Abraha

Abraha, the Aksumite commander who made himself independent ruler of Yemen, built a cathedral meant to outshine the Kaaba — and marched on Mecca with an elephant, the campaign Arab memory remembers as the Year of the Elephant.

He had originally been a commander in the Aksumite expedition that ended the rule of Dhu Nuwas in Himyar, and he became the de facto ruler of Yemen under the nominal suzerainty of the Negus ¹. He built the church of al-Qullays in San'a, a house of worship which, the sources say, he meant to draw the Arabs' pilgrimage away from Mecca.

The march on Mecca followed, with an elephant at its head. The tradition places it in the year of the Prophet ﷺ's birth (around 570 CE); the inscriptional evidence that scholars favour points to an earlier date, around 552 CE — the museum records both dates ^{1 2}. In the Qur'anic account (sura al-Fil), the army is destroyed by birds hurling stones; the Sira adds that the elephant knelt and refused to advance ³.

However the campaign is reconstructed, "the Year of the Elephant" became the calendar peg of Meccan memory — the year from which everything afterwards in the city was dated, including the Prophet's birth.

The Sealed Nectar records that Aryat ruled Yemen on behalf of the Abyssinian king after the occupation of 525 CE, until he was assassinated by Abraha, one of his army commanders, who took over in his place after winning the Abyssinian king's favour. It was this Abraha who recruited troops to demolish the Kaaba, and he and his soldiers became known as the People of the Elephant ^{4 5}. Once he had consolidated his hold on Yemen's government, he pursued the spread of Christianity with great energy, and built a church in Yemen that was called the Yemeni Kaaba; he wanted to divert the Arabs' pilgrimage to it and to demolish the House of God in Mecca ⁶. After the Battle of the Elephant, the Yemenis appealed to the Persians, who drove out the Abyssinians by 575 CE ⁴.

The Encyclopaedia of Islam (2nd ed.) entry describes Abraha as a Christian king of South Arabia in the middle of the sixth century. The Muslim stories about his expedition against Mecca, in the year of Muhammad's birth, are folklore attached to his name. The article relies instead on Procopius and the Himyaritic inscriptions: an Abyssinian king invaded South Arabia before 531, and Abraha, once a slave of a Byzantine merchant of Adulis, seized the throne from the puppet ruler. His long inscription on the Ma'rib dam records the quelling of a revolt, the reception of embassies from Abyssinia, Byzantium, Persia and Hira, and the repair of the dam. ⁷