What It Means - Day 308

"Muhammad would also have associated with Yemenis of various faith traditions, pagan, Jewish, and Christian. Indigenous Yemeni inscriptions call the one God 'the All-Merciful' and contain the name 'Muhammad.' Since both terms are used in the Qur'an, it seems likely that Islam has a Yemeni context to some extent. Yemen's startling religious history in late antiquity is mainly known from somewhat cryptic inscriptions, bug it seems clear that from about 380 CE, the ruling elite of the kingdom of Himyar adopted some form of monoaltry (the worship of only one divinity), centered on a figure they called 'the All-Merciful.' Its state-sponsored temples to the many gods abruptly fell into desuetude, though commons continued pagan worship. Jewish and Christian inscriptions also call God 'the All-Merciful' in Yemen, but it seems most likely that the royal family followed a homegrown cult. Some of the inscriptions call on both the Himyarite All-Merciful and the lord of the Jews, which does not sound exactly like monotheism but certainly is not Judaism. By the early 500s, some princes and commoners had converted to Judaisim and others to Christianity, and those two biblical communities fell to warring with one another. In this struggle the Christians, backed by Ethiopia and the Roman Empire, prevailed in the 520s through about 570. Then Iran invaded and dethroned the Ethiopian Christian elite, depending politically instead on local pagans, pagan monotheists, and Jews among the Yemenis." Juan Cole, Muhammad: Prophet of Peace Amid the Clash of Empires, p. 69

Here's another passage from Cole's biography of the Prophet. As I said yesterday, another copy of the book showed up unexpectedly the other day and I was leafing through the new one. Considering that I'm teaching a class this semester focusing on themes in Islam and the Islamic world through the lens of Yemen you can imagine how this jumped off the page. We know that large swathes of Yemen converted to Islam by 630, only two years before the death of the Prophet, making it one of the first places where the faith found a home outside the heartland between Mecca and Medina. What's interesting about Cole's point is that it speaks to not only Muhammad's role in shaping Yemeni religious thought, but, in turn, the influence of Yemen on the Prophet when he traveled there as a merchant. Guess this will play a role in class discussion very soon.