Christianity in pre-Islamic Arabia

This article is about Christianity in pre-Islamic Arabia. For monotheism in pre-Islamic Arabia, see Monotheism in pre-Islamic Arabia. For the religion of Judaism in pre-Islamic Arabia, see Judaism in pre-Islamic Arabia.

Christianity was one of the prominent monotheistic religions of pre-Islamic Arabia. Christianization emerged as a major phenomena in the Arabian peninsula during the period of late antiquity, especially from the north due to the missionary activities of Syrian Christians and the south due to the entrenchment of Christianity with the Aksumite conquest of South Arabia.[1][2] Christian communities had already surrounded the peninsula from all sides prior to their spread within the region.[3] Sites of Christian organization such as churches, martyria and monasteries were built and formed points of contact with Byzantine Christianity as well as allowed local Christian leaders to display their benefaction, communicate with the local population, and meet with various officials.[4] At present, it is believed that Christianity had attained a significant presence in Arabia by the fifth century at the latest, that its largest presence was in Southern Arabia (Yemen) prominently including the city of Najran, and that the Eastern Arab Christian community (along the Gulf coast) communicated with the Christianity of the Levant region through Syriac.[5]

The spread of Christianity into Arabia (which then included the Arabian Peninsula and the southern Levant) has historically been understood through the lenses of Christian literary texts and Byzantine historiography which typically describe the conversion of Arabs (often called "Saracens") to Christianity in the context of interactions with monks and other holy men, followed by renunciations of polytheism and idols. Many of these events are described as having been followed up with the construction of a church. Such descriptions appear in narratives of the bishop Ahudemmeh, the abbot Euthymius the Great, the ascetic Simeon Stylites, and the shrine of St. Sergius at Resafa patronized by Al-Mundhir III, leader of the Christian Arab Ghassanid tribe.[4] These narratives overwhelmingly derive from Syrian and Iraqi texts.[6]

Pre-Islamic Arabian Christians are also described in the Quran and, in recent years, archaeology has begun to play a significant role in the understanding of pre-Islamic Arabian Christianity.[7] Recent years have witnessed discoveries of Christian Paleo-Arabic inscriptions like the Yazid inscription from the northeastern Jordan and the Hima Paleo-Arabic inscriptions found 90 km north of Najran.

  1. ^ Hoyland, Robert (2018). Río Sánchez, Francisco del; Association for the Study of the Middle East and Africa (eds.). Jewish Christianity and the origins of Islamconference). Brepols. pp. 37–40. OCLC 1029235683.
  2. ^ Cook, Michael (2024). A history of the Muslim world: from its origins to the dawn of modernity. Princeton: Princeton University Press. pp. 41–42. ISBN 978-0-691-23657-5.
  3. ^ Al-Azmeh, Aziz (2014). The emergence of Islam in late antiquity: Allah and his people. New York: Cambridge University Press. p. 263. ISBN 978-1-107-03187-6.
  4. ^ a b Fisher, Greg; Wood, Philip; Bevan, George; Greatrex, Geoffrey; Hamarneh, Basema; Schadler, Peter; Ward, Walter (2015-07-01), "Arabs and Christianity", Arabs and Empires before Islam, Oxford University Press, pp. 284–286, doi:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199654529.003.0007, ISBN 978-0-19-965452-9, retrieved 2024-02-21
  5. ^ Arbach, Mounir (2022). "Le christianisme en Arabie avant l'Islam". Bulletin des Chrétiens d'Orient: 17–26.
  6. ^ Mourad, Suleiman A. (2014-12-09), "Christianity in Arabia: An Overview (4th–9th Centuries CE)", The Syriac Writers of Qatar in the Seventh Century, Gorgias Press, pp. 37–40, doi:10.31826/9781463236649-004, ISBN 978-1-4632-3664-9
  7. ^ Al-Jallad, Ahmad. "Jesus in Arabia: Tracing the Spread of Christianity into the Desert". The BAS Library. Retrieved 2024-02-21.