Malkikarib Yuhamin

Malkīkarib Yuha’min (r. 375–400) was a king (Tubba', Arabic: تُبَّع) of the Himyarite Kingdom (in modern-day Yemen), succeeding his father Tharan Yuhanim. Byzantine sources and contemporary historians credit him with converting the ruling class of the Himyarite Kingdom from paganism to Judaism (whereas later Islamic sources ascribe this event to Abu Karib, his son). These events are chronicled by the fifth-century Ecclessiastical History of the Anomean Philostorgius and the sixth-century Syriac Book of the Himyarites. Such sources implicate the motive for conversion as a wish on the part of the Himyarite rulers to distance themselves from the Byzantine Empire which had tried to convert them to Christianity.^[1]

Malkikarib was likely at an advanced age when he took the throne as he immediately initiated a coregency with his children.^[2] He first entered into a coregency with his son Abīkarib Asʿad (Abu Karib). Later in his reign, he entered into coregency with both his sons Abīkarib Asʿad and Dharaʾʾamar Ayman. According to two inscriptions, RES 3383, Ja 856 (= Fa 60), and Garb Bayt al-Shwal 1, Malkikarib Yuhamin constructed a mikrāb^[3] named Barīk in the city of Marib (and also capital of the ancient Saba kingdom) in order to replace the polytheistic temple of the moon deity Almaqah. The term mikrāb refers to a structure that is either the equivalent of a synagogue^[4] or refers to a local Himyarite variant of this Jewish institution.^[5]

Very little memory remained of Malkikarib Yuhamin remained among traditionalist writers from the Islamic era. Al-Hamdani believed that he had reigned for thirty-five years and, besides this, only knew that he was the father of Abīkarib Asʿad.^[4]