Thread by @emrane

#MerryChristmas

Did you know scholars increasingly believe Arabia was predominantly monotheistic by 6th C, even Christian?

The background of Christian Arabia set the scene for how queens and prophets exercised power, and changed our world.

We have virtually no evidence of an Arabic-speaking church prior to the spread of Islam. What we have are early Arabic inscriptions demonstrating that by the 5-6th C, Christianity had reached truly remote fringes of Arabian society.

These include Hima (Yemen), and Zabad (Syria). However, the brief honorific or funerary nature of these writings do not divulge to what church those communities belonged.

The absence of explicit sectarian leanings in those texts has led scholars to speculate broadly about the influence of provinces and cities supporting a sizeable Christian community: Roman Arabia, al-Hirah, or Najran.

The avalanche of scholarship on pre-Islamic Christian Arabs posits Syriac or Greek as their liturgical language. This state of affairs is certainly true for their ranks among the West Syrian, East Syrian, and Chalcedonian churches to which Arabian communities largely belonged.

But what liturgical or ecclesiastical space did Arabic-speaking Christians occupy, if any, both before the fruition of these official churches and outside the Christian auspices of the Tanukhids near Aleppo, Lakhmids in al-Hirah, Ghassanids in Bosra, or the enclave in Najran?

To find out you have to read my book!

Queens and Prophets How Arabian Noblewomen and Holy Men Shaped Paganism, Christianity and Islam

oneworld-publications.com/work/queens-an…

@OneworldNews