Najran
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Najran (formerly Aba as Sa'ud) (Arabic: نجران) is a city in southwestern Saudi Arabia near the frontier with Yemen. It is the capital of Najran Province. Designated a New town by the Saudi Government in 1965, Najran is one of the fastest-growing cities in the kingdom, its population having risen from 47,500 in (1974) and 90,983 in 1992 to 246,880 in 2004 (census figures}. Saudi Arabia annexed 'Asir, Najran, and Jizan from Yemen in 1934. The population belongs mostly to the ancient tribe of Yam.
Najran in Arabic has at least two meanings. It is a term used to describe the wooden frame on which a door opens and is also a synonym for thirsty. Local tradition also has it that the land derived its name from the first man to settle in the area, Najran ibn Zaydan ibn Saba ibn Yahjub ibn Yarub ibn Qahtan.
It is said that the history of Najran could be traced back to 4000 years ago and that it was once occupied by the Romans. Najran's most prosperous trading time was during the first and second centuries B.C. In ancient times it was known as Al-Ukhdood. Najran was also an important stopping place on the Incense Route.
Najran was a centre of cloth making and originally, the kiswah or the cloth of the Ka'aba was made there. There used to be a Jewish community at Najran, renowned for the garments they manufactured. According to Yemenite Jewish tradition, the Jews of Najran traced their origin to the Ten Tribes.
The town of Najran was already an important centre of arms manufacture during the lifetime of Prophet Muhammad. However, it was more famous for leather rather than iron.
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[edit] Archaeological ruins and artifacts
Najran city is famous for its archeological significance. Old Najran was surrounded by a circular wall, 220 by 230 meters, built of square stone with defensive balconies. It contained several unique buildings. There is also a cemetery south of the external wall. Excavations of this site have uncovered glass, metals, pottery, and bronze artifacts. Square and rectangular buildings have also been found. At Al-Ukhdood which is south of Najran city, carvings from those days and human bones can be seen. A museum displays among other items, a bronze lion head. Najran's landmarks include the "Rass" stone, a 2-meter-high granite stone. [1]
[edit] The Christians and Jews of Najran and their expulsion
Christianity must have been introduced into Najran, as in the rest of South Arabia, in the 5th century C.E. or perhaps a century earlier. According to the Arab Muslim historian, Ibn Ishaq, Najran was the first place where Christianity took root in South Arabia.
Prior to the rise of Christianity, the people of Najran were polytheists and worshipped a tall date-palm tree, for which also they had an annual festival when they hung upon it the finest garments they could find, and female ornaments. Then they would come and dance around it the whole day. During this period, they had a Chief named Abdullah ibn ath-Thamir who became the first Najranite to embrace Christianity. A pious Christian builder and brick-layer named Phemion settled among them and led them to his religion and its religious laws, which they adopted.
Before the advent of Islam, Najran was an oasis, with a large Christian population and the seat of a Bishopric. It sheltered an oligarchy of Christian merchants which were as rich as any in Edessa or Alexandria. It had been an important stop on the spice route from Hadhramaut.
Najran had been an important centre of Christianity in South Arabia and the focus of international intrigues in which economics, politics, and religion were all entangled.
The highlight of Christian presence in South Arabia caused a severe clash between Jews and Christians. Various Christian sources reveal that the arrival and spread of Christianity is South Arabia, particularly Najran, was bitterly opposed by the local Jews which would later have serious implications on both sides. The Jews of Najran were in contact with their co-religionists in Palestine and were seemingly effective prosletyzers. The existence of Judaism in Southern Arabia also preceded the existence of Christianity by several centuries and dated back to the destruction of the Second temple in AD 70.
The Christians of Najran later came into conflict with the Jewish rulers of Yemen, which ended in their being massacred in 524 by the Himyarite king,Yusuf As'ar Dhu Nuwas. The Najranite Christians, like other Southern Arabian Christian communities, had close connections with the ecclesiastical authorities in Byzantium and Abyssinia. They were identified by virtue of their religion as "pro-Axumite" and "pro-Byzantine".
Dhu Nuwas hoped to create, in the rich lands of Southern Arabia, a "Davidic" kingship which was independent of the Christian powers. He also considered Najran to be a Byzantine base that controlled the Red Sea trade route, and badly affected the economic situation of Himyar.
When Dhu Nuwas invaded Najran in 524, he called upon its people to abandon Christianity and embrace Judaism. When they refused, he had them slaughtered and thrown into burning ditches.Estimates of the death toll from this event range up to 20,000 in some sources, whereas some sources put it as low as 700. Some sources say that Dus Dhu Tha'laban from the Saba tribe was the only man able to escape the massacre of Najran, who fled to Constantinople to seek help and promptly reported everything. This brought about the wrath of emperor of Byzantium, Justin I who, as protector of Christianity encouraged his ally, the Abyssinian king Ella-Asbeha of Aksum, to invade the country, kill Dhu-Nuwas and annex Himyar in 525.
However, according to the Book of Himyarites, the instigation to action was not caused by a request from Constantinople but, more plausibly, the arrival at the court of the Abyssinian king of a refugee from Najran by the name of Umayya. Later, an army of 7,000 men led by Abraha al-Ashram, the Christian viceroy of the Negus of Abyssinia defeated Dhu Nuwas's forces and restored Christian rule in Najran.
In his 524 C.E letter describing the Najran persecutions in detail, the West-Syrian debater Simeon, the bishop of Beth Arsham describes how female martyrs rushed in to join "our parents and brothers and sisters who have died for the sake of Christ our lord".
In one exchange, reminescent of the Acts of Marta and her father Pusai, a freeborn woman of Najran named Habsa taunts Dhu Nuwas with the memory of her father:
Habsa told him, "I am the daughter of Hayyan, of the family of Hayyan, the teacher by whose hand our lord sowed Christianity in this land. My father is Hayyan who once burned your synagogues". Masruq the Crucifier (Dhu Nuwas), said to her, "So, you have the same ideas as your father? I suppose you too would be ready to burn our synagogues just as your father did."
Simeon of Beth Arsham's Second letter preserves yet another memorably gruesome episode. After seeing her Christian kinsmen burned alive, Ruhm, a great noblewoman of Najran, brings her daughter before the Himyarite king and instructs him: "Cut off our heads, so that we may go join our brothers and my daughter's father." The executioners comply, slaughtering her daughter and granddaughter before Ruhm's eyes and forcing her to drink her blood. The king then asks, How does your daughter's blood taste to you?" The martyr replies, "Like a pure spotless offering: that is what it tasted like in my mouth and in my soul."
The martyrs of Najran are remembered in the Christian calenders and are even mentioned in the Surat al-Buruj of the Q'uran 85:4-8, where the persecutions are condemned and the steadfast believers are praised:
...slain were the men of the pit, the fire abounding in fuel, when they were seated over it, and were themselves witnesses of what they did with the believers. They took revenge on them because they believed in God the All-mighty, the All-laudable...
The stories of the Najran deaths spread quickly to other Christian realms, where they were recounted in terms of heroic martyrdom for the cause of Christ. Their martyrdom led to Najran becoming a major pilgrimage centre that, for a time, rivaled Mecca to the north.
The Martyrdom of the Christians of Najran is celebrated in the Roman Calender on the 24th of October; in the Jacobite Menologies on December 31st; in the Arabic Feasts of the Melkites on October 2nd; in the Armenian Synaxarium on the 20th of October, and in the Ethiopian Senkesar on November 22nd.
The bishops of Najran, who were probably Nestorians, came to the great fairs of Mina and Ukaz, and preached Christianity, each seated on a camel as in a pulpit. The Church of Najran was called the Ka'aba-e-Najran. (Note that several other shrines in Arabia were also called Ka'aba). The Ka'aba Najran at Jabal Taslal drew worshippers for some 40 years during the pre-Islamic era. The Arabian sources single out Khath'am, as a Christian tribe which used to perform the pilgrimage to the Christian Ka'aba of Najran. When Najran was occupied by Dhu Nuwas, the Ka'aba Najran was burned together with the bones of its martyrs and some 2,000 live Christians within it.
In the tenth year of the Hirah, a delegation of fourteen Christian Chiefs from Najran; among them Abdul Masih of Bani Kinda, their chief, and Abdul Harith, bishop of Bani Harith, came to Medina to make a treaty with the Islamic prophet Muhammad, and were permitted by him to pray in his mosque, which they did turning towards the east.
Later, they undertook a religious discussion with the prophet, which was inconclusive but ended with signing a treaty between the two parties. Muhammad concluded a treaty with their Chiefs and Bishops, which on payment of a tribute of 2000 pieces of cloth, valued at 40 dirhams each, secured them in the undisturbed profession of their ancestral faith. Throughout the rebellion they remained loyal to their engagements, and Abu Bakr renewed the treaty. According to the treaty, the people of Najran like the Christians of the Banu Taghlib tribe were exempted from paying the Jizya required of all non muslims. The peace agreement also stipulated that the town supply 30 sets of armor, 30 horses and 30 camels for operations along the Gulf coast or in Yemen.
However, in time they resisted the blandishments of Islam; and as a penalty, they were forcibly expelled from the town of their forefathers. They were ordered by Umar ibn al-Khattab to vacate the city and emigrate out of the Arabian peninsula, or accept a money payment. Some migrated to Syria; but the greater part settled in the vicinity of Al-Kufa in predominantly Christian Southern Iraq, where the colony of Al-Najraniyyah long maintained the memory of their expatriation. The Jews of Najran were expelled with the Christians and went with them as their followers.
However, the historicity of these events is not absolutely reliably established. It appears that the orders of Umar were not fully carried out and might have applied only to Christians living in Najran itself, not to those settled round about. This is because there is some evidence of a continuing Christian presence in Najran for at least 200 years after the expulsion. Some sources also state that the Christian community of Najran still had considerable political weight in the late ninth century.
According to a Yemeni Arab source, the first Zaydite Imam of Yemen, al-Hadi Ila l-Haqq Yahya ibn al-Hussain (897-911) concluded an accord with the Christians and the Jews of the oasis on 897, at the time of the foundation of the Zaydite principality.
A second Yemeni source alludes to the Christians of Najran in muharram 390 (999-1000). The oasis was still one third Christian and one third Jewish, according to the testimony of the Persian traveller, Ibn al-Mujawir. The last evidence of the presence of Christianity in Northern Yemen of which Najran used to belong to, dates back to the 13th century.
There is also no reason to speculate that the Jews did not continue to dwell in Najran after the expulsion. In any event, a Jewish settlement in Najran existed as late as 1949, when all the Jews of the town and its vicinity emigrated to the newly formed state of Israel. Most of the people of the region eventually converted to Islam in 630 or 631.
Eventually the Old Najran which was Christian disappeared, and is now represented by Al-Ukhdood, a desolate village, while another the Najran which is Islamic, has now appeared in its vicinity.
[edit] References
[edit] Further reading
- This text is adapted from William Muir's public domain, The Caliphate: Its Rise, Decline, and Fall.
- Irfan Shahîd, Byzantium and the Arabs in the Fifth Century, Dumbarton Oaks (1989), ISBN 0884021521.
- Hugh Goddard, A History of Christian-Muslim Relations, Edinburgh University Press (2000), ISBN 074861009X.
- Josef W. Meri, Jere L. Bacharach, Medieval Islamic Civilization, Taylor & Francis (2006), ISBN 0415966922.
- Mark A. Caudill, Twilight in the Kingdom, Greenwood Publishing Group (2006), ISBN 0275992527.
- Andre Vauchez, Richard Barrie Dobson, Michael Lapidge, Adrian Walford, Encyclopedia of the Middle Ages, Routledge (2001), ISBN 1579582826.
- Joel Thomas Walker, The Legend of Mar Qardagh, University of California Press (2006), ISBN 0520245784.
