The position of affairs in Arabia was at the time abnormal and interesting.  For the most part that vast but sterile region has been the home of almost countless tribes, living independently of one another, each under its own sheikh or chief, in wild and unrestrained freedom.  Native princes have seldom obtained any widely extended dominion over the scattered population; and foreign powers have still more rarely exercised authority for any considerable period over the freedom-loving descendants of Ishmael.  But towards the beginning of the sixth century of our era the Abyssinians of Axum, a Christian people, “raised” far “above the ordinary level of African barbarism” by their religion and by their constant intercourse with Rome, succeeded in attaching to their empire a large portion of the Happy Arabia, and ruled it at first from their African capital, but afterwards by means of a viceroy, whose dependence on the Negus of Abyssinia was little more than nominal.  Abraha, an Abyssinian of high rank, being deputed by the Negus to re-establish the authority of Abyssinia over the Yemen when it was shaken by a great revolt, made himself master of the country, assumed the crown, established Abyssinians in all the chief cities, built numerous churches, especially one of great beauty at Sana, and at his death left the kingdom to his eldest son, Yaksoum.  An important Christian state was thus established in the Great Peninsula; and it was natural that Justinian should see with satisfaction, and Chosroes with some alarm, the growth of a power in this quarter which was sure to side with Rome and against Persia, if their rivalry should extend into these parts.  Justinian had hailed with pleasure the original Abyssinian conquest, and had entered into amicable relations with both the Axumites and their colonists in the Yemen.  Chosroes now resolved upon a counter movement.  He would employ the quiet secured to him by the peace of A.D. 562 in a great attack upon the Abyssinian power in Arabia.  He would drive the audacious Africans from the soil of Asia, and would earn the eternal gratitude of the numerous tribes of the desert.  He would extend Persian influence to the shores of the Arabian Gulf, and so confront the Romans along the whole line of their eastern boundary.  He would destroy the point d’appui which Rome had acquired in South-western Asia, and so at once diminish her power and augment the strength and glory of Persia.

The interference of Chosroes in the affairs of a country so distant as Western Arabia involved considerable difficulties; but his expedition was facilitated by an application which he received from a native of the district in question.  Saif, the son of Dsu-Yezm, descended from the race of the old Homerite kings whom the Abyssinians had conquered, grew up at the court of Abraha in the belief that that prince, who had married his mother, was not his step-father, but his father.  Undeceived by an insult which Masrouq,