An implausible theory—but a telling one all the same. Sozomen came from near Gaza, between the Mediterranean and the Negev, and was an experienced observer of the region. He had travelled to Mamre, for instance, and witnessed the crowds that gathered there: he knew full well that it was not only Christians who reverenced Abraham, but Jews and pagans too. This led him, in contrast to Theodoret, to contemplate a quite hideous possibility. What if the Saracens’ knowledge of their ancestry did not necessarily lead them to Christ? What if it led them in a different direction altogether?
After all, their origin being what it is, they practise circumcision like the Jews, refrain from the use of pork like the Jews, and observe many other Jewish rites and customs. That they deviate at all from the Laws of the Jewish people can only be ascribed to the lapse of time, and to the influence upon them of other, pagan peoples.
95
It was a devastating insight—and had an obvious corollary. Cleanse the Arabs of their paganism, and it might not be a Christian people at all that emerged from beneath the ordure, but something alarmingly different: whole tribes of Jews. In fact, according to Sozomen, this had already happened: “There are those of them who, by coming into contact with Jews, learn the truth of their origins, and so return to the ways of their kinsmen, and are persuaded to adopt Jewish customs and laws.”96 Who precisely these Jews might be, Sozomen did not think to say; but it certainly suggested that Christianity, beyond the reaches of Roman control, was not the only option available to Arabs embarked on a spiritual quest.
Or indeed to Arabs who wished simply to dig in their heels and defy the superpower. In 524, at a time when Roman ambassadors were closeted with Mundhir, negotiating the release of two prominent prisoners, a delegation of emissaries from the distant kingdom of Himyar arrived unexpectedly at the summit. These ambassadors, to the Romans’ horror, brought news of an atrocity fit to put even those of Mundhir in the shade: the wholesale slaughter of the Christians of Najran. Even more terrifyingly, Yusuf, the Himyarite king, had sent a proposal of alliance to his Lakhmid counterpart: one that he suggested be sealed with the blood of the Christians of Hira.
Out of the blue, the ambassadors from Constantinople found themselves confronted by a nightmare of threateningly global proportions. An alliance of pagan and Jewish interests, forged well beyond the reach of Roman arms, was too hellish to be countenanced. With Iranshahr in firm control of the Persian Gulf, trade links to India were already being steadily asphyxiated; and now, with a Jewish kingdom established beside the Red Sea straits, there was pressure coming to bear on a second vital windpipe. The menace, however, was more than merely material. The Jewish character of Himyar was no mere pretension or show. Yusuf, although he had seized power by toppling a Christian regime, was not, by any means, the first Jew to rule the kingdom. In fact, there had been Jewish monarchs in Himyar for almost as long as there had been Christian emperors in Rome. In 440, when a massive dam had been repaired at Marib, the ancient capital of Sheba, the king had publicly dedicated it to the God of Israeclass="underline" Rahmanan—“The Merciful.”97 The same identical title, as it happened, was one much bandied about in the Talmud; nor was it surprising that the rabbis of Palestine, resentful as they were of their Christian masters, took a good deal of interest in the Himyarite monarchy. Granted, the enthusiasm of Yusuf and his predecessors for aping King David was hardly one of which they could entirely approve; and it may be that the presence of rabbis from Tiberias at his court reflected a desire on their part to temper some of his more flamboyant excesses. That, however, was not how it appeared to the local Christians, who predictably blamed the holocaust at Najran on the machinations of the rabbis—nor, of course, to the fretful Roman authorities.
To the profound relief of Constantinople, though, no sooner had the danger of an alliance between Hira’s pagans and Himyar’s Jews flared up than it was successfully being extinguished. Mundhir, far removed from Himyar, was bought off easily enough. Then, even as one Roman embassy returned in triumph from Hira, another set off for the kingdom that lay directly opposite Himyar, and which by great good fortune just happened to be Christian: Ethiopia. Not that the country’s king was entirely without his drawbacks. The “Negus,” in addition to being a Monophysite, was also quite insufferably conceited: for it was his claim, based as it was on a presumed descent from Solomon and the Queen of Sheba, to rank as the world’s pre-eminent Christian monarch. Under normal circumstances, of course, the ambassadors of Caesar would have laughed this pretension to scorn; but the circumstances were hardly normal. A treaty was duly patched up. When the Ethiopians launched their invasion of Himyar, they made the crossing in a borrowed Roman fleet. In the wake of Yusuf’s overthrow and death, the conquered kingdom was transformed into an Ethiopian protectorate and Roman merchants were once again free to use its harbours and trading stations. Meanwhile, at Najran, a domed monument named the Ka’ba, on account of its cuboid base, was raised above the ruins of the cathedraclass="underline" a memorial to the priests and virgins left slaughtered by Yusuf.
All of which, back in Constantinople, could be viewed with tremendous satisfaction. Imperial policy towards the Saracens appeared to be in excellent shape. Irrespective of the pestiferous brews of heresy and insurrection that might occasionally bubble up beyond the frontier, the Roman state clearly had the wherewithal—and the reach—to deal with them all. After the successful pacification of Himyar, it was evident that the Roman Empire remained what it had always been: a global superpower.
“Dominion without limit”: it seemed that the ancient maxim still held good.
a Long after Simeon’s death, it was his hairiness which particularly enabled people to recognise him when he appeared to them in visions.
b What is today known as the Church of the Holy Sepulchre was rebuilt in the eleventh century after the original was destroyed by a messianic Egyptian Caliph, and it now contains the rock of Golgotha as well as the tomb of Christ. Whether either of these sites is authentically what Christian tradition has for so long presumed them to be is much debated. Ironically, the probability is that Helena’s excavations, and her son’s subsequent building works, served to obliterate memories that had been preserved by local Christians of the original sites.