Two years ago, a team of French and Saudi researchers found what they believed to be the oldest extant examples of written Arabic, which they dated to the late 5th and early 6th centuries CE. Among the inscriptions is a reference to Yusuf As’ar Yath’ar, the last leader of the Himyarite kingdom, an ancient Jewish (or quasi-Jewish) entity that existed in what is now Yemen and southwestern Saudi Arabia. Ariel David writes (free registration required):
Established around the 2nd century CE, by the 4th century [Himyar] had become a regional power. Headquartered in what is today Yemen, [it] had conquered neighboring states, including the ancient kingdom of Sheba (whose legendary queen features in a biblical meeting with Solomon). . . . [M]ost scholars now agree that, around 380 CE, the elites of the kingdom of Himyar converted to some form of Judaism.
The Himyarite rulers may have seen in Judaism a potential unifying force for their new, culturally diverse empire, and an identity to rally resistance against creeping encroachment by the Byzantine and Ethiopian Christians, as well as the Zoroastrian empire of Persia. . . .
Sometime around the year 500, [Himyar] fell to Christian invaders from the Ethiopian kingdom of Aksum. In a last bid for independence, in 522, a Jewish Himyarite leader, Yusuf As’ar Yath’ar, rebelled against the puppet ruler enthroned by [the Aksumite monarch] and put the Aksumite garrison to the sword. . . .
In 2014, the French-Saudi expedition at Bir Hima discovered an inscription recording Yusuf’s passage there . . . as he marched north with 12,000 men into the Arabian desert to reclaim the rest of his kingdom. After that, we lose track of him, but Christian chroniclers recorded that around 525 the Ethiopians caught up with the rebel leader and defeated him.
Read more on Haaretz: http://www.haaretz.com/jewish/archaeology/.premium-1.709010