The cautious conversion of the kings of Ḥimyar to monotheism in the fourth century CE was influenced by the beliefs of a local Jewish community. This chapter clarifies the relationship between South Arabian Jews and Jewish sympathizers and offers an interpretative framework for the monotheism of fourth- and fifth-century Ḥimyar, which contextualizes the choice of South Arabia’s elites to become Jewish sympathizers. The process of conversion to monotheism also shares features with the first stage of Christianity in Aksūm and the Graeco-Roman world, as well as the henotheism of pre-Islamic North Arabia. It argues that the Ḥimyarite kings’ cautious conversion follows a broad Late Antique trend which aimed to ease the transition for their subjects and/or to assume a neutral position towards the developments of the surrounding empires. In the brand-new kingdom of Ḥimyar, the cult of a single, institutionalized and translocal deity provided a strong mechanism for establishing identities that were reshaped in a wider syncretistic framework through a sociopolitical exploitation of cults characteristic of the broader late antique world.

The second chapter narrates the history of North Arabia between the late third and fifth centuries. In around 224, the Arsacid dynasty in Iran was defeated by the Sasanians, who immediately embarked on a war against Rome. The renewed animosity between the two superpowers of Late Antiquity had repercussions in the Near East, causing the fall of valuable buffer states such as Palmyra and Hatra and the employment of Arabian allies in areas such as North Ḥijāz, where the Romans could no longer easily exercise direct control. These Arabian allied confederacies did not have fixed geographical boundaries and were also often unstable in their alliances. After shedding light on the sociopolitical situation of North Arabia, the chapter focuses on the impact of Constantine’s conversion to Christianity, which had the result of creating a cultural network. It argues that Christianity had an instrumental role for the North Arabian urban elites and a more limited role among the poorer classes, especially the rural ones.