Martyrdom of Arethas

{{Italics}}The Martyrdom of Arethas is a hagiography about the life and martyrdom of Arethas of Najran, the leader of the Najran's Christians in the early 6th century. The Martyrdom was written in Greek c. 560 AD, and survives through its translations into Latin, Ethiopic, and Arabic. The Martyrdom describes the role played by the Jewish king of the Himyarite Kingdom of South Arabia, Dhu Nuwas, in laying the city of Najran to siege and then massacring its Christian inhabitants and burning their churches. According to the Martyrdom, Dhu Nuwas tried to form an alliance with the Persian Sasanian Empire based on their mutual opposition to Christian states, especially the Byzantine Empire and the Kingdom of Aksum (in Ethiopia). In 524, he sent a letter describing his massacre to a conference being held in the city of Ramla, where delegates from both the Byzantine and Sasanian empires were present. In response, the Byzantine emperor at the time, Justin I (r. 518–527) sent an ambassador to Arabia to secure the safety of the remaining Christians in Arabia. In addition, he sent a letter to Kaleb, the king of Aksum, urging him to invade Himyar, which he then did with Justin's support (using military support also reported by Procopius), bringing an end to Jewish rule over South Arabia in the aftermath of the Aksumite invasion of Himyar. The Martyrdom therefore represents the motivations of the invasion as religious in nature, although today, historians also believe that additional economic and political factors were at play in causing the invasion to take place.{{Sfn|Binyamin|Krebs|2024|p=22–26}} According to the Martyrdom, after his success in South Arabia, Kaleb abdicated his throne and took up a monastic life, an idea also found in the Ethiopian Synaxarium, although this detail about Kaleb's later years has not yet been verified by contemporary Ethiopic sources.{{Sfn|Binyamin|Krebs|2024|p=27}}

Alessandro Bausi and Alessandro Gori have edited the Ethiopic recension of the Martyrdom.Bausi, Alessandro, and Alessandro Gori. 2006. Tradizioni orientali del “Martirio di Areta”. Florence: Dipartimento di Linguistica. Irfan Shahid has argued that the Martyrdom is a reliable account.{{Sfn|Shahid|1979|p=26, 55–56}}