Early Jewish Diaspora Communities: Ḥimyar

The kingdom of Ḥimyar was located in the southern Arabian Peninsula, in what is today Yemen. Historically polytheistic, the kingdom adopted Judaism around 380 CE and remained Jewish until its conquest by the Ethiopian kingdom of Aksum in 529–530 CE. There were Jews in Ḥimyar and elsewhere in Arabia in more ancient times, probably at least as early as the first century CE, following the destruction of the Second Temple. But the earliest invocations to the Lord of Heaven (and Earth), an epithet of the Jewish God, in South Arabian inscriptions date to the first half of the fourth century CE. The archaeological and epigraphic evidence from Ḥimyar, largely attested through carved stone inscriptions, reveals conversion from polytheism to a kind of Judaism, apparently led by social and political elites, around 380 CE. References to other deities disappear, replaced by invocations of “God, Lord of the Heaven and the Earth,” “Lord of the Jews,” and Raḥmanān, a name related to the Hebrew raḥamân (“merciful”), a term applied to God in the Jewish Aramaic of the Byzantine period and in postbiblical Hebrew. Some authors of Ḥimyarite inscriptions identify themselves as Jews and as members of the community of Israel in place of prior local group identities.

Although the Ḥimyar inscriptions are written in Sabaic, a South Arabian alphabet and language used in the kingdom, one bears a Hebrew graffito at its center. Some Ḥimyarites also bore Hebrew names, such as Joseph (Yūsuf), the last Jewish king of Ḥimyar, who took power after the death of a Christian king seated on the throne by the Ethiopians. Joseph fought the Abyssinians (Ethiopians) in the kingdom—including in the capital, Tsafār—and the supporters of the Ḥimyarites killed Christians and burned Christian churches in several towns. This gave the king of Aksum a pretext to intervene, depose Joseph, conquer the country, and impose Christianity on Ḥimyar for a few decades, until Islam took its place.

The key feature of Ḥimyarite Judaism appears to have been Jewish or Judaizing monotheism. The inscriptions contain some Jewish iconography; four examples of menorahs and Torah shrines are known. An inscription (a gezērâ, a protection or prohibition measure) by a local lord allowing the foundation of a separate Jewish cemetery proves that the person who composed the text was familiar with Jewish religious law, as it contains several precise terms, loanwords from Hebrew or Jewish Aramaic. An inscription in Hebrew listing the names of the priestly families that served in the Jerusalem Temple (mishmārôt) shows an interest in preserving Jewish traditions; it is the only inscription of this type found outside Palestine, and the longest one. Several Ḥimyarite inscriptions also mention a place of worship called a mikrāb, probably the word for synagogue in the Sabaic language. These buildings seem to have had a function similar to the synagogues of other Jewish communities.

Contacts between Ḥimyar and Palestinian Jewry are further evidenced by Aramaisms in Ḥimyaritic inscriptions; a bilingual funeral inscription of Leah, daughter of Judah (in Sabaic and Hebrew/Aramaic); and a Hebrew inscription on a grave “of the Ḥimyarites” in the Jewish necropolis at Beth Shearim (see Beth Shearim).