Kings of the Jews: Himyar, Khazaria, & Ethiopia - Jewish rulers outside of the Land of Israel

Historical knowledge regarding Jewish rulers outside of the Land of Israel remains impoverished in comparison with the Jewish kingdoms established in the homeland. What is certain is that over the millennia a number of polities well beyond the borders of the Holy Land were ruled by Jews, either by virtue of the fact that their ruling houses converted to Judaism—as in Himyar and Khazaria—or because a Jewish community in the Diaspora achieved sovereignty over a distinct region—as in Ethiopia. Scattered references about these kingdoms and their monarchs derive from numerous sources including Syriac letters, the fanciful diary of the merchant traveler Eldad Ha-Dani (800s C.E.), Muslim accounts such as Al-Masudi’s The Meadows of Gold and Mines of Gems (947 C.E.) and Ibn Khaldun’s Muqaddimah (in Greek, Prolegomena, 1377 C.E.), Khazarian letters such as the long and short versions of the Reply of Joseph first published in Isaac Akrish’s Kol Mevasser (1577 C.E.), and the Responsa of the Spanish Talmudist and Kabbalist Radbaz (Rabbi David Ben Solomon Ibn Zimra, 1479-1573 or 1589 C.E.).

Judaism had spread to Yemen, formerly Himyar (and originally Sheba), at least as early as the 3rd century C.E. Among the Jewish Himyarite rulers, the Tuba’a and Abu Kariba dynasties became prominent, and are noted especially for their longstanding struggle for independence against the Christian Ethiopians led by a negus and centered at Axum. The Himyarite capital Zafar lay in the fertile southern highlands, and Sabaic and Greek inscriptions attest to the kingdom’s synagogues and Jewish cemeteries. A number of Jewish Himyarites were buried in Bet She’arim in Israel. Long before and long after the kingdom of Himyar flourished for 250 years between the 3rd and 6th centuries C.E., Jews resided in both northern and southern Arabia. The Jews of Yemen survived as a community into the modern era. Read More