Ḥimyarites were rarely mentioned and the various tribes, who had previously belonged to other kingdoms, worshipped a variety of gods. This is probably why the Ḥimyarites did not try to impose their own religion on the annexed territories. Rather, they preferred to preserve the worship of the main Sabaean god, Almaqah, in Mārib. Subsequently, as religious developments progressed in South Arabia, Jewish and Christian communities settled there and some inhabitants converted to Judaism. In the second half of the fourth century, the Ḥimyarite kings converted to Judaism, probably rather superficially, the majority of the population followed and the ancestral polytheistic cults were abandoned. From the late fourth to the sixth century, the dominant religion of the Ḥimyarite kingdom was a kind of Judaism or Judaizing monotheism, with Jewish communities living among the rather superficially Judaized population. Christians were present as well in merchant cities, but their presence is not documented in the local sources before the sixth century. In the sixth century, violent conflicts opposed Ḥimyarites and Ethiopians and also Jews and Christians; finally, Ethiopians conquered the kingdom of Ḥimyar and imposed Christianity as the official religion. These religious transformations are studied in context of political, economic and social evolutions, with the help of various sources, mainly South Arabian Pre‐Islamic inscriptions, but also Arab Islamic tradition and Roman and Byzantine sources.