lo THE PRE-ISLAIMIC ARABIAN ELEMENT 1. 1. xx.

to Christianity by Frumentius about 330 a.d., and the faith spread very rapidly throughout Abyssinia. The Yemen had been converted half a century earlier and remained nominally Christian until about 500 A.D. when the king, Dhu Nawas, a descendant of Abraha, adopted Judaism-.

XXI Both Anastasius (491-518) and Justinus I (518-527) sent embassies to the Himyarites seeking their aid to check the increasing inroads of the Persians by an attack in the rear; but their plans were nullified by the trouble that had arisen between the Himyarites and the Axumites as a result of the persecution of Christians by Dhu Nawas. Elesbaan, king of Axum, invaded the Yemen and subdued it about 522 A.D.*, and until about the end of the century it remained subject to Abyssinia, though the actual administration remained in the hands of the Himyarites.

XXII The last of the Himyarite viceroys was Sayf, the son of Dhu Yazan and grandson of the Dhu Nawas mentioned above. This man, with the aid of the Persians, succeeded in driving most of the Abyssinians out of el Yemen and enslaving the rest. Some of these latter, however, murdered him about 608 a.d. and he was buried at Sana'a. The Persians then occupied the country until it was conquered from them by the Muhammadans in 634.

Now, curiously enough, this Sayf ibn Dhu Yazan is fabled to have founded the kingdom of Kanem. That he did not do so is quite certain, great traveller though he is related to have been in Arab tradition'. But during the tumultuous years which ushered in the seventh century in Arabia and immediately preceded Islam, there may have been, and probably was, some emigration from the Yemen to Africa, and it is not outside the bounds of possibility that some of these Himyarites penetrated to the far west, called themselves members of the royal family of el Yemen and were accepted as such by the ignorant natives.

Letronne, loc. cit.

Van Dyck, pp. 20, 21. The legend that a Himyarite founded a dynasty in Bornu at the end of the sixth century (Nachtigal ap. Schurtz, loc. cit. pp. 534, 582) is curious but unsupported by evidence.

Milne, pp. 103, 104. * Procopius, De Bell. Pcrs. i, 19 {ap. Bent, p. 178).

'' Van Dyck, pp. 21-24, and Abu el Fida, pp. 118, 119.

* He appears under the names "Sayf ibn Dhu Yazan," "Muhammad Sayf Ullah," or "Sayf ibn Hasan." See Carbou, i, 4-7, Barth, 11, 261, 262, 268, 269, 633, and Nachtigal.

' Abu el Fida, loc. cit.

** Cp. Carbou, loc. cit. and Barth, 11, 269. I suppose Sultan Bello to refer to this movement when he speaks of certain Berber slaves and conscripts in el Yemen as rebelling against the Himyarites and being forced in consequence to emigrate to the African coast. "They then went to Kanoom, and settled there, as strangers, under the government of the Tawarek, who were a tribe related to them, and called