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Abrahah
Abraha (Geʽez, Ge’ez: አብርሃ) (also spelled Abreha, died presumably 570 CE) was an Kingdom of Aksum, Aksumite military leader who controlled the Himyar, Kingdom of Himyar (modern-day Yemen) and a large part of Arabia for over 30 years in the 6th century. Originally a general in the Aksumite army that invaded Yemen around 525 CE, Abraha seized power by deposing the Christians, Christian Himyarite king installed by Kaleb of Axum, Kaleb. He is famous for the tradition of his attempt to destroy the Kaaba, a revered religious site in Mecca, using an army that included war elephants, an event known as Year of the Elephant. Life The Byzantine Empire, Byzantine historian Procopius identified Abraha as the former Slavery, slave of a Roman people, Roman merchant who conducted business in Adulis, while the Muslims, Muslim historian al-Tabari says that he was related to the Aksumite royal family. Later, Abraha was either one of the commanders or a member of one of the armies led by ...
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Mecca
Mecca, officially Makkah al-Mukarramah, is the capital of Mecca Province in the Hejaz region of western Saudi Arabia; it is the Holiest sites in Islam, holiest city in Islam. It is inland from Jeddah on the Red Sea, in a narrow valley above sea level. Its metropolitan population in 2022 was 2.4million, making it the List of cities in Saudi Arabia by population, third-most populated city in Saudi Arabia after Riyadh and Jeddah. Around 44.5% of the population are Saudis, Saudi citizens and around 55.5% are Muslim world, Muslim foreigners from other countries. Pilgrims more than triple the population number every year during the Pilgrimage#Islam, pilgrimage, observed in the twelfth Islamic calendar, Hijri month of . With over 10.8 million international visitors in 2023, Mecca was one of the ten List of cities by international visitors, most visited cities in the world. Mecca is generally considered "the fountainhead and cradle of Islam". Mecca is revered in Islam as the birthp ...
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Sanaa
Sanaa, officially the Sanaa Municipality, is the ''de jure'' capital and largest city of Yemen. The city is the capital of the Sanaa Governorate, but is not part of the governorate, as it forms a separate administrative unit. At an elevation of , Sanaa is one of the highest capital cities in the world and is next to the Sarawat Mountains of Jabal An-Nabi Shu'ayb and Jabal Tiyal, considered to be the highest mountains in the Arabian Peninsula and one of the highest in the Middle East. Sanaa has a population of approximately 3,292,497 (2023), making it Yemen's largest city. As of 2020, the greater Sanaa urban area makes up about 10% of Yemen's total population. The Old City of Sanaa, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, has a distinctive architectural character, most notably expressed in its multi-story buildings decorated with geometric patterns. Al-Saleh Mosque, the largest in the country, is located in the southern outskirts of the city. According to the Yemeni constitution, ...
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Year Of The Elephant
The ʿām al-fīl (, Year of the Elephant) is the name in Islamic history for the year approximately equating to 570–571 CE. According to Islamic resources, it was in this year that prophet Mohammad was born.Hajjah Adil, Amina, "''Prophet Muhammad''", ISCA, Jun 1, 2002, The name is derived from an event said to have occurred at Mecca: Abraha, the Abyssinian, Christian king of Himyar marched upon the Ka‘bah in Mecca with a large army, which included war elephants, intending to demolish it. However, the lead elephant, known as 'Mahmud' (), is said to have stopped at the boundary around Mecca, and refused to enter. It has been mentioned in the Quran that the army was destroyed by small birds, sent by Allah, that carried pebbles that destroyed the entire army and Abraha perished. Surah Fil in the Quran contains an account of the event. The year came to be known as the Year of the Elephant, beginning a trend for reckoning the years in the Arabian Peninsula. This reckoning ...
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Persian Empire
The Achaemenid Empire or Achaemenian Empire, also known as the Persian Empire or First Persian Empire (; , , ), was an Iranian empire founded by Cyrus the Great of the Achaemenid dynasty in 550 BC. Based in modern-day Iran, it was the largest empire by that point in history, spanning a total of . The empire spanned from the Balkans and Egypt in the west, most of West Asia, the majority of Central Asia to the northeast, and the Indus Valley of South Asia to the southeast. Around the 7th century BC, the region of Persis in the southwestern portion of the Iranian plateau was settled by the Persians. From Persis, Cyrus rose and defeated the Median Empire as well as Lydia and the Neo-Babylonian Empire, marking the establishment of a new imperial polity under the Achaemenid dynasty. In the modern era, the Achaemenid Empire has been recognised for its imposition of a successful model of centralised bureaucratic administration, its multicultural policy, building complex inf ...
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Slavery
Slavery is the ownership of a person as property, especially in regards to their labour. Slavery typically involves compulsory work, with the slave's location of work and residence dictated by the party that holds them in bondage. Enslavement is the placement of a person into slavery, and the person is called a slave or an enslaved person (see ). Many historical cases of enslavement occurred as a result of breaking the law, becoming indebted, suffering a military defeat, or exploitation for cheaper labor; other forms of slavery were instituted along demographic lines such as race or sex. Slaves would be kept in bondage for life, or for a fixed period of time after which they would be granted freedom. Although slavery is usually involuntary and involves coercion, there are also cases where people voluntarily enter into slavery to pay a debt or earn money due to poverty. In the course of human history, slavery was a typical feature of civilization, and existed in most socie ...
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Sabaeans
Sheba, or Saba, was an ancient South Arabian kingdom that existed in Yemen from to . Its inhabitants were the Sabaeans, who, as a people, were indissociable from the kingdom itself for much of the 1st millennium BCE. Modern historians agree that the heartland of the Sabaean civilization was located in the region around Marib and Sirwah. In some periods, they expanded to much of modern Yemen and even parts of the Horn of Africa, particularly Eritrea and Ethiopia. The kingdom's native language was Sabaic, which was a variety of Old South Arabian. Stuart Munro-Hay, ''Aksum: An African Civilization of Late Antiquity'', 1991. Among South Arabians and Abyssinians, Sheba's name carried prestige, as it was widely considered to be the birthplace of South Arabian civilization as a whole. The first Sabaean kingdom lasted from the 8th century BCE to the 1st century BCE: this kingdom can be divided into the " mukarrib" period, where it reigned supreme over all of South Arabia; and the ...
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Kinda (tribe)
The Kinda, or Kindah, (, Ancient South Arabian script: 𐩫𐩬𐩵𐩩) were an tribes of Arabia, Arab tribe from South Arabia. Originating in the region to the west of Hadramawt, the Kinda tribe is known to have served the Sabaean Kingdom as Bedouin auxiliaries as early as the 3rd century, later allying themselves with the Himyarite Kingdom under the Jewish king Dhu Nuwas (early 6th century). In the mid-5th century, the tribe established its own kingdom over the Arab tribal confederation of Ma'add in northern and central Arabia, known as the Kingdom of Kinda, which lasted until the mid-6th century. By this point its rulers had all been killed or prompted to flee for Hadramawt. There, the bulk of the tribe had continued to reside and dominate. While many of the tribesmen in Hadramawt likely embraced Judaism with the Himyarites, many of those in central and northern Arabia embraced Christianity. After accepting Islam during the lifetime of the Islamic prophet Muhammad (died 632), ...
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Stuart Munro-Hay
Stuart Christopher Munro-Hay (21 April 1947 – 14 October 2004) was a British archaeologist, numismatist and Ethiopianist. He studied the culture and history of ancient Ethiopia, the Horn of Africa region and South Arabia, particularly their history of coins. Born in Northern Ireland, he was initially called ''Stuart Christopher H. McIlwrath'', but took his mother's maiden name after his parents separated. Munro-Hay studied Egyptology at the University of Liverpool from 1970 to 1974. As a student and collaborator of Neville Chittick, he worked on the 1973-74 excavation project of the British Institute in Eastern Africa (BIEA) in Aksum, the capital of the late-antique Aksumite Empire. The excavations had to be cancelled due to the Derg's coup d'état in 1974, but Munro-Hay continued to dedicate his work to researching the history of Aksum, and in particular compiled a large collection of Aksumite coins. He completed his doctorate in 1978 at the London School of Oriental and A ...
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South Arabia
South Arabia (), or Greater Yemen, is a historical region that consists of the southern region of the Arabian Peninsula in West Asia, mainly centered in what is now the Republic of Yemen, yet it has also historically included Najran, Jazan, and Asir, which are presently in Saudi Arabia, and Dhofar of present-day Oman. South Arabia is inhabited by people possessing distinctive linguistic and ethnic affinities, as well as traditions and culture, transcending recent political boundaries. There are two indigenous language groups: the now extinct Old South Arabian languages and the unrelated Modern South Arabian languages, both members of the Semitic family. Etymology The term ''Yamnat'' was mentioned in Old South Arabian inscriptions on the title of one of the kings of the second Himyarite Kingdom known as Shammar Yahrʽish II. The term was probably referring to the southwestern coastline of the Arabian peninsula and the southern coastline between Aden and Hadramout. One ...
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Dhu Nuwas
Dhū Nuwās (), real name Yūsuf Asʾar Yathʾar ( Musnad: 𐩺𐩥𐩪𐩰 𐩱𐩪𐩱𐩧 𐩺𐩻𐩱𐩧, ''Yws¹f ʾs¹ʾr Yṯʾr''), Yosef Nu'as (), or Yūsuf ibn Sharhabil (), also known as Masruq in Syriac, and Dounaas () in Medieval Greek, was a Jewish king of Himyar reigning between 522–530 AD who came to infamy on account of his persecutions of peoples of other religions, notably Christians, living in his kingdom. He was also known as Zur'ah in the Arab traditions. Names and family Dhu Nuwas' family is not very well known. There is debate on who his father is; the earlier Arab scholars and the Jewish Encyclopedia believed that Dhu Nuwas was the son of the earlier Himyarite king Abu Karib. However, Ibn al-Kalbi disagreed and stated that he was the son of Sharhabil Yakkuf, hence making him the great-grandson of Abu Karib. Ibn Abbas also reported that Dhu Nuwas' real name was Yusuf, son of Sharhabil, which was reported by Ibn al-Kalbi and Al-Baydawi and later o ...
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