Even at this stage there may have been a theological schism which divided the two communities for there does not appear to be any evidence to show that the Arabian Jewish communities influenced their Ethiopian co-religionists in any way. Nor is there any record of influence being exerted in the reverse direction. By the time that the Christian king of Axum, Kaleb (Ella Asbeha), mounted his campaign against the Jewish king Dhu Nuwas in the Yemen, about AD 523, the Jewish population of Abyssinia was in no position to aid their co-religionists. The expedition was undertaken at the request of the Byzantine Emperor, Justin I, to whom the Christians of Himyar had appealed for help against their Jewish rulers, alleging that they were being persecuted, though, according to Professor Bernard Lewis, (2) the attack was really a reprisal for the repression of their Jewish subjects by the rulers of Byzantium. Kaleb responded to the appeal and the embarkation of the expeditionary force at Adulis was witnessed by the Alexandrian merchant Cosmas Indicopleustes, who left a description of the scene in his bookThe Christian Topography.(3) Kaleb's victorious campaign marked the end of the independent Jewish kingdom in the Yemen and the establishment of a Christian state in its place. There is nothing to show that Jewish prisoners transported to Axum brought any influence to bear on the indigenous Agau Jewish population, though a Falasha tradition has it that they established the gold- and silver-smithing trades for which Axum became famous. The residue of the Jewish population of the Yemen which did not convert to Christianity or, later, to Islam, retained its identity for fourteen centuries in the face of great hardships until the moment arrived in 1948 when all but a small remnant were airlifted to the Promised Land, under a scheme known as 'Operation Magic Carpet'.

Christianity had a short span in the Yemen. Not more than fifty years after the Axumite occupation the country was conquered by the Zoroastrian Persians and the Ethiopians withdrew. But even this situation was not to last long for soon the armies of the Prophet were sweeping all before them across the whole Arabian peninsula and imposing the rule of lslam.

A new predicament now faced the Christian enclave in Ethiopia. Muhammad's conquest of Mecca in 630 which heralded

(1)Ethiopia and the Bible, p. 17.
(2) The Arabs in History, p. 24.
(3)Pankhurst, Economic History of Ethiopia, p. 44.