YAMEN, PAST AND PRESENT 9
or clord of curls/ in which connection it may be mentioned that the Jews of Yamen have still to wear a curl or lock of feair on the side of the head.
The Christian Emperor of Constantinople communicated with the Christian Negus of Abyssinia and placed a Roman fleet at his disposal. There followed an Ethiopian invasion of Yamen, in which Dhu Nowas was defeated, and committed suicide by spurring his horse into the sea.
Aryat, the successful Ethiopian general, was appointed governor of Yamen by the Negus.
Abraha, another chief of the Abyssinian expedition, rose against Aryat, and the two leaders fought in single combat for ultimate rule. Abraha got his nose split, but Aryat was stabbed from behind in most unsporting fashion by a looker-on—a slave in Abraha's pay. Abraha now ruled Yamen in the name of the Negus, and built a fine church at Sanaa, of which there is little left but the site nowadays. Two Arab pagans of the Koreish, natives of Mecca, desecrated this church with their excrement on the eve of a solemn festival, and Abraha launched an expedition against Mecca to avenge the sacrilege. This happened the year Mohamed was born (A.D. 577), and is mentioned in Chapter 105 of the Koran (entitled the Elephant), for Abraha is said to have led the Abyssinian forces on an armoured elephant, which refused to enter Mecca. The story goes that high-soaring swallows dropped tiny pebbles on Abraha's army, piercing man and horse until the host was almost annihilated. Level-headed Moslem commentators point to the word c herrashat/ which means small pebbles and also the c pitting3 of small-pox. A natural explanation is that an epidemic of small-pox scattered the troops of