North Stelae Park, Axum, Ethiopia (Wikimedia Commons)
King Kaleb of Axum Calls for Expedition to Stop Jewish Persecution of His Kingdom
Jewish King Dhu Nuwas of Himyar, a kingdom of ancient Yemen known by the Greeks and the Romans as the Homerite Kingdom, had been persecuting King Kaleb’s Christians/Aksumites in Axum, a trading kingdom in modern-day Eritrea. That led Kaleb, one of the best documented kings of Axum, to send an expedition against Himyar circa 520, during Roman’s Byzantine empire, as Concordia University professor Paulos Milkias argues in “Ethiopia.” Kaleb’s expedition came after Axum had conquered the Kingdom of Kush, now northern Sudan, in 350 and covered present-day Ethiopia and Eretria. Scholar Stuart Munro-Hay provides evidence in his book, “Aksum: An African Civilisation of Late Antiquity,” that suggests Axum later became heavily involved in trade routes between India and Rome, which later became Byzantium.