Christianity was one of the monotheistic religions of pre-Islamic Arabia. Christianity had a large presence on the Arabian peninsula by the fifth century AD, with prominent communities located in Najran and Eastern Arabia.[1] Organized Christian communities in Arabia constructed churches, martyria and monasteries. These buildings enabled Christian leaders to display benefaction, communicate with locals, and act as a meeting point for officials and as a point of contact with Byzantine Christians.[2]
Early on, Christian communities were established around the peninsula.[3] During late antiquity, Arabia underwent a process of Christianization driven by Syrian Christian missionaries from the north and in South Arabia after the success of the Aksumite invasion of Himyar.[4][5] Byzantine Christian literature contains many accounts of Arab communities converting to Christianity. What typically first happens in these stories is that an Arabian community interacts with a monk (or other kind of holy man). Soon thereafter, the community renounces both polytheism and idol worship. Finally, a church is built. Examples of missionaries who are described in these stories included Ahudemmeh (d. 575), Euthymius the Great (d. 473), Simeon Stylites (died 459), and the events leading to the construction of the shrine of St. Sergius at Resafa patronized by Al-Mundhir III, leader of the Ghassanid tribe.[2] Overwhelmingly, these narratives come from Syrian and Iraqi texts.[6]
Christianity in Arabia before Islam is also known from regular mentions of Christian communities in the Quran and in the evidence from a growing number of known pre-Islamic Arabian inscriptions, such as the Hima Paleo-Arabic inscriptions.[7]
- ^ Arbach, Mounir (2022). "Le christianisme en Arabie avant l'Islam". Bulletin des Chrétiens d'Orient: 17–26.
- ^ a b Fisher, Greg; Wood, Philip; Bevan, George; Greatrex, Geoffrey; Hamarneh, Basema; Schadler, Peter; Ward, Walter (2015-07-01), "Arabs and Christianity", Arabs and Empires before Islam, Oxford University Press, pp. 284–286, doi:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199654529.003.0007, ISBN 978-0-19-965452-9, retrieved 2024-02-21
- ^
ʻAzmah, ʻAziz (23 February 2017) [2014]. "Preface to Allāh". The Emergence of Islam in Late Antiquity: Allāh and His People. New York: Cambridge University Press. p. 263. ISBN 9781316641552. Retrieved 15 February 2025.
[...] the final phases of Christianisation of the phylarchic border tribes in the erstwhile Provincia Arabia came with the formation of an ethnically Arab episcopate, and the designation by Juvenal of Jerusalem (d. 458) of a 'bishop of encampments'. But central and western Arabia were not only bordered by Christianised lands to the north. This pagan reservation was in fact surrounded by Christian polities, and populations whose Christianity was largely of indeterminate character and uncertain extent, theologically porous and minimal.
- ^ Hoyland, Robert (2018). Río Sánchez, Francisco del; Association for the Study of the Middle East and Africa (eds.). Jewish Christianity and the origins of Islam conference). Brepols. pp. 37–40. OCLC 1029235683.
- ^ Cook, Michael (2024). A history of the Muslim world: from its origins to the dawn of modernity. Princeton: Princeton University Press. pp. 41–42. ISBN 978-0-691-23657-5.
[...] Christian communities [...] did not exist in the interior of the Hijāz, around Mecca and Yathrib; in Mecca our sources mention only a few individuals who were Christians. This region was nevertheless in touch with the Christian world outside Arabia, if only through trade. The later Arabic sources lay particular emphasis on the dependence of Quraysh on trade with Syria. The claim is credible, as they may have been helping meet the apparently insatiable demand of the Roman army for leather.
- ^ Mourad, Suleiman A. (2014-12-09), "Christianity in Arabia: An Overview (4th–9th Centuries CE)", The Syriac Writers of Qatar in the Seventh Century, Gorgias Press, pp. 37–40, doi:10.31826/9781463236649-004, ISBN 978-1-4632-3664-9
- ^ Al-Jallad, Ahmad. "Jesus in Arabia: Tracing the Spread of Christianity into the Desert". The BAS Library. Retrieved 2024-02-21.