Judaism in pre-Islamic Arabia

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

Judaism has been practiced as a religion in the Arabian Peninsula since at least the first century BCE. It is also the first monotheistic religion of Arabia. Arabian Jews were linguistically diverse and would have varied in their practice of the religion. The presence of Jews is best attested in Northwestern and Southern Arabia. Judaism would briefly become politically relevant in the fourth century, when the rulers of the Kingdom of Himyar converted to Judaism.

It is not known how Judaism first entered Arabia.[1] Some proposals suggest there were Jewish migrations after the destruction of the Second Temple during the Jewish–Roman wars in the first century[2] or during the conquests or persecutions by the Persians, Babylonians, or Romans, but no data exist to support this.[3][4] In addition, the religious diversity and the normative or non-normative nature of Arabian Judaism(s) is also ill-understood.[5]

  1. ^ Bar-Asher, Meir M. (2021). Jews and the Qur'an. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press. pp. 20–22. ISBN 978-0-691-21135-0.
  2. ^ Bar-Asher, Meʾir Mikhaʾel (2021). Jews and the Qur'an. Translated by Rundell, Ethan S. Princeton: Princeton University Press. pp. 15–16. ISBN 978-0-691-21135-0.
  3. ^ Hoyland, Robert G. (2011). "The Jews of the Hijaz in the Qurʾān and in their inscriptions". In Reynolds, Gabriel Said (ed.). New perspectives on the Qur'an. The Qur'an in its historical context. New York: Routledge. p. 91. ISBN 978-0-415-61548-8.
  4. ^ Lindstedt, Ilkka (2023). Muhammad and his followers in context: the religious map of late antique Arabia. Islamic history and civilization. Leiden Boston: Brill. pp. 59, n. 24. ISBN 978-90-04-68712-7.
  5. ^ Hughes, Aaron (2020). "South Arabian 'Judaism', Ḥimyarite Raḥmanism, and the Origins of Islam". In Segovia, Carlos Andrés (ed.). Remapping emergent Islam: texts, social settings, and ideological trajectories. Social worlds of late antiquity and the early Middle Ages. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press. pp. 19–22. ISBN 978-94-6298-806-4.