Christianity in pre-Islamic Arabia
[9] Another figure, Ahudemmeh, was said to "visit all the camps of the Arabs, instructing and teaching them in many sermons .... establishing in every tribe a priest and a deacon ... and founding churches and naming them after tribal chiefs.
The latter was discovered located on the pillars base of a basalt slab in the northern part of the "Double Church" (so-named by the excavators) at the site of Umm al-Jimal.
The establishment of this monastery likely belongs to the period of the eve of Islam, and its presence in the arid desert environment is an indication of the conversion of nomadic Arab tribes that had already taken place by that time.
Around 400, Zokomos, the leader of the Salihids (the dominant Arab foederati of the Byzantine Empire in the fifth century) is reported by the historian Sozomen to have converted to Christianity.
[15][16] The Ghassanids who had set up a kingdom in the Levant and northern Arabia, converted to Christianity during the reign of their leader Al-Harith ibn Jabalah (r. 528–569).
[17] The Ghassanids became some of the leading patrons of the Miaphysites and became sponsors of the martyr cult of St Sergius, which appealed strongly to Arabs.
[19] Epigraphic evidence also suggests they sponsored a shrine of St Sergius and basilica in al-Ruṣāfa, likely during the leadership of Al-Mundhir, as well as a three-church complex in Nitl, which is near Madaba.
[21] Several other inscriptions have been found at martyria whose sponsors have Arab names, including two dating to the fifth century from the site of Khanasir in northern Syria.
[26] From the fifth and sixth centuries, the Miaphysite church displayed a significant interest in expanding missionary activity in the Himyarite Kingdom.
], Christianity was introduced by a merchant named Hannan or Hanyan who began by converting his family, and then the rest of the peoples.
These events are also discussed in several contemporary Christian sources: in the writings of Procopius, Cosmas Indicopleustes, John Malalas, and Jacob of Serugh.
[36] John of Ephesus related a letter from another contemporary, Mar Simeon, directed to Abbot von Gabula about the events.
In addition, an anonymous author produced the Book of the Himyarites, a sixth-century Syriac chronicle of the persecution and martyrdom of the Christians of Najran.
[37] Sumyafa Ashwa came into power, but he was soon overthrown by his rival Abraha, initiating a period of Ethiopian Christian rule over southern Arabia in 530.
Abraha celebrated the construction of the dam by holding mass in the city church and inviting ambassadors from Rome and Persia.
Christian Robin has argued that Abraha's inscriptions bear a relatively low Christology, perhaps meant to assuage the Jewish population, and their formulae resemble descriptions of Jesus in the Quran.
[43] (The Jabal Dabub inscription is another South Arabian Christian graffito dating to the sixth century and containing a pre-Islamic variant of the Basmala.
[44]) Whereas Abraha's predecessor more explicitly denoted Jesus as the Son of Rahmanan and as "Victor" (corresponding to Aksumite description under Kaleb of Axum), and made use of Trinitarian formulae, Abraha began to only describe Jesus as God's "Messiah" (but not Son) and, in aligning himself more closely with Syriac Christianity, replaced Aksumite Christian with Syriac loanwords.
[4] More broadly, the separation of Abraha's Himyar from the Akumsite kingdom corresponded to its greater alignment with the Christianity espoused in Antioch and Syria.
From then on, bishops and monasteries continue to be mentioned in the Gulf by chronicles, synodic acts, hagiographies and letters all in Syriac records, indicating the presence of many Christian communities in the area.
[48] The Chronicle of Arbela, which appears to date to the sixth century, claims that a bishopric already existed in Beth Qatraye (Syriac-originating term for "territory of the Qataris") around the year 225.
[49] The first concrete evidence of a highly organized Christian presence in the region of modern-day Qatar is in the description of the synods held at Seleucia-Ctesiphon between 410 and 776, as documented in the eighth-century Synodicon Orientale.
[6] Several Christian sites have been discovered in Qatar and other Gulf countries in recent decades, and they have been dated between the sixth to ninth centuries.
In the mid-seventh century, the Patriarch of the Church of the East, Isho'yahb, sent a letter to Qataris wherein he described the presence of several faithful communities, including Talun, which is a now an island of Bahrain.
[63] Western Arabia does not feature in episcopal lists or in ecclesiastical hagiography[64] and until recently it has been argued that there is little concrete evidence for the presence of Christians in this region, including near Mecca and Medina.
[65][66][67] Although no Christian inscriptions are yet known from the region immediately around Mecca or Medina, this is likely due to the fact that no systematic epigraphic surveys or archaeological excavations of pre-Islamic sites have been done in these areas.
[69] The inscription contains a cross and also makes use of the divine epithet ʾl-ʾlh (al-ilāh), an uncontracted form of allāh which originated among Arabian Christians.
Christians may have used this uncontracted form as an isomorphism or calque for the Greek expression ho theos, which is how the Hebrew ʾĕlōhîm is rendered in the Septuagint.
[73] In 2018, eleven inscriptions written in Greek were published deriving from the regions of ʿArniyyāt and Umm Jadhāyidh, northwest of Hegra (Mada'in Salih) in Saudi Arabia.
[77] Multiple Christian cities north of the Arabian peninsula acted as contact points between speakers of Arabic and other languages.
