According to the Arab Muslim historian Ibn Ishaq, Najran was the first place where Christianity took root in South Arabia.
Najran was home to famous Christian figures of Arabic culture like Quss Ibn Sa'ida al-Iyadi, whose sermons Muhammad is said to have encountered.
These events caused widespread reactions among Christians in the Roman Near East, and Jacob of Serugh composed and sent them his Letter to the Himyarites to console the community during their hardships.
Before the advent of Islam, from indications in the Qur'an it would appear that the Jews to the West of the Himyarite Kingdom, in western Arabia, maintained some form of rabbinical organisation, possibly connected to late antique Judaism, and were not wholly cut off from their brethren elsewhere in the Middle East.
[2] The apparent conversion of local Himyarite rulers to Judaism, or some form of a Judaic monotheism,[2] as early as the late fourth century under the Tabbāi'a dynasty,[2] is indirect evidence that suggests that effective Jewish proselytization was active in the region.
[2] The Jewish faith had strong roots within the Himyarite kingdom when Dhu Nuwas rose to power, and it seems that several synagogues had been built not only in Zafar, but in Najran also.
[3] Unlike most Ṣayhadic people of that zone, had only come under the authority of the Himyarite Kingdom in the early fifth century, more or less around the time that a local merchant, one Hayyān by name, had visited Constantinople and underwent conversion at al-Hīra, during a later journey.
[2] The bishops of Najran, who were probably Miaphysites, came to the great market of Mina and the Sūq ʿUkāẓ, and preached, each seated on a camel as in a pulpit.
[1] The events comprised episodes involving a massacre of Ethiopians in a Yemen garrison, the destruction of churches, punitive expeditions in several regions and attempts to constrain communities to undergo conversion to Judaism.
[6] These circumstances have a geopolitical dimension as well, in that there are indications that these Jewish communities had connections with the Iranian Sassanid kingdom, while the Christians, though Monophysites, were linked to Byzantine interests.
[1] After coming to the throne through a coup d'état, Dhu Nuwas launched a campaign which swept away an Aksumite garrison in Zafar, where a church was put to the torch, and then invaded the Tihāma coastal lowlands where a partially Christianized population dwelt, and where he took over key centres as far as the Bab el-Mandeb.
He sent one of his generals, a Jewish prince, north to Najran in order to impose an economic blockade on the oasis by cutting off the trade route to Qaryat al-Faw in eastern Arabia.
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.
The emperor of Byzantium, Justin I, requested his ally, the Abyssinian ruler Kaleb of Axum, to invade Najran, kill Dhu-Nuwas, and annex Himyar.
[8] According to the Book of the Himyarites, Najrani Christian refugees (including one by the name of Umayyah) arrived in Aksum and requested aid from its king.
Whereas you and all who belong to your people will become a byword that will cause future generations to wonder, because of all that you, a godless and merciless man, have wrought upon the holy churches and upon those who worship Christ 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.
The leader of the Arabs of Najran who was executed during the period of persecution, Al-Harith, was canonized by the Roman Catholic Church as St.
[19] Muhammad also stated "The Muslims must not abandon the Christians, neglect them, and leave them without help and assistance since I have made this pact with them on behalf of Allah.