Eritrea stranded

One nagging problem for some might be the presence of "Abyssinian" or "Ethiopic" in the Quran. It is difficult enough for the "Meccan" sira; it is positively worse for revisionists who swear up and down that Islam came out of Petra and Syria (alternatively, Iraqi poets or even Beqaa). In Quran, philologers like Hamdani have already accounted for Semitic Sabaic and para-Arabic Himyaric - you'd think. Chaim Rabin pondered if we are indeed looking at south Arabian (5v p. 52); I've been pondering complete Bronze Age fossils like Mehri. But Hamdani knew Mehri.

So: John Turpin has a MA-level summary on "Christianity in Western Arabia". In it, I read notes about "Ethiopians" in Arabia - all gathered from Irfan Shahid's own summary (pdf), from Lammens. That, I wonder, could be its own essay. Let's distill this from Shahid's notes.

The famed Throne of Adulis has that the Axsum kingdom started meddling oversea in our fifth century, the Greeks' eighth. Axsum spoke Ge'ez, related to today's dominant languages of Eritrea and the Tigre. By 490ish/800 it was also Miaphysite Christian, following a failed attempt by earlier Eunomian Christians who came also to Najran. In our sixth century Philoxenus of Mabbug (d. 523 / 834) consecrated Najran's first Miaphysite bishop. Relevant to us, here weren't just Syrians: later events suggest that to the Yemen Christian Ethiopians migrated too.

One can imagine Ethiopians and Syrians both being standouts in old Najran. The Himyar, we are told also-immigrant but at least Arabians speaking something like Arabic, arose in a reaction. The Eunomians assure us they had been Christian; but now, they formally converted to Judaism. On Philoxenus' death, the Himyar descended upon Najran and murdered all the Christians they could find. If I were an Ethiopian there, my ratline would be northwest to follow the Syrians.

Syrians like Jews were well at home in Arabia's north. Such exiles from northern Yemen could go anywhere. Ethiopians stranded in the peninsula had more trouble, especially if they had not been in the Ge'ez elite - I am of course thinking of slaves. Problem: Byzantine Syria wasn't really a slave-state, past Jericho. Just trade 'em off at a Red Sea port, for safe passage. Some, perhaps, ended up at Gidda-Kentos: Turpin has that "Habashis" formed an underclass in Mecca. Who can forget Bilal in The Message.

In 525/836 Caleb of Axsum would flat invade Yemen, depose the Jews, and rule the place. The king did not ransom all the Ethiopians by-now scattered around the Near East. If any had been sold to the Zanj, Down River as it were, those would have been difficult to extract. The luckier ones worked their way up to mawla clientage - or beyond: Antar became a famous poet. Arabia was now their home.

So there's our medium for Ethiopic: disaffected mostly-Cushitic castoffs of Christian Semitic runaways, with that Semitic as their mother tongue. To the extent they were subservient to Arab masters or patrons, they wouldn't blame the Arabs for their station. It is difficult for me, as a Christian, to blame these people for choosing Islam, in turn.