Dhu Nuwas

Dhū Nuwās, (Arabic: ذو نواس‎‎) or Yūsuf Ibn Sharhabeel (Arabic: يوسف بن شرحبيل‎‎)Syriac Masruq; Greek Dounaas (Δουναας), was a Judaic warlord in Yemen between 517 and 525-27 CE, who came to renown on account of his military exploits against people of other religions living in his kingdom.

Ibn Hisham's Sirat Rasul Allah (better known in English as the Life of Muhammad), describes the exploits of Yūsuf Dhū Nuwās. Ibn Hisham explains that Yūsuf was a Jew who grew out his sidelocks (nuwas meaning, "forelock" or "sidelock"), and who became known as "lord of the sidelocks." The historicity of Dhū Nuwās is affirmed by Philostorgius and by Procopius (in the latter's Persian War). Procopius writes that in 525, the armies of the Christian Kingdom of Axum in Ethiopia invaded Yemen at the request of the Byzantine Emperor, Justin I, to take control of the Jewish kingdom in Ḥimyar, then under the leadership of Yūsuf Dhū Nuwās, who rose to power in 522. Ibn Hisham explains the same sequel of events under the name of "Yūsuf Dhū Nuwās." Indeed, with this invasion, the Ḥimyarites were smitten, and as such the supremacy of the Jewish religion in the Kingdom of Ḥimyar, as well as in all of Yemen, came to an abrupt end.

Imrū al-Qays, the famous Yemeni poet from the same period, in his poem entitled taqūl lī bint al-kinda lammā ‘azafat, laments the death of two great men of Yemen, one of them being Dhū Nuwās, whom he regards as the last of the Himyarite kings:

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