Inscription of Sumyafa’ Ashwa’ at Husn al-Ghurab (CIH 621)

Set up by Sumyafa’ Ashwa’ and his sonsDated dhu-Hillatan 640 of the Himyarite era: February AD 530 on the usual reckoning

A Himyarite inscription recording that a group of nobles repaired and held a fortress when the Abyssinians came into the land of Himyar and killed its king. It is a local witness to the Aksumite conquest that ended the reign of Yusuf.

Ten lines name Sumyafa’ Ashwa’, his sons and a long list of clans and tribes, and say that they wrote the inscription in the fortress of Mawiyat when they restored its wall, gate, cisterns and approach and fortified themselves there, after returning from the land of the Abyssinians, when the Abyssinians had killed the king of Himyar and his chiefs. The king is not named. Norbert Nebes, whose notes the archive reproduces, takes him to be Yusuf As’ar Yath’ar and converts the date, the month dhu-Hillatan of the year 640, to February 530. The translation of lines 8–9 is disputed in detail, as the archive’s notes set out.

The live record sits behind an automated-access check; the archived copy of the same address linked above shows the text and translations.

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