The cautious conversion of the kings of Ḥimyar to monotheism in the fourth century CE was influenced by the beliefs of a local Jewish community. This chapter clarifies the relationship between South Arabian Jews and Jewish sympathizers and offers an interpretative framework for the monotheism of fourth- and fifth-century Ḥimyar, which contextualizes the choice of South Arabia’s elites to become Jewish sympathizers. The process of conversion to monotheism also shares features with the first stage of Christianity in Aksūm and the Graeco-Roman world, as well as the henotheism of pre-Islamic North Arabia. It argues that the Ḥimyarite kings’ cautious conversion follows a broad Late Antique trend which aimed to ease the transition for their subjects and/or to assume a neutral position towards the developments of the surrounding empires. In the brand-new kingdom of Ḥimyar, the cult of a single, institutionalized and translocal deity provided a strong mechanism for establishing identities that were reshaped in a wider syncretistic framework through a sociopolitical exploitation of cults characteristic of the broader late antique world.

The concluding chapter pulls the various strands together and answers one final question: what made the Arabian milieu capable of producing Scripture of such universal appeal as the Qur’ān?

In the sunny, austere central hall of the Pergamon Museum in Berlin, wrapping around the room’s walls like a serpent, then rising halfway to the ceiling on marble steps, stands a strident, if also fragmentary statement of empire. It is an unfinished wedding cake of a building. Tourists recline languidly on its ascent, like guests with nowhere to sit. The room is just too small; it is overtaken by the object on display: the Great Altar of Pergamon. The Altar, with its two sculptural friezes, the outer depicting the Battle of Gods and Giants, the inner, the tale of Telephos, son of Herakles and heroic ancestor of the Attalid dynasty, was discovered in 1871, the year in which the Second German Empire was born. The engineer Karl Humann stumbled upon the marble fragments while building infrastructure for Ottoman Turkey, making the Altar as we know it a pure product of German, French, and British competition for influence in the Middle East. Today, Turkey has regained confidence, and officials from the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation expect Ankara to ask for it back.

More than any other Hellenistic dynasty, the Attalids patronized city gymnasia. A much needed explanation for that curious philanthropic habit is provided, and it is argued that the Pergamenes helped transform the gymnasium into the “second agora” of the post-Classical polis. While the financial instability of the gymnasium and its agglomerative architectural ensemble made it an attractive target for royal donors, the ideological appeal was paramount. In the mid-second century BCE, the gymnasium may have represented itself as “the city writ small,” but this was a fiction, concocted by its elite membership and reinforced by the Attalids, ever anxious to present themselves as champions of the polis without ceding real power to the populace. The social distance of the gymnasium from other polis institutions was the critical factor for the entry of the Attalids, who partnered with towering civic benefactors to remake the space just as the royal capital reformed itself with a gymnasium as the anchor of the new urban plan.

A complete analysis of the fragmentary evidence for the Attalid fiscal system is presented, which aims to reveal those strategies of revenue seeking that were available to the kings after the territorial grant of the Settlement of Apameia. Generally, Pergamon’s direct taxes fell on communities, not landholders. The direct taxation of persons – poll taxes – seems to have been limited. The various forms of indirect taxation on movement, usage, and sale are analyzed, including the agoranomia of Toriaion. The personnel of tax collection in the Attalid kingdom are identified at two levels: the royal bureaucracy and the local tax farmers, who purchased tax contracts from polis authorities. Royal tax farmers as such did not exist. An assessment of taxation levels is offered. What becomes clear are the practical limits and enduring ideological framework within which the post-188 BCE Attalids attempted to expand revenues by deepening the incidence rather than the scope of taxation.

Having previously investigated the political and religious milieux of the north and the south of the Arabian Peninsula, this chapter sheds some light on the history of the Ḥijāz at the time of the rise of Islam. It aims to answer the following questions: what factors made the Ḥijāz a favourable environment for the emergence of a third scriptural monotheism? What was the religious context of sixth- and seventh-century Ḥijāz? What picture emerges from a comparative reading of the epigraphical and literary sources? The chapter discusses the polytheistic milieu of pre-Islamic Arabia immediately after the introduction. This discussion includes an analysis of the Qurʾānic passages which mention pagan idols, and argues the case for the existence of a henotheist Ḥijāz at the end of the sixth century. In the third section, an overview of the scriptural communities documented in the Ḥijāz is given. These scriptural groups heavily influenced and shaped the rise of Islam, as evident from even a superficial reading of the Qur’ān. Finally, section four analyses Muḥammad’s prophetic career.

This chapter aims to analyse the interactions between Jews and Christians in sixth-century South Arabia, offering some reflections on the broader Late Antique socio-economic and political map. The first part reconstructs the spread of Christianity in South Arabia and the events leading to the massacre of the Christians of Najrān in 523, presenting a comprehensive analysis of this period through a reading of literary and epigraphic material. It argues that economic reasons were the main motivations behind the negus’s invasion of South Arabia and that faith was exploited as a casus belli. Conversions tended to be the cumulative result of socio-economic networks and migrations, as the exchange of ideas followed that of resources. As such, the depiction of the massacre of Najrān as a ‘religious slaughter’ reflects more the ‘religious’ character of the available literary sources than the actual unfolding of the events. The second part of the chapter focuses on the Red Sea Christianities. It examines the religious allegiances of the Aksūmite negus Kālēb and the Ḥimyarite king Abraha, shedding light on the several stages involved in the Christianisation of these two regions and reconstructing the events that led to the collapse of Ḥimyar.