تختگاه آدولیس: جنگ‌های دریای سرخ در آستانۀ ظهور اسلام

by Glen W. Bowersock, مهناز بابایی

Just prior to the rise of Islam, in the sixth century AD, southern Arabia was embroiled in a holy war between Christian Ethiopians and Jewish Arabs. The Jewish kingdom, composed of ethnic Arabs who had converted to Judaism more than a century before, had launched a bloody pogrom against Christians in the region. The ruler of Ethiopia, who claimed descent from the union of Solomon and the Queen of Sheba and even was rumored to possess an object no less venerable than the Ark of the Covenant, aspired both to protect the persecuted Christians and to restore Ethiopian control in the Arabian Peninsula. Though little known today, this was an international war that involved both the Byzantine Empire, who had established Christian churches in Ethiopia beginning in the fourth century, and the Sasanian Empire in Persia, who supported the Jews in a proxy war with Byzantium.
Our knowledge of these events derives mostly from an inscribed throne at the Ethiopian port of Adulis seen and meticulously described by a Christian merchant known as Cosmos in the sixth century. Trying to decipher and understand this monument takes us directly into religious conflicts that occupied the nations on both sides of the Red Sea in late antiquity. Using the writings of Cosmas and archaeological evidence from the period, historian G. W. Bowersock offers a narrative account of this fascinating but overlooked chapter in pre-Islamic Arabian history. The extraordinary story told in Throneof Adulis provides an important and much neglected background for the rise of Islam as well as the collapse of the Persian Empire before the Byzantines.

Genres: History, Islam, Nonfiction, Africa, Middle East, Ethiopia, Christianity

160 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2013

About the author

Glen Warren Bowersock is a contemporary American scholar of the ancient world. He is the author of over a dozen books and has published over 300 articles on Greek, Roman, and Near Eastern history and culture as well as the classical tradition.

Reviews

[Steve Cran · Rating 3 out of 5]

It is not well known but before the advent of Islam during a time of upheaval and war between the Persian Empire and the Byzantines, there was a militant Jewish Kingdom in Southern Arabia. This kingdom was called the Himyarite and it’s location was in Yemen. I have always been fascinated with Yemen and all aspects of its culture, including their own minorities the Yemenite Jews.
Across the Red Sea from this kingdom was Ethiopia, whose capital was in Axum. They were a Christian country. Back in those times most Christians were allied with the Byzantines while Pagan were divided. The Jews both in Israel/Palestine and Yemen were allied with the Persians. This Christian country would eventually over take the Jewish Kingdom of the Himyarites. It was these event that would help lead up to the ad vent of Islam. Seems that everyone back then was rather hardline.
Prior to full independence the Himyarite were dominated by the Kingdom of Axum. The reason why Axum left the Himyarites was that problems were brewing in Ethiopia. This enabled the Himyaarite to taste some freedom for a bit. But there was always Christian agitation, and the fomentation of rebellion. Christians acts of terrorism were occurring on Jewish Himyarite soil. So Joseph Dhu Nawwas retaliated by storming Najran and locking all the Christians in a Church and burning it with them inside. This sparked the Axumite invasion of Himyar.
The main account of this invasion was told by a travelling historian named Cosmas several years after the invasion and by then the Himyarites were pretty much history. King Kaleb king of Axum. Sat on a throne that was located in Adulis. Adulis was some 20 miles north of an Ethiopian harbor that emptied into the say and south from the capital of Axum. The throne had inscription that praised the king. The inscription were also in greek and had some documentation of Ptolemaic invasions of Palestine and and Mesopotamia. The Pagan Ethiopians prayed to a war god named Mahrem, a war god comparable to Aries. The inscriptions were in Greek. Apparently the Ethiopians were fond of these thrones.
After Kaleb took over Himyar he retired to a Monastery. Everntually Abraha would take over Himyar by force and he was not the best leader. In either case the Himyarites never regained control of their land.
Joseph Dhu Nawas fought back as well he could. Even erected a chain to stop the incoming ships. He would be last seen riding his horse into the sea. It is rumored that the Ethiopians were assisted by byzantine troops. Persian reinforcements never arrived to help their Jewish allies. Persia had control of it’s lands and some Arab tribes in the peninsula. Byzantium had Palestine, Egypt and their own territory. To bolster their control there was some assistance given to the new religion of Islam from the Byzantine.
All this set the stage for the coming of Islam. There was more then one hajira. The most well known is when Muhammad fled Mecca and went to Medina. The secend was when followers of Muhammad went to Axuman many remained there.
The book is short and scholarly. Most of the sources are in Syriac and are almost untrackable or too expensive to get a hold of. This does not detract from the scholarly value of the book. It is only 150 pages worth of information and over half the book is footnote. If you are expecting a long read you will be disappointed.

[Charles Haywood · Rating 4 out of 5]

When we think of Late Antiquity, we usually think of Rome, either its decline in the West or its continuation in the East. When we are feeling particularly adventurous, we may think of the Sassanid Persians, or ponder the stirrings of the Franks in the dark forests of Gaul. We usually don’t think of the farther reaches of the Red Sea—Ethiopia, the Horn of Africa, and what are today the oil- and blood-soaked sands of Saudi Arabia and Yemen. But in the several centuries after Christ, all these were very much part of the known world, if somewhat peripheral. The "Throne of Adulis" reconstructs, from fragmentary evidence, those centuries, through the prism of wars conducted across the Red Sea.

What this short book offers is a glimpse, a momentary glimpse, of this part of the world before Islam swept over much of it and erased it as it had been. This excellent work, by the well-known classical scholar G. W. Bowersock, is not really meant for the layman. Getting much out of it requires either deep background knowledge of Late Antiquity or a lot of time spent looking up names and places. In sections the book is very dry, not a surprise since it revolves around the analysis and interpretation of monument inscriptions, used because very few other locally-written records survive detailing this area of the world in the relevant time period, roughly A.D. 300 to A.D. 700. It’s worth the effort, though—for the attentive reader, Bowersock opens a door to an exotic and little-known past, where the ambitions and deeds of long-dead kings still echo in the present.

Much of what Bowersock offers is fitting together pieces of a puzzle, using clues within inscriptions to tease out facts not themselves obvious from the inscriptions. Thus, if a king uses a particular adjective, such as the Greek megas, meaning great, this places an inscription within a particular time period when that usage was fashionable. References to campaigns or battles that are otherwise obscure can become comprehensible if tied to details in better-known histories or travel accounts written elsewhere. Still, even the names and dates of many of the kings of the areas surrounding the Red Sea are totally unknown; others are known only from their presence on coinage. Moreover, the areas farther south from the Red Sea are almost utterly opaque, though known of from Ethiopian inscriptions that memorialize wars and campaigns against their rulers. From this thin stock, Bowersock manages to spin a story that is not only interesting to the persistent reader, but to tie it causally to the rise of Islam.

The eponymous throne was an actual throne, of inscribed marble cut from a single block, although it disappeared long ago. It was set up as propaganda in Adulis, a port city in the Gulf of Zula (known until recently as Annesley Bay), in today’s Eritrea and across the Red Sea from what is now Sanaa, the largest city in Yemen. Adulis was important because it was the port from which the ancients reached Axum, the capital city of Ethiopia and the seat of its kings (and where, to this day, the Ethiopian Orthodox claim the Ark of the Covenant resides in one of their churches, the Church of Our Lady Mary of Zion). We only know about the throne because in the sixth century it was described in detail, including a transcription of its Greek inscription, by a Christian traveler-monk, known to us as Cosmas Indicopleustes (the name, not his real one, means “Indian Voyager,” and he is known to us primarily as the maker of important early world maps).

It is not entirely clear which Ethiopian king set up the throne in the late second or early third century A.D.—it may have been Gadra, or another, Sembrouthes. Regardless, the point of the throne was not to be sat on, but to record for public consumption what the king claimed were his conquests and ruled lands. Some of those were merely tribes and petty kingdoms around Axum, but there was also much focus on wars against the powerful Nubian nation of Meroë (confusingly in ancient sources often also called Ethiopia, a reference to the dark skin color of the Nubians), including noting how the king fought his enemies knee-deep in snow. Most important of all, in that time and for our purposes, was the Axumite king’s claim to have conquered and ruled across the Red Sea in South Arabia, in the land of Himyar, roughly what is now Yemen. The throne was placed in Adulis because its port was the launching point for invasions of Himyar, and the king boasted how he had restored Axumite power over Himyar.

Long after the throne was set up, in the middle of the fourth century, Ethiopia became Christian, under the king Aezanas. He also commanded the carving of similar inscriptions boasting of his power over Himyar, now laced with Christian phraseology and giving thanks to Christ, not to Ares. But now, the king lied, for by A.D. 270, the Ethiopians had been driven from Arabia, under circumstances now lost. Regardless, we can see from Aezanas’s claim, along with other evidence, that irredentism was important to all the Axumite kings. They desired, very much, to regain their rule across the Red Sea. Again, the history of Ethiopia and Himyar during these times, and of Arabia as well, is largely unknown, and appears to us mostly in Byzantine histories, primarily connected to struggles with the Persians over control of Red Sea trade. But in the sixth century Ethiopia and Himyar briefly assumed broader importance, when the long irredentism of the Ethiopian kings finally became more than talk, in the form of a religious war against Himyar.

For when the polytheist Ethiopians converted, so did the Arab polytheist Himyarites—to strict Judaism, not Christianity. As Bowersock notes, from A.D. 380 onwards polytheism disappeared completely and permanently from both South Arabia and Ethiopia, though it persisted among the Arab tribes in the rest of Arabia. (He rejects the earlier-fashionable idea that Himyar was merely a quasi-Jewish state, where an existing form of pseudo-monotheism adopted some Jewish trappings.) Reinforcing the confessional nature of the Himyarite state, the kingdom developed a sharp focus on persecuting its very large Christian minority, explicitly to force conversions. (How there came to be so many Christians in Himyar is unclear, although it probably has something to do with Ethiopian influence in the region.) The Himyarites were strongly allied to the Persians to their north, who sought support against their Byzantine enemies. And in the late fifth and early sixth centuries, the kings of Himyar, especially their most famous, Yusuf (also known as Dhu Nawas), conducted pogroms against Christians, including the throwing of Christians into pits filled with fire. Unwisely, he publicly boasted of his deeds to both the Byzantines and the Sassanids, as well as representatives of the sheikhs of the desert. It wasn’t that he was dumb—presumably he wanted to reinforce Persian support and impress the sheikhs, thereby insulating himself from possible Byzantine reprisals. In retrospect, though, it didn’t work out for him.

It was the most spectacular of these pogroms, in the Christian city of Najran, in A.D. 523, killing hundreds or thousands, that provoked the Ethiopian kings to put force behind their centuries-old claims. The Axumite king, Kaleb, a devout Christian, quickly responded with a massive invasion force, in A.D. 525. In preparation for the invasion, Kaleb asked Cosmas Indicopleustes to transcribe the throne’s inscription and send him a copy, which is why we know of it at all. Presumably Kaleb intended to use the earlier inscription as moral support for his military campaign. Only by chance did Cosmas include the inscription in a travel book he later wrote, which is why we know of it.

The invasion was a purely Ethiopian initiative. The Byzantines did not directly assist the invasion, though they were no doubt happy to see it; they were far away and they were Chalcedonian Christians while the Ethiopians were Monophysites, always causing a coolness between them. Kaleb (pictured on the cover of this book) was swiftly victorious, killing Yusuf and restoring a Christian kingdom in Himyar under Axumite control. Then he retired to a monastery, and disappeared from history (and is honored as a saint by the Orthodox Church).

Kaleb’s victory didn’t last long, however. His nominee for the new king of Himyar was soon overthrown by the Christians there, ending Axumite influence in Himyar almost as swiftly as it was achieved, but not restoring Jewish control. The Byzantines leapt into the power gap, seeing an opportunity to wrong-foot the Persians by further disrupting their influence over Red Sea trade. In 552, with Byzantine support, the successor Christian king of Himyar, Abraha, launched an invasion into central Arabia, towards Mecca, aimed at reducing Persian influence over all of Arabia. (This episode is recorded in the Qur’an, taking place supposedly in the year of Muhammad’s birth, and miraculously repelled by birds that pelted Abraha’s army with stones.) Whether from clever birds or not, Abraha failed, and the Persians struck back with a large-scale invasion of Himyar, in cooperation with the Jews, that expelled the Axumites for the last time, in 575.

We all know what happened next. Into this chaos of shifting power and multiple confessions stepped Muhammad, offering a new religion to bind all Arabs together. His famous hijira in 622, to Yathrib, renamed Medina, was probably in part the result of Byzantine efforts, both directly and through Arab allies, to undermine the Persians and their Jewish allies in the city (not dissimilar to Lenin’s journey to the Finland Station). Muhammad succeeded beyond all likely possibility. Within a few decades, the Sassanids were gone entirely, the reach of the Byzantines irrecoverably shrunk, and Islam began its short golden age followed by its long decline. The throne, like most everything else in this narrative, disappeared from history, subsumed underneath the new order and the movement of peoples—though Ethiopia itself did not change much for the next fourteen hundred years, and remains Christian to this day.

Two history lessons, often forgotten, pop out of this narration. The first is that before Christianity came to dominate the Middle East, Jewish conflict with, and persecution of, Christians was common. Himyar was merely one example. It is often forgotten that the Persians conquered Jerusalem, a Christian city part of the Eastern Roman Empire, in 614—forgotten because in 637 Muslim conquest of Jerusalem made the Persian conquest irrelevant. But when the Persians conquered Jerusalem, as Bowersock records, the Jews assisted, and celebrated as the Persians slaughtered the Christians, just as they later similarly helped the Muslims conquer Christian Visigothic Spain. That’s not especially notable, given the rivalry between Jews and Christians, but contradicts the usual stereotype that it’s Christians who are solely responsible for problems between Christians and Jews. Later Christian mistreatment of Jews in the Middle Ages, widespread though often exaggerated in scope and impact, has given us the false view that Jews were always and everywhere a sympathetic mistreated minority. In reality, they just lost out in power struggles, first to the Christians, and then to the Muslims. Antipathy between monotheist religions is inevitable; none of this should be surprising, or suggests that Christians are worse-behaved than Jews, or vice-versa. Theologically Christians are supposed to be more forgiving and less aggressive against their enemies, but actual behavior by Christian rulers, with some exceptions, mostly is not all that different from the behavior of all powerful rulers, encapsulated in the Melian Dialogue—“the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must.”

The second history lesson is about the origins of Islam. The mechanics of its formation as influenced by local and regional wars are outlined above, but the ferment around the Red Sea had an additional effect on the creation of Islam. It is often noted, though sotto voce nowadays in order to avoid being killed, that the Qur’an is pretty obviously merely a mashup of Christianity and Judaism, taken from both their sacred scriptures and from their legends and folktales, along with an admixture of creativity from Muhammad. The history narrated by Bowersock makes how this happened clear. All agree that Muhammad, a merchant by trade, must have come into contact with Jewish and Christian merchants, and to that is usually ascribed his knowledge of Judaism and Christianity. But that’s only part of it. This book shows how all the pagan Arab tribes were surrounded by far more powerful monotheistic kingdoms, Christian or Jewish, to which they often had to bow. And Arabia was filled with Jews, not just in Himyar, who had lived there for a very long time—according to contemporary belief, ever since the Emperor Vespasian’s destruction of Jerusalem in the first century A.D., but perhaps for even longer. The Jews of Yathrib, for example, whom Muhammad exterminated, had been there for centuries, not far from, and supported by, their brethren in the Holy Land and in Himyar. Christians, too, were widespread throughout Arabia.

Thus, the idea that the Arabia of Muhammad was a barbaric polytheistic land, of the Muslim jahiliyyah, to which Muhammad revealed a fresh type of religion, monotheism, is a myth. It is easy to see how Muhammad got the detailed knowledge of Judaism and Christianity to cobble together into his new religion, tailoring it to especially appeal to the desert dwellers of Arabia. Between Islam’s pull and the power vacuum resulting from the exhaustion of the Sassanids and the Byzantines, it is less surprising that Islam spread as it did. True, we would all have been better off if the Ethiopians had established and kept sway over all Arabia, and Islam had been strangled in its crib. We can see from the world this book compellingly evokes how that could have been the result. But that’s not the way it went. Too bad.

[Truls Ljungström · Rating 3 out of 5]

Denna bok behandlar de religiösa och politiska relationerna mellan Etiopien och Yemen under 500-talet efter Kristus. Den gör detta utifrån skriftliga, numismatiska och epigrafiska källor, och förefaller inte göra några allt för stora hopp i sina tolkningar, även om detta naturligtvis är svårbedömt för en person som inte är specialiserad på ämnet. Det avslutande kapitlet försöker placera islams födelse i den politiska kontext som beskrivits, vilket kompletterar den traditionella förståelsen kring effekterna av det långa kriget mellan Byzans och Persien i Syrien och Mesopotamien.

Det nya för mig var dels genomgången av konflikten mellan de etiopiska och bysantinska kyrkorna, dels information om himyarrikets enligt författaren dominerande och statsreligiösa judendom. Dessa spelar roll eftersom de kontextualiserar de ökade kostnaderna för handel på indiska oceanen via nilkanalen, och eftersom de ger en politisk förklaring till den persiska toleransen av judendom under denna period.

Boken är välskriven och användbar inom sitt specialområde. Har du hittat den är det sannolikt att du har en fråga den faktiskt kan besvara, osagt om svaret är korrekt eller ej.

[C. B. · Rating 5 out of 5]

A really satisfying book. Gloriously specific. An in-depth account of Axum's invasion of Himyar(modern Yemen) in 525 AD, and the events surrounding it. The book has an engaging and entertaining flow, almost like it's an excerpt from the grand, up-to-date history of Ethiopia we are so direly in need of.

[Alberto Martín de Hijas · Rating 3 out of 5]

Una aportación interesante sobre La ocupación etíope de Yemen en la antigüedad tardía. Son hechos muy poco conocidos y que aportan información que aclara mucho la situación política en la arabia pre-islámica.

[Karen · Rating 3 out of 5]

Brilliant, but not a book for a novice of this era!

[Aaron Stevens · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very interesting bit of scholarship, but not really enough there to blow out into a full book.

[Geoff]

"Our knowledge of these events derives mostly from an inscribed throne at the Ethiopian port of Adulis seen and meticulously described by a Christian merchant known as Cosmos in the sixth century."

From the New York Review of Books:

" The Throne of Adulis shows Bowersock at full bent. In it, he reveals an unimaginably distant world, where the Indian Ocean touched societies caught between equatorial Africa and the deep desert of Arabia. Byzantines knew of these strange lands as sources of their incense, gold, and ivory. Occasionally, even a giraffe from the wide savannahs of East Africa and the Sudan would appear in Constantinople, to be placed in the menagerie of the imperial palace. There the gangly and voracious beast would be fed with leafy branches from the hand of the emperor himself, to symbolize the wide reach of a ruler capable of taming exotic beasts from the far ends of the earth—whether these were giraffes or barbarians.

This is where Bowersock begins—in Adulis (on the modern Gulf of Zula, in Ethiopian Eritrea) and in Axum, a royal capital set back from the coast, in the foothills of the mountains of Ethiopia. He studies a remarkable series of inscriptions. These inscriptions are in three languages—in Greek and in two languages that were outliers from the great Semitic languages of the Middle East: Ge’ez (Ethiopic) and Sabaic. Greek was then still a lingua franca beyond the territories of Rome. Looking beyond these unusual monuments, Bowersock draws on similar inscriptions from both sides of the Red Sea to add a whole new chapter to the history of the ancient world in its last century. He shows how, throughout the sixth century AD, the kingdoms on either side of the Red Sea—the Kingdom of Himyar in southern Arabia and the Ethiopian kingdom of Axum, just across the sea—were locked in conflict, with momentous consequences for their neighbors."
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archi...

Not my usual reading fare, but sounds interesting, just the place-names are getting me all word-drunk...

[Jackson Cyril · Rating 5 out of 5]

A kingdom of ethnic Arabs converts to Judaism in the Yemen in the 5th and 6th centuries, unleashes pogroms against its Christian subjects and is shortly overthrown by an Ethiopian invasion force with the support of the Byzantine emperor. This story can be dismissed as one of the many anomalies of history, but as G.W. Bowersock reveals in his short but masterful study The Throne of Adulis, much can be learned from this event. Driven by a desire to reveal the factors active in pre-Islamic Arabia which led to the meteoric rise and expansion of Islam, Bowersock, in this book, attempts to shed light on pre-existent conditions in the region which aided the progress of the new faith.
The throne of Adulis itself, an object we know only through the writings of a Greek traveler called Cosmos Indicopleustes (Cosmos the Indian sailor), seems to have been a large throne-like relic made of marble and ivory; large, but not large enough to accommodate a king, this strange object was described with great care by Cosmos. Much indeed, can be learned from it. It could not have been built but for the vibrant trade culture active in the Eastern Mediterranean at the time, as Ivory from NE Africa, and a specific sort of Greek marble both went into the construction of this object. Ivory trade, as we know from many sources, was quite active in Northern Africa during the days of the Ptolemies and the product found itself being shipped all over the Mediterranean.
The throne, on which was depicted the images of Greek heroes (Herakles in particular is named), contained inscriptions in both the classic Ethiopic language (Ge’ez) and Greek. Greek seems to have been the Lingua Franca of the region during the period— a certain Ethiopic king was even said to have learned it—not a simple feat, as classic Ethiopic, like Hebrew and Arabic, was a Semitic language, and Greek is not. Inscriptions in both Ethiopia and the Yemen, we find, were written in both the Ethiopic and Greek languages, with the Ethiopic being rendered in two scripts, unvocalized Ethiopic, and Sabaic (South Arabian).
This strange cosmopolitan culture, worshipping its polytheistic gods, seems to have come to an end in the late fourth century. Tribes of Jews and Christians rose in the region—and Cosmos himself later converted to Christianity. This conversion from polytheism to monotheism seems to have been total; to quote Christian Robin, an authority on the field, “Ce rejet du polythéisme est radical et définitif” (from Bowersock’s notes p. 154)—more on this later, but we are certain that the Christian groups in the Yemen maintained strong ties with the nearby Ethiopic kingdom, one of the oldest bastions of Christianity in the world.
But by the fifth and sixth centuries, a group of ethnic Arabs, who had converted to Judaism, established themselves as rulers of the region, known to us as the Kingdom of Himayar. As the Christians had ties to Ethiopia—and at least nominally—to Christian Byzantium, the Jewish Arabs allied with the Persian Sassanian empire; it is therefore worth looking at these events in the larger light of Byzantine-Sassanian relations, although such a reading can, if done without care, lead to a simplistic reading of this story, and dismissing it as simply another event in the ‘Cold War’ between these two great empires.
This Jewish Himayar kingdom, facing a large Christian population, attempted initially to coerce them into conversion. When these attempts failed, pogroms began, culminating in two large ones which led to a successful Christian invasion, led by an Ethiopian general with Byzantine support. An Ethiopian kingdom established in the region was extremely short-lived and by 571, the date of the Prophet Muhammad’s birth, the area had become again an extremely chaotic one, ruled and dominated by various tribes.
Robin’s claim, that the “rejection of polytheism” in the Yemen was both “radical and definitive”, faces stiff opposition from centuries of scholarship, which maintains, following the Qur’an, that the space in which the Prophet moved was occupied by polytheistic tribes. A modern school of scholarship on the other hand (led by Patricia Crone) argues, mainly using philological analysis of the word used for ‘pagan’ in the Qur’an, that the polytheists mentioned in the Qur’an were not, strictly speaking, polytheists. They were probably monotheists in the sense that the Hebrews of the oldest books of the Bible were monotheists; they believed in minor deities (the way the Old Testament Hebrews believed in the existence of Ba’al) and angels, but were hardly polytheists. Bowersock, though largely skeptical of these interpretations, suggests that perhaps the people of the region believed in something akin to the cult of saints in Christianity— believing perhaps in an innumerable chain of intercessors between the divine and the believer, but not polytheists in the strictest sense. Crone’s reading, almost entirely philological, is hardly convincing.
But the book does convincingly argue that the space in which the Prophet emerged was highly favorable to monotheist faith and the spreading of Islam. Sheathed in formidable philological, religious, archeological and historical research, Bowersock makes clear that Southern Arabia was a highly cosmopolitan region, with strong and active ties to the larger world, with vigorous trade routes highly favorable to the spreading of a religion and that the idea of monotheism had been rooted in the consciousness of the space for at least two centuries before Islam entered the scene. None of this, of course, diminishes the intellectual, economic and martial vigor involved in the spread of Islam, but it does help us better understand how (and why) Islam was able to spread with such prodigious speed.
The throne of Adulis, like the Kingdom of Himayar, is now largely known only to specialists. The throne disappeared after the Ethiopian defeat in the mid-sixth century and we do not know of its fate. The story of Himayar, of Arabs converting to Judaism, allying with Persians and murdering Christians seems to us unimaginably strange. We may even be inclined to dismiss it as an irrelevant aberration, but this strange kingdom, and its almost fantastical story, remain crucial for anyone trying to better understand a region and a religion whose influence was, and indeed is, writ large upon the pages of history.

[Christopher · Rating 2 out of 5]

I understand that its got very little to work with to talk about this remote but fascinating corner of history, but I felt like I was reading someone's powerpoint presentation in an unventilated classroom.

[Anthony Nelson · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting, but the marketing doesn't match up to what you get. This is a short bit of academic research, not a wild tale of ancient wars.

[Kathy · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Throne of Adulis is a very interesting and very detailed account of a little known time in history -- the 6th century invasion of Axum (Ethiopia) into Himyar (modern day Yemen) -- but some might find themselves a little bogged down with the text from time to time. This is because the author assumes the reader already has an understanding of the basics, I found myself regularly looking up people and places to better know what's going on. It's a good way to learn, but can make reading a bit of a slow go.

Also, I'm accustomed to using and reading "big words", but this guy has dug up some that I've never encountered before, and with nearly 60 years of reading under my belt, that's saying something. So again, I had to stop, look up the meaning of a word, then move on. As I said, a learning experience.

One thing that annoyed me (more than having to stop and look something up) was the occasional tendency of the author to repeat himself. For example, he writes of a 6th century geographer named Cosmas Indicopleustes, and on at least three different occasions points out that the name Cosmas means "world".

There are also very few illustrations or diagrams to help the reader better picture what is being described.

All my carping aside, it's a good book for someone who has a background in this time and place in history, or who is willing to take the time to dig into the subject matter, but definitely not something for the casual reader.

[Kay · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read this while working on a paper concerning the Himyarite conversion to Judaism, and while this book did contain some useful information toward that topic The Throne of Adulis is much more focused on Aksum. This makes sense since Adulis is an Aksumite city and the titular throne is the throne of an Aksumite king, but the sheer disparity on the information concerning the two kingdoms is a bit frustrating.

That said, as a book in itself it's an easy, straightforward read though I found Bowersock to be somewhat repetitive, especially in the middle of the text which is, on the whole, less grounded on specific texts. The final chapter is mostly about Islam and I didn't find it particularly relevant or useful in light of the rest of the text, especially because it was a rather technical discussion.

I also think that Bowersock could've engaged in more of a critical analysis of some of the Christian accounts of Yusuf's persecution of Christians at Najran, but I've found that's a common omission in works that deal with this subject.

All that said The Throne of Adulis is still a valuable, approachable work, though possibly less exciting and more scholarly than the title implies.

[Rusty del Norte · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Throne of Adulis covers a period & area of the world that has only recently been getting some attention. Based on inscriptions & translations of texts, it builds a picture of a turbulent area with a shared history.

The book gives a glimpse into the kingdom of Aksum/Axum. Little understood, Axum is the predecessor to Ethiopia. However, many of its ruins lay in what is now Eritrea. The book discusses the earliest references to encounters with the Greek world to the spread of Christianity, both of which greatly shaped the kingdom.

Yet, this book focuses more on the interactions between Axum & Saba/Himyar. It gives some detail on the military campaigns in Arabia by Axum as well as it's language - which has roots in South Arabian. Its pretty fascinating to read.

The book fleshes out as much as it can & it still an enjoyable read. It doesn't cover much from the other peoples in the area, which makes this book shorter & more focused. If you are interested in this area & time, give it a go.

[Rhiannon · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was distracted throughout by Bowersock's rhetorical flourishes. Every chapter--sometimes every page--has several instances of phrases like "There can be no doubt that..." "There can be little doubt that..." and "This can hardly be a coincidence." Saying so don't make it so. In fact, it makes me feel suspicious and mistrustful, which is something a history book should avoid.

Despite my mistrust, Bowersock is thorough and generally lays out his arguments clearly to paint a fascinating picture of Red Sea geopolitics around the sixth century.

[John Holmes III · Rating 4 out of 5]

Challenging work that needs to be restructured

I think Bowersock raises some compelling points in this work and I thoroughly enjoyed reading it, but their constant back-and-forth with "Introduction of this piece, followed by several paragraphs of explaining its importance" is confusing and hard to piece together. This is not to say the book is bad, just that it could be structured better so that it flows with a more tangible narrative. By the end of the book, it is more coherent, but that is more so by being grounded than it is an improvement of the work.

[Aatif Rashid · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of those marvelous works of scholarship that feels like magic. In 130 dense and concise pages, Bowersock uses a sixth century record of an Ethiopian monument (the titular throne) to flesh out the rich world of pre-Islamic Arabia and East Africa and make a compelling argument about the nature of the religious and political conflicts around the Res Sea in Late Antiquity.

[Zera Silver · Rating 4 out of 5]

An incredibly interesting look at an under examined part of history however it is very academic in its writing style and you would definitely want to already have some understanding of Ethiopian history and the political situation in the middle east at this time. Also be prepared for a lot of discussions of the titular throne.

[James Cobb · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fascinating story of an ethnic Arab Jewish kingdom that became the center of a power struggle between Byzantium, Persia and Ethiopia before the rise of Islam.

[Jay Fisher · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not well written.

[Sam Moyer · Rating 2 out of 5]

Poorly written and not convincingly argued. Even though the source material is extremely sparse, the reader still has a hard time keeping track of what evidence is being discussed from page to page.

[Matt · Rating 2 out of 5]

Horrible. Nothing to do with the title, just background material

[Aubrey]

Seminary!

Rlly interesting if you want to know more about the history right before the rise of Islam in Ethiopia, East Africa, and Southwest Arabia!

[Errol Orhan · Rating 5 out of 5]

A couple of years ago, I leafed through an old issue of the New York Review of Books. My father had a subscription to that magazine, and I noticed that he had marked the review of this particular book. My father rarely marked reviews, and I was yet to find out that he has a knack for singling out extraordinarily interesting books. This one seemed interesting enough, a bit obscure even, and though I would forget the title of the book, the image of its cover, a glorious and victorious King Kālēb, stayed with me.

A few years later, I had read a couple of other books which reviews my father had marked either in the NYRB, the TLS or the Guardian Weekly. They had been amazing and never failed to amaze. The prospect of my father's birthday, made me think of the glorious image of King Kālēb, and a google search of the words 'Ethiopia, Throne, New York Review' made me remember the title of this mysterious book. I ordered it, in the hope of ordering the perfect unexpected gift, and hoping that I would be able to read it after he had finished it.

I found the book in my old bedroom in my parent's house and figured that my father had put it there after he had finished it. I picked up the book, and asked my father if he knew about the events that are described in The Throne of Adulis. 'Well, now I do,' was his short answer. While he said those four words, his lips curled in a conspiring smile and his eyes shot little sparks of joy. I am happy I now know about these events as well.

[Stephen Shapiro · Rating 4 out of 5]

A fascinating book for those interested in Late Antiquity or the borderlands of Euro-centric history. Bowersock successfully presents Ethiopia and the Arabian peninsula as a Late Antique cockpit of the wider Mediterranean world, sitting astride the rich Indian Ocean trade routes, often in political turmoil, battered between the great empires (in this era, Byzantium and Persia). The only downside is that the evidence is fairly tenuous, so the story frequently has to stop to explain the epigraphy or archaeology. People who enjoyed this will probably also appreciate his Empires in Collision in Late Antiquity, which covers some of the same ground but has more on Persia and on the spread of early Islam.

[Jonathan · Rating 4 out of 5]

SO far I have only read one other book from the Emblems of Antiquity series and I have to say that for being of rather modest length they are quite meaty. Bowersock spins a thread that starts in the 2nd century B.C. and 800 years later ends with the emergence of Islam. The book raises some fascinating questions about the origin of Islam, its debts to Christianity, Judaism & Paganism - and its formative environment in the Arabian peninsula. The titular Throne is the key - and highlights how precarious our knowledge of the past is: coins, inscriptions and manuscript traditions.

[Lisa · Rating 3 out of 5]

The author clearly knows his subject, but I agree with the previous reviewer who said this is not a text for novices, and I freely admit I am one.

[Yoni T. · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very detailed work that is easy to follow. Impressed by accuracy in decoding the inscription.