Himyarites

Himyarites, ancient Semitic tribe that originated in the extreme south-west of Arabia. Although fragments of inscriptions thought to be Himyaritic have been found that date from before 700 bc, the earliest specific reference to the Himyarite Kingdom dates from about 115 bc. At that time control of the commercially important region of Sheba passed from the Sabaeans to the Himyarites, who, according to the Roman statesman Pliny the Elder, had become pre-eminent among south Arabian peoples by the 1st century bc. From this point onwards, however, their history is inseparable from that of the Sabaeans. Dynastic rule established in the early Christian centuries was interrupted in ad 335 by an invading force from Abyssinia. Local control was re-established towards the end of the 4th century. The ruler of the Himyarites at this time adopted Judaism as his religion, thus creating a Jewish-Sabaean kingdom. The early 6th-century persecution of Christians in the kingdom resulted in a further attack by the Abyssinians who captured it in 525. Although references to Himyarites suggest that they remained a strong element in the population of the area, most Arab writers of the 7th century use the names Himyarite and South Arabian interchangeably. The Himyarite language is still spoken in a small area of southern Yemen and provides important evidence for the development of Semitic languages from ancient times.