1. 1. XX. THE PRE-ISLAMIC ARABIAN ELEMENT 9

influence which occur there, and which will be noticed later^, date

in the main from this or a later period.

At this period sun-worship was flourishing both in Southern

Arabia and among the Himyaritic colonists of northern Abyssinia ^

and the worship of the same deity that survived at Talmis (Kalabsha)

until the time of Justinian^ may well have formed a bond of sympathy between Himyarite and Nubian through the medium of Abyssinia and so have facilitated and encouraged intercourse between the two.

Pliny, as we have already seen, even quotes Juba to the efl^ect that

the Nile dwellers from Aswan to Meroe were not Ethiopians but

Arabians^—a statement which though obviously exaggerated may be

taken as containing at least some grain of truth. There is, too, a

tradition^ that Abu Malik, one of the last of the true Himyarite

dynasty, made an expedition into the Bega country in quest of

emeralds and there perished with most of his army. The event on which this tale is founded probably occurred during the early decades

of the Christian period^.

XIX In 25 B.C. Augustus, under the impression that the merchan-

dize brought to the Red Sea ports by the Arabs was produced by

Arabia, commissioned Aelius Gallus, the Prefect of Egypt, to conquer

that country'.

This expedition was a failure ; but about thirty years later, having

learned that the most valuable merchandize brought by the Arabs came originally from India, and desiring a monopoly for ships from Egyptian ports, the Romans imposed a 25 per cent, import duty on goods from Arabian ports and destroyed Adane, the chief trading

centre of them all^. For about two centuries Roman shipping was

developed at the expense of the Arab^, but the old freedom of inter-

course between the two coasts does not seem to have been checked

thereby, and by the time of Diocletian (284-305 a.d.) the Axumites

of Abyssinia and the Himyarites of the Yemen had entirely regained

the trade ascendancy ^°.

XX These two peoples, closely connected by race, were now united by the bond of a common religion. Axum had been finally converted

^ See Index, sub "Himyar."

- Cp. Van Dyck, pp. 18 and 38; and see Part II, Chap. 2, xxvi.

^ Letronne, Materiaux....

* " Quin et accolas Nili a Syene non Aethiopuxn populos sed Arabum esse dicit usque Meroen." Pliny, Bk vi, para. 34.

^ Caussin de Perceval, i, 82; Van Dyck, p. 18.

* Caussin de Perceval puts the date of Abu Malik's birth in 31 a.d.

' Milne, pp. 19, 20. * Ibid. p. 34.

' Cp. Muir, Life of Mahomet, pp. Ixxix, Ixxx. He attributes to this cause the northward migration of the Kuda'a and Beni Azd.

^° Milne, p. 94.