L’Osservatore Romano

(by Roberto Cetera)

To anyone who attends a course on the history of religions it is almost always represented, hastily and superficially, that the situation of the Arabian Peninsula before the advent of Islam was socially characterized by tribalism and, from a religious point of view, from a widespread paganism made up of devotion to family deities and esoteric practices.

The reality is in fact very different and the recent revival of research and studies on Arabia before the appearance of Muhammad largely confirms it. If on the social level there were, in the centuries preceding the prophet, important kingdoms reunifying the tribal realities (the Nabataeans, the Palmyrenes, the Ghassanids, and the Lakhmids), on the religious level, much documentation also attests to the presence of dynamic communities and traces of Christian pilgrims to Christian places of worship, which find their greatest expression in the iconic figure of Saint Arethas.

A more complex reality therefore appears than the initial observation, which generally favors the vision of a cultural and social stasis to the detriment of an existing ordered social structure, even if in embryo. And the Arabic language was the element that unified the nomadic populations of the peninsula in the third century; although the term “Arabic” can be found in other languages as early as nine centuries before Christ, it is only at the end of the second century AD that the inhabitants begun to define themselves as Arabs. The first written traces of the Arabic language date back even later to the sixth century, although considered a variation of Aramaic.

In 2021, an interesting book by J. Sarmiento entitled Unforgotten Martyrs of Arabia provided an exhaustive historical reconstruction of the Christian presence in Arabia in pre-Islamic times, also constituting a prestigious source for current Christian communities, today existing under the Apostolic Vicariate of Northern Arabia, governed by the French Bishop Aldo Berardi and the Apostolic Vicariate of Southern Arabia, governed by the Italian Bishop Paolo Martinelli. A subdivision which, as we will see, is still today the result of the demarcations that arose in the first Christian penetration into Arabia.

The scenario within which the story of the Christian communities before Muhammad takes place is mainly that of Southern Arabia, which the Romans called Arabia Felix, due to its fertility, a region that today includes the southern part of Saudi Arabia and much of Yemen. It is also a portion of the territory which in the biblical story belonged to the legendary Queen of Sheba. The northernmost part of this region, almost on the border with the northern civilizations, is a group of oases, the last outpost before the desert, the largest of which took the name of Najran, an obligatory stop for caravans headed towards the Mediterranean along the famous Incense Road, mentioned by Ezekiel in the Bible.

Najran was the cradle of Christianity in Arabia, and probably in the 4th century it was introduced into those lands by the Syriac and Monophysite Churches and by the Ethiopian Christians. More or less in the same period the ruling tribe in Himyar, therefore in all the south region of the Peninsula, was converted to Judaism. In short, a situation far from that “confused paganism” which is often superficially evoked in reference to pre-Mohammedan Arab religiosity.

If in Najran and throughout the coastal strip of the Red Sea Christianity expanded under the protection of the Byzantine Church, in the opposite area, which overlooks the Gulf, the Nestorian Church prevailed, declared heretical after the Council of Ephesus and subsequently protected by Persians. To this second group of people belonged the great master of eastern spirituality and monastic asceticism, Isaac of Nineveh, who resigned as bishop after coming into conflict with the Nestorians.

According to tradition, Arethas (original name Al Harith ibn K’ab) was born in Najran in 427. He was considered a sort of governor of the city-state of Najran, and even more, a mukarrib, that is a priest- king, a cleric who was also responsible for the power of civil government. According to some sources, he was responsible for introducing Christianity to Najran and then to the south of the peninsula. A Christianity of Syriac origin and therefore Monophysite (the heresy confuted and abandoned in the Council of Chalcedon in 451 which denied the dual nature of Christ, for which the Messiah’s humanity and divinity are the same reality). A later Christianity supported above all by Byzantine Church had engaged in a harsh and even violent confrontation with Jewish communities of the diaspora.

This religious competition also ended up affecting Najran. The protagonist will be King Dhu Nuwas, a convert to Judaism who rose to the throne of the Himyarites around 490 AD and will go down in history for having put to death many Christians throughout the peninsula. Around 520 AD, Dhu Nawas will attack the Christian people of Najran, who were led by the charismatic elder Arethas.

A Greek text from the 7th century entitled Martyrium S. Arethae recounts in great detail the siege first and then the extermination that Dhu Nawas made of the approximately six hundred Christians of the city, including women, deacons, elders and children, after a fraudulent promise of truce. Arethas himself, leader of the community, will suffer the torture of decapitation at the age of 95, after the declamation of a joyful religious and political challenge against Dhu Nawas, reported in detail by a Passio written in the Byzantine liturgy. It was October 24, 523 AD. The Churches of Arabia therefore celebrate this year (2023-2024) the Jubilee of the 1,500 years of martyrdom of St. Arethas.

Following the massacre, a few years later king-negus Elesbaan (today venerated by the Oriental Churches with the name of Saint Caleb) was requested by the patriarch of Alexandria Timothy I and by the Byzantine emperor Justin to regain the territories of Najran and to avenge the Christian martyrs. It was a great task that the Ethiopian king promptly carried out at the head of a powerful army that defeated Dhu Nawas, forcing him, according to the chronicles of the Acta S. Arethae, to surrender and to commit suicide.

After suffering martyrdom, Najran therefore became the center of pre-Islamic Arab Christianity and a destination for pilgrimages from all over the Middle East. The pilgrims came to honor the martyrs to whom a large sanctuary with a cubic shape had been dedicated, the Martyrium (Ka’ba in Arabic). Eighty years later, with the advent of Islam, things changed again. It seems that the prophet Muhammad was initially quite tolerant towards the Christian community of Najran and, according to some reconstructions, he even met their representatives around 630 AD, assuring them of a regime of tolerance. But after the death of Muhammad, with the rise of Caliph Omar, this regime was set aside, and the Christians had to leave the city, some taking refuge in Syria, some in Iraq. With their banishment the city also disappeared forever, today with only a few ruins remaining. But with the city of Najran, the memory of the martyrs has not disappeared, kept alive by the new wave of Christians present there today.

In the box
Martyrs of Najran
In an ancient city in the desert, 1,500 years ago, 600 Christians led by Saint Arethas were massacred, who were responsible for the introduction of Christianity into the south of the Arabian Peninsula before the appearance of Muhammad.

*English translation of an article that appeared in L’Osservatore Romano on August 30, 2023. The original article in Italian can be found here.