Judaism in pre-Islamic Arabia

Judaism was the first monotheistic religion practiced in pre-Islamic Arabia, since at least the 1st century BCE. Arabian Jews were linguistically diverse, and communities spoke Greek, Aramaic, Arabic, and Sabaic. The centers of Arabian Judaism were in the Northwest and South of the Arabian Peninsula, and its main period of political ascendancy took place after the conversion of the ruling elites of the Himyarite Kingdom, who dominated South Arabia, to Judaism in the late fourth century.

How Judaism entered Arabia remains controversial. Some theories center on migrations that took place after the destruction of the Second Temple during the Jewish–Roman wars or in the aftermath of Persian, Babylonian, or Roman persecutions, but these theories remain speculation. The way Judaism was practiced, and its diversity, is also not well-understood. In addition, there is no concrete evidence for the translation of entire Jewish scriptures into local Arabian languages, indicating that religious communication was largely oral.

The study of Judaism in pre-Islamic Arabia is limited by the nature of the available sources. The primary source for the life and activities of pre-Islamic Arabian Jews is through epigraphy. Few epigraphs explicitly identify the author as Jewish, and so other markers are typically used to infer their Jewish identity, such as including Jewish names (i.e. onomastics, although this method has some limitations), Jewish expressions and use of the Hebrew script. Nothing is said about these communities by contemporary Greek and Syriac sources with the exception of a passing reference in Josephus. Both Talmuds (Palestinian and Babylonian) only mention Arabia occasionally, and even then, they usually refer to regions in southern Palestine and Jordan instead of the Peninsula. Contemporary Islamic sources, limited to the Quran and the Constitution of Medina, ameliorate the situation. Non-contemporary Islamic sources record many examples of Jewish poets and their poetry, although the date, modification, and authenticity of these sources is unclear. Later Arabic historiography is also more detailed, but suffers from problems related to its lateness and reliability. Non-contemporary Arabic historiographical sources, such as those of al-Hamdani, are considered secondary in their ability to enable a historical reconstruction of Judaism in pre-Islamic Arabia. Ya'qubi (d. 897) asserted that all of Yemen used to be Jewish, whereas Ibn Hazm (d. 1064) says it was all of Himyar plus parts of Kinda that were Jewish. This literature also stresses the importance of the Jewish community of Medina and its tribes, most prominently the Banu Nadir, the Banu Qaynuqa, and the Banu Qurayza. Nevertheless, evidence regarding the size and nature of a Jewish Medinan community remains phantasmal in the pre-Islamic evidence.