Throne of Adulis

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by Bowersock, G. W.




  THE THRONE OF ADULIS

  EMBLEMS OF ANTIQUITY

  Font of Life

  Ambrose, Augustine, and the Mystery of Baptism

  GARRY WILLS

  Medusa’s Gaze

  The Extraordinary Journey of the Tazza Farnese

  MARINA BELOZERSKAYA

  The Throne of Adulis

  Red Sea Wars on the Eve of Islam

  G. W. BOWERSOCK

  THE THRONE of ADULIS

  RED SEA WARS ON THE EVE OF ISLAM

  G. W. BOWERSOCK

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  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Bowersock, G. W. (Glen Warren), 1936–

  The Throne of Adulis : Red Sea wars on the eve of Islam / G. W. Bowersock.

  p. cm.—(Emblems of antiquity)

  Includes bibliographical references and index.

  ISBN 978-0-19-973932-5

  1. Himyar (Yemen)—History—6th century. 2. Jews—Yemen (Republic)—Himyar—History—

  6th century. 3. Arabian Peninsula—History—To 622. 4. Aksum (Kingdom)—History 6th century.

  5. Red Sea Region—History—6th century. 6. Judaism—Relations—Christianity—History—6th century. 7. Christianity and other religions—Judaism—History—6th century. I. Title.

  II. Series: Emblems of antiquity.

  DS231.B69 2013

  939.49—dc23 2012023593

  1 3 5 7 9 8 6 4 2

  Printed in the United States of America

  on acid-free paper

  Contents

  Maps and Illustrations

  Preface

  Abbreviations

  Timeline

  PROLOGUE

  Chapter One

  THE THRONE

  Chapter Two

  A CHRISTIAN TRAVELER IN THE RED SEA

  Chapter Three

  PTOLEMY’S ELEPHANTS

  Chapter Four

  THE KINGDOM OF AXUM

  Chapter Five

  CHRISTIANITY COMES TO AXUM

  Chapter Six

  JUDAISM COMES TO ḤIMYAR

  Chapter Seven

  THE ETHIOPIAN INVASION OF 525

  Chapter Eight

  ENTRY OF THE GREAT POWERS

  Chapter Nine

  RECKONING

  Appendix

  Notes

  Bibliography

  Index

  Maps and Illustrations

  Map 1. Late Antique East Africa, map based on William Y. Adams, Nubia. Corridor to Africa (Princeton, 1984), p. 384.

  Map 2. Late Antique Southwest Arabia, map based on I. Gajda, Le royaume de Ḥimyar à l’époque monothéiste (Paris, 2009), p. 139.

  Fig. 1. Drawing of the Adulis Throne in Ethiopia as given in three manuscripts of Cosmas Indicopleustes, from W. Wolska-Conus, Cosmas Indicopleustes, Topographie Chrétienne, Vol. 1, Sources chrétiennes no. 141 (Paris, 1968), p. 367. 13

  Fig. 2. Cosmas’ throne as imagined in DAE, p. 66. 19

  Fig. 3. RIE Vol. 1, no. 185 bis, text II face B, (Axum). Photo courtesy of Finbarr Barry Flood.

  Fig. 4. RIE Vol. 1, no. 185 bis, complete stele.

  Fig. 5. Gold coin of the Christian Axumite king Ousanas, fifth century AD.

  Fig. 6. Marco Polo’s reception by Kublai Khan atop four elephants, as shown in L. Oeconomos, Byzantion 20 (1950), 177–178 with plate 1.

  Fig. 7. CIH 541, RdA p. 90.

  Fig. 8. The Axum Stele. Photo courtesy of Werner Forman/Art Resource, NY.

  Preface

  The idea of a short book centered on the inscribed throne at Adulis first occurred to me over thirty years ago when I read an article that A. F. L. Beeston published in the Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 43 (1980), 453–458. His arresting title was “The Authorship of the Adulis Throne.” Because I had long recognized that anything from the pen of Freddy Beeston deserved careful attention, I read his article, which touched upon work that I was doing at the time on Roman Arabia, with particular interest. Some ten years before that, Freddy had attended a lecture I gave in Oxford on Roman policy in the Near East, and his conversation was then, as it always was, convivial, instructive, and memorable. We met again occasionally after that, but his work was never far from my desk. Freddy had rightly identified the inscription on the Adulis Throne as a still unsolved problem. Although he was not concerned with the other, and much earlier, inscription on the stele that lay beside the throne, his reflections on the throne text showed his legendary mastery of South Arabian language and epigraphy.

  Like most scholars today, I cannot accept the hypothesis that Freddy advanced, albeit with due caution, as an interpretation of the throne inscription, and at this late date there is no point in trying to engage with it or refute it. His notion that a Ḥimyarite king put up the throne and its inscription cannot now withstand the powerful evidence of the Ethiopic epigraphy at Axum or of the many other thrones for which traces survive. But Freddy saw clearly that the throne at Adulis, which first received widespread attention only when J. W. McCrindle published his English translation of Cosmas Indicopleustes in 1897, could be a fundamental document for understanding the complex wars and religious struggles that played out in the Red Sea area in the three or four centuries before Islam. Freddy’s article in 1980 was pathbreaking.

  When I published my Roman Arabia in 1983, the Jewish kingdom of converted Arabs in Ḥimyar had seemed to me perhaps the most extraordinary of all the nations of the late antique Near East. As this kingdom lay outside the territory of Roman Arabia, I had contemplated a complementary volume entitled Jewish Arabia, but at that time it seemed that such a title might bring more misunderstanding than enlightenment. The documentation then was considerably more exiguous than it is now. But with all that we have learned in recent years, the story of the Jews of Ḥimyar, in the context of their relations with Ethiopian Christians across the Red Sea, has become much more accessible. This is what I have attempted to explore by examining the manifold implications of the Adulis Throne from the Ptolemies to Muḥammad.

  I have had the good fortune of working with a former Princeton graduate student, George Hatke, who had similar
ly discovered, entirely on his own, the fascination of the Ḥimyarite–Ethiopian confrontation. I was delighted when he invited me to serve as a reader for his thesis, directed by my friend and colleague Michael Cook. Hatke successfully defended his work in November 2010, and I hope very much that the thesis will be published in the near future. It currently bears the title Africans in Arabia Felix: Aksumite Relations with Ḥimyar in the Sixth Century C.E. and will be an invaluable resource for scholars who wish to do further research on this topic.

  Finally, some of the issues I have raised in my final chapters in connection with the struggles between Ethiopia and South Arabia overlap the first of three lectures that I delivered in Jerusalem in April 2011 in memory of Menahem Stern. These lectures, Empires in Collision in Late Antiquity, carry forward the Byzantine–Persian conflict and the rise of Muḥammad into the seventh century. They examine the Persian capture of Jerusalem in 614 (second lecture) and the collapse of the Persian empire (third lecture). With my head full of this material, I responded with enthusiasm to Stefan Vranka’s imaginative idea for a series of volumes on emblematic objects or events in history by reviving the excitement I had felt long before in reading Freddy Beeston’s demonstration that the Adulis Throne evoked the whole complex world of Red Sea imperialism and religion. Hence I owe no less to Stefan than to Freddy for making this book happen. It will be obvious to any scholar in the field how much I owe to the pioneering work of Christian Julien Robin and his colleagues in Paris. The recent growth of South Arabian epigraphy, of which Robin is a master, has provided welcome confirmation of traditions and suppositions that have been discussed for centuries. As so often in the past, I am deeply indebted to Christopher Jones of Harvard, my friend and colleague of more than fifty years, for a critical reading of these pages.

  G. W. Bowersock

  Princeton, August 2012

  Abbreviations

  BSOAS

  Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies (London).

  BASOR

  Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research.

  CAC

  Catalogue of the Aksumite Coins in the British Museum, ed. Stuart Munro-Hay (London, 1999).

  CIH

  Corpus Inscriptionum Himyariticarum: Corpus Inscriptionum Semiticarum, Pars Quarta inscriptiones himyariticas et sabaeas continens.

  CRAI

  Comptes-Rendus de l’Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres (Paris).

  DAE

  Deutsche Aksum-Expedition (Berlin, 1913). Vol. 2, Daniel Krencker, Ältere Denkmäler Nordabessiniens. Vol. 4: Enno Littmann, Sabäische, griechische und altabessinische Inschriften.

  FGH

  Die Fragmente der griechischen Historiker (Jacoby).

  FHG

  Fragmenta Historicorum Graecorum, ed. C. Müller.

  FHN

  Fontes Historiae Nubiorum. Vol. 2: From the Mid-Fifth to the First Century BC, and Vol. 3: From the First to the Sixth Century AD, ed. Tormod Eide, Tomas Hägg, Richard Holton Pierce, László Török (Bergen, 1998).

  JRS

  Journal of Roman Studies.

  JSAI

  Jerusalem Studies in Arabic and Islam.

  MarAr

  Le martyre de Saint Aréthas et de ses compagnons (BHG 166), ed. Marina Detoraki with translation by Joëlle Beaucamp (Paris, 2007).

  RdA

  Routes d’Arabie. Archéologie et Histoire du Royaume d’Arabie Saoudite, ed. Ali Ibrahim Al-Ghabban et al., Catalogue de l’exposition au Louvre (Paris, 2010).

  RIE

  Recueil des Inscriptions de l’Éthiopie des périodes pré-axoumite et axoumite. Vol. 1. Les documents and Vol. 2 Les planches (Paris, 1991). Vol. 3 Traductions et commentaires. A. Les inscriptions grecques (Paris, 2000).

  SEG

  Supplementum Epigraphicum Graecum.

  TAPA

  Transactions of the American Philological Association.

  Timeline

  246–241 BC

  Third Syrian War of Ptolemy III Euergetes

  27 BC

  Foundation of the Roman Empire under Augustus

  All dates below are CE/AD.

  ca. 50

  Composition of the Periplus of the Red Sea

  ca. 200–270

  First Ethiopian occupation of Ḥimyar

  ca. 330–380

  Reign of Aezanas at Axum in Ethiopia

  ca. 340

  Conversion of Aezanas to Christianity

  ca. 380

  Conversion of Ḥimyar to Judaism

  ca. 450

  MḤDYS negus in Axum, imitator of Constantine

  ca. 470

  Martyrdom of Azqīr in Ḥimyar

  491–518

  Anastasius Emperor in Byzantium

  502

  Embassy of Euphrasius to Kinda

  518–527

  Justin Emperor in Byzantium

  ca. 517–533

  Kālēb (Ella Asbeha) negus in Axum

  522–525

  Yūsuf, Jewish king in Ḥimyar

  523

  Massacre of Christians at Najrān

  524

  Embassy of Abraham to Naṣrid al Mundhir and Conference of Ramla

  ca. 524

  Visit of Cosmas Indicopleustes to Adulis

  525

  Ethiopian Invasion of Arabia and death of Yūsuf

  527–565

  Justinian Emperor in Byzantium

  528

  Embassy of Abraham to Kinda

  530

  Embassy of Nonnosus to Kinda and Axum

  531

  Embassy of Abraham to Kinda

  ca. 527–565

  Ethopian Abraha King in Ḥimyar

  548

  Conference at Mārib

  ca. 549

  Cosmas writes the Christian Topography

  552

  Abraha’s campaign into northern Arabia

  ca. 565

  Sassanian Persians take control of Ḥimyar

  ca. 570

  Traditional date for the birth of Muḥammad

  602–610

  Phocas Emperor at Byzantium

  614

  Capture of Jerusalem by the Sassanian Persians

  622

  Hijra (migration) of Muḥammad from Mecca to Medina

  610–641

  Heraclius Emperor at Byzantium

  Map 1. Late Antique East Africa, map based on William Y. Adams, Nubia. Corridor to Africa (Princeton, 1984), p. 384.

  Map 2. Late Antique Southwest Arabia, map based on I. Gajda, Le royaume de Ḥimyar à l’époque monothéiste (Paris, 2009), p. 139.

  THE THRONE OF ADULIS

  PROLOGUE

  In the southwestern part of Arabia, known in antiquity as Ḥimyar and corresponding today approximately with Yemen, the local population converted to Judaism at some point in the late fourth century AD, and by about 425 a Jewish kingdom had already taken shape. After that for just over a century its kings ruled, with one significant interruption, over a religious state that was explicitly dedicated to the observance of Judaism and the persecution of its Christian population. The record has survived through many centuries in Arabic historical writings, as well as in Greek and Syriac accounts of martyred Christians. For a long time incredulous historians had been inclined to see little more than a local monotheism overlaid with language and features that had been borrowed from Jews who had settled in the area. It was only toward the end of the last century that enough inscribed stones turned up to prove definitively the veracity of these surprising accounts. We can now say that an entire nation of ethnic Arabs in southwestern Arabia had converted to Judaism and imposed it as the state religion.

  This bizarre but militant kingdom in Ḥimyar was eventually overthrown by an invasion of forces from Christian Ethiopia on the other side of the Red Sea. They set sail from East Africa, where they were joined by reinforcements from the Christian emperor in Constantinople. In the territory of Ḥimyar they engaged and destroyed the arm
ies of the Jewish king and finally brought an end to what was arguably the most improbable, yet portentous upheaval in the history of Arabia before Islam. Few scholars, apart from specialists in ancient South Arabia or early Christian Ethiopia, have been aware of these events, but a vigorous and talented team led by Christian Julien Robin in Paris has recently pioneered research on this Yemenite Jewish kingdom.

  No one can look at the kingdom of Jewish Arabia without constant reference to its neighbors—the Ethiopians at Axum in East Africa, the Byzantines in Constantinople, the Jews in Jerusalem, the Sassanian Persians in Mesopotamia, and the Arab sheikhs who controlled the great tribes of the desert. Soon after 523 all these powerful interests had to confront a savage pogrom that the Jewish king of the Arabs launched against the Christians in the city of Najrān. The king himself reported in excruciating detail to his Arab and Persian allies about the massacres he had inflicted on all Christians who refused to convert to Judaism. News of his infamous actions rapidly spread across the Middle East. A Christian who happened to be present at a meeting of an Arab sheikh at which the Jewish king reported on his persecution was horrified and immediately sent out letters to inform Christian communities elsewhere. When word of the pogrom reached Axum in Christian Ethiopia, the king who had his capital there seized the opportunity to rally his troops and cross the Red Sea in aid of the Arabian Christians.

 

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