The Jewish Ritual Massacre of the Christian Community of Najran in 524 A.D.

The ritual massacre of Christians by jews in 524 A.D. at the town of Najran in what is now Saudi Arabia but is historically part of Yemen is one of those facts – along with the 614 A.D. genocide of Greek Christian women and children at the Mamilla Pool outside of the walls of Jerusalem following its capture by the Sasanian Empire (aka the Persians) – (1) that is almost completely forgotten outside of historians of pre-Islamic Arabia, the Byzantine Empire and the Sasanian Empire.

In large part because this is because events like this ritual massacre – along with the repeated genocidal anti-gentile revolts of the jews and Samaritans against the Byzantine Empire between the 300s and 600s - of non-jews by jews directly conflict with the picture drawn by jewish and pro-jewish historians of jewish history and jewish relations with non-jews, which always cast jews as the ‘victim of irrational hatred’ and as having ‘done nothing wrong’ because they were ‘meek and helpless’ in the face of gentile – specifically Christian at this point – ‘bigotry’ and the various popular uprisings – what we’d now call pogroms – against the jews were motivated primarily by ‘irrational hate’ and ‘religious fanaticism’.

The truth is rather less flattering to the jews with their violent plots to exterminate and/or enslave the gentiles of the Roman Empire – as well as precursors to it such as the Seleucid Empire, ancient Egypt and so on – didn’t simply stop when the Emperor Hadrian responded to yet another massive jewish conspiracy – and subsequent attempt - to exterminate non-jews across the Near East and North Africa in 132-136 A.D. in the Bar Kochba revolt with even more radical anti-jewish laws and the near-destruction of Judaism/the jewish community.

It took the just over two centuries to rebuild and recover their power which then resulted in their next bid for world domination in the form the Gallus revolt of 350-353 A.D. and the fact that jewish power was in no way broken is seen in the Emperor Julian – often falsely termed a philo-Semite when he was actually quite the opposite – (2) having been held to ransom by the jews of Antioch in 363 A.D. because they controlled the grain trade and were deliberately starving non-jews (and the Roman army) to increase their profit margins. (3)

Part of this picture that is often left out but is vital – as I’ve explained in detail elsewhere – (4) is the close relationship-cum-alliance between the Persian/Parthian Empires and the jews with the latter often acting as proxies of the former while the former often funded and armed them.

This picture extends both to the later massacre of Christian women and children at Mamilla Pool by the jews in 614 A.D. as well as the jewish ritual massacre of the Christians of Najran in 524 A.D.

The event itself is quite widely known and documented with the English diplomat, explorer, soldier and polymath Sir Richard Francis Burton commenting in his ‘The Jew, the Gypsy and El Islam’ that:

‘In the fifth century the Hebrew colony, which, flying from Syria to Palestine after the wars of Titus and Hadrian, settled near Yathrib (Medina), was powerful enough to murder the Viceroy of the Tobbaa, or Himyarite King, and to convert to Judaism, Du-nawas (A.D. 480), one of the last of that dynasty. He acquired the title “Lord of the Fiery Pit,” by burning alive, in a trench filled with combustibles, thousands of Christians of Nejeran at the instigation of the Jews.’ (5)

Burton’s dating in this passage has thrown some commentators off who mistakenly assumes this is when the massacre happened (6) when Burton’s dating refers to Yusuf Asʾar Yathʾar’s (aka Dhu Nuwas which literally means ‘He of the Sidelocks’) conversion to Judaism and not to the ritual massacre at Najran in 524 A.D nor Dhu Nuwas’ murder of the Yemenite King Lakhni'ah Yanuf Dhu Shanatir which occurred in 517 A.D

However, he summarizes the situation well in that Dhu Nuwas did indeed murder Dhu Shanatir – allegedly using a knife in his shoe – (7) and then proceeded to launch a violent religious persecution and war against Christians in Yemen and its environs which was so vicious and violent that it is actually mentioned in the Qu’ran (8) as being a persecution of Christians for being Christians by the jews. (9)

In essence what occurred was that Dhu Nuwas murdered Dhu Shanatir in 517 A.D. for dynastic and religious reasons – i.e., so he could take power but also because Dhu Nuwas was pro-Sassanid and may have actually been born in the Sassanian Empire to a jewess from what is now Iraq (10) as well as because Dhu Nuwas despised gentiles as a jew – (11) using the excuse that Dhu Shanatir was a homosexual paedophile which appears to have been at least somewhat true. (12)

Once he assumed power Dhu Nuwas appears to have appointed jews to run his military and government (13) and have even influenced the jews of Medina against Mohammed (hence Burton’s reference albeit Burton got who was influencing who backwards). (14) All while seeking to eliminate the Christians of Arabia and Yemen – who were largely Monophysites although the Nestorians later claimed it was them who had been persecuted – (15) who were viewed as agents of the Byzantine Empire and opposed to jewish and Sassanid interests as well as fighting against the Byzantines and their Christian allies the Ethiopian Empire. (16)

As part of this Dhu Nuwas marched to Najran with his (jewish) forces and gave the Christians of that town the opportunity to convert to Judaism or die. By all accounts nearly all – or at least most of – Najran’s Christian population chose to die rather than convert to Judaism, so Dhu Nuwas had a large trench dug with which he filled with wood and kindling then in a truly biblical ‘Holocaust’; he had his jewish subordinates throw thousands of the Christians of Najran into the burning trench and ensured that they were burned alive.

The motivation of this massacre is well-attested to have because the population of Najran were Christians and opposed to jewish influence with the reason given – jewish hatred of non-jews and Christians (who remember jews see as pagans) – (17) by a surviving rock inscription (Ja 1028) in Yemen from one of Dhu Nuwas’ jewish commanders which states that the ritual massacre was carried out ‘By the Lord of Jews. By the Highly Praised.’ (18)

In other words: this was a ritual massacre of thousands of Christians by jews for geopolitical as well as religious reasons that jews don’t want to talk about for obvious reasons since is disrupts their whole ‘jews are innocent victims of irrational bigotry’ narrative.

References

(1) See my article: https://karlradl14.substack.com/p/the-massacre-of-christians-at-mamilla

(2) See my article: https://karlradl14.substack.com/p/julian-the-apostate-on-the-jews

(3) See my article: https://karlradl14.substack.com/p/the-emperor-julians-attitude-to-the

(4) See my article: https://karlradl14.substack.com/p/tacitus-on-the-jews

(5) Sir Richard Burton, 1898, ‘The Jew, the Gypsy and El Islam’, 1st Edition, Hutchinson: London, pp. 115-116

(6) Phillip De Vier, 2001, ‘Blood Ritual’, 1st Edition, National Vanguard Books: Hillsboro, p. 79

(7) Alfred Guillaume, 1967, [1955], ‘The Life of Muhammad: A Translation of Ibn Ishaq's Sira Rasul Allah’, 1st Edition, Oxford University Press: New York, pp. 13–14

(8) Sura 85: 4-8

(9) Philip Wood, 2013, ‘The Chronicle of Seert: Christian Historical Imagination in Late Antique Iraq’, 1st Edition, Oxford University Press: New York, pp. 253-254

(10) Jonathan Berkey, 2003, ‘The Formation of Islam: Religion and Society in the Near East, 600-1800’, 1st Edition, Cambridge University Press: New York, p. 47

(11) Implied by his actions as recounted by Ibid.; also, Norbert Nebes, 2010, ‘The Martyrs of Najran and the End of the Himyar’, pp. 44-49 in Angelika Neuwirth, Nicolai Sinai, Michael Marx (Eds.), 2010, ‘The Qur’an in Context: Historical and Literary Investigations into the Qur’anic Milieu’, 1st Edition, Brill: Leiden

(12) Guillaume, Op. Cit., pp. 13-14

(13) Nebes, Op. Cit., p. 43

(14) Wood, Op. Cit., pp. 253-254

(15) Ibid., p. 253

(16) Berkey, Op. Cit., p. 47

(17) See my article: https://karlradl14.substack.com/p/idolaters-and-the-abomination-in

(18) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ja_1028