Kālēb (r. ca. 510–540 CE)

Kālēb was a Christian king of Aksum who launched no fewer than four invasions of South Arabia during the first half of the sixth century CE, one of which he led in person. He pursued a policy of governing South Arabia through Christian Himyarite puppet rulers, and to that end he brought to power Maʿdīkarib Yaʿfur during the invasion of 518 and Sumūyafaʿ Ashwaʿ during that of 529.

Kālēb was the son of his immediate predecessor, Tāzēnā, and bore as an alternative name ʾƎlla ʾAṣbəḥā “He who brought the dawnˮ. This alternative name gave rise to Ἐλεσβαάς, the name by which Kālēb is most commonly called in Greek sources. As an indication of the ideological importance of South Arabia to Kālēb, RIÉth 191, a Gǝʿǝz inscription from Aksum, is written in the consonantal musnad script of pre-Islamic South Arabia and presents a title that is inspired in part by the so-called Very Long Royal Title borne by Himyarite kings since the fifth century, the chief difference being the addition of names of African vassals, thus “King of Aksum and Ḥimyar and Dhū-Raydān and Sabaʾ and Salḥīn and Ṭawdum and Yamanāt and Tihāma and Ḥaḍramawt and all of their Arabs, and of the Beja and the Nubians and the Kushites and Ṣəyāmō and the DRBTˮ (RIÉth 191/7–10). The same inscription refers in passing to what appears to be the invasion of South Arabia in 518, judging from the fact that Ḥayyān Thaʿlabān Dhū-Shamīr (ḥyn s¹lbn z-s¹mr [RIÉth 191/34–35]) is likely the Ḥayyān (ḥywnʾ) who, according to the Book of the Himyarites, led the Aksumite army during Kālēb’s first invasion of South Arabia (Moberg 1924: 3b). This invasion was ostensibly launched in defense of South Arabia’s Miaphysite Christian community, at that time the target of persecution by Himyarite Jews. This initial invasion brought to power Maʿdīkarib Yaʿfur, whose authority was enforced by a contingent of Aksumite troops stationed at Ẓafār.

Maʿdīkarib Yaʿfur’s reign was cut short in 522 by an uprising led by the Jewish Himyarite Yūsuf Asʾar Yathʾar, who revived the persecution of Miaphysite Christians, including a massacre of the Aksumite residents of Ẓafār followed, in the autumn of 523, by a further massacre of the Christian community of Najrān. The Aksumites responded in the spring of 529 with a punitive campaign that overthrew and killed Yūsuf and brought to power Sumūyafaʿ Ashwaʿ. As with the first invasion, that of 529 is likely to have had geo-strategic as well as economic motives, not least given the fact that, by controlling both sides of the Bāb al-Mandab, the Aksumites effectively controlled all traffic to and from the Red Sea, while from the oasis of Najrān they controlled all caravan traffic to and from South Arabia. Nevertheless, Greek and Syriac texts leave no doubt that Aksumite military intervention in South Arabia was infused with religious ideology, something which is also expressed in the Gəʿəz inscriptions from Yemen, which frequently quote Biblical verses in their presentation of the invasion of 529: RIÉth 195 from Maʾrib, RIÉth 263, RIÉth 264, and Ẓafar 08-077 from Ẓafār, and RIÉth 265 and RIÉth 266, of unknown provenance (Drewes 2019: 248–255, 279–285, 357–360; Müller 2013: passim).

Like his predecessor, Sumūyafaʿ Ashwaʿ did not reign for long. Some time after 531 he too was overthrown, not, as before, by a local uprising but by a general in the Aksumite army which had invaded South Arabia in 529. This general, a former slave named Abraha, thwarted two punitive campaigns launched by Kālēb to remove him from power, while Kālēb himself abdicated the throne ca. 540 and spent the remainder of his life as a monk. Abraha remained in power as king of Ḥimyar while paying tribute, at least for a time, to Kālēb’s successor Wāʿzēb.

George Hatke

References and suggested reading

Sources

• Drewes, A.J. 2019. Receuil des inscriptions de lʼÉthiopie des périodes pré-axoumite et axoumite. Tome III - Traductions et commentaires. B. Les inscriptions sémitiques (Aethiopische Forschungen, 85). Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag.
• Book of the Himyarites / ed. Moberg: 1924. The Book of the Himyarites: Fragments of a Hitherto Unknown Syriac Work, ed. and trans. A. Moberg. Lund: C.W.K. Gleerup.
• Müller, W.W. 2013. Äthiopische Inschriftenfragmente aus der himjarischen Haupstadt Ẓafār. Aethiopica 15: 7-21.

Studies

• Beaucamp, J., F. Briquel-Chatonnet & C.J. Robin (eds) 2010. Juifs et chrétiens en Arabie aux Ve et VIe siècles : regards croisés sur les sources. Actes du colloque de novembre 2008. Paris: Association des amis du Centre d’histoire et civilisation de Byzance.
• Gajda, I. 2009. Le royaume de Ḥimyar à l’epoque monothéiste: L’histoire de l’Arabie du Sud ancienne de la fin du IVe siècle de l’ère chrétienne jusqu’à l’avénement de l’islam. Paris: AIBL.
• Robin, C.J. 2012. Arabia and Ethiopia, in S.F. Johnson (ed.) The Oxford Handbook of Late Antiquity. Oxford: Oxford University Press: 247–332.

_{Atlernate spellings: Kālēb, Kaleb, ʾƎlla ʾAṣbəḥā, Ella Aṣbeḥā, Ella Asbeha, Ella Atshaha, Ellasbas, Elesboas}