The king of Yemen, Thabbaan Asad, was travelling to do business at Sham. He passed next to al-Madinah and he left his son in al-Madinah to do business until he returned from Syria. The people of Madinah killed his son.

When Thabbaan Asad came back and heard the news that his son was killed, he decided to destroye Madinah. His army was overwhelming compared to that of Madinah and attacked crushing the opposition.

At that time Jews were living in Madina. When the Romans destroyed Jerusalem, the Jews dispersed – some of them who came to Arabia searched for the Promised Land where the “nabi” (prophet) would be sent. Their books already had signs of the awaited Prophet and were looking for the place where he would immigrate to. They saw the signs in Madina, and few other places such as Hajar. Three Jewish tribes – Banu Qainuqa, Banu Nadheer and Banu Quraidha – settled in Madinah.

Two of the Jewish Rabis came out of Madina to see Thabbaan Asad and told him, “This place (Madinah) is protected by God. If you attempt to destroy it, Allah will destroy you.” They were able to convince Thabbaan Asad to stop the attack and withdraw his army. He was impressed by the religion that he became Jewish himself and invited the two Jewish Rabis to Yemen which they gladly accepted.

On his way south, heading back to Yemen, he happened to meet with the tribe of Hawaazim - a tribe who had a problem with people of Quraish and who were waiting for the right moment create fitna (problem). They succeeded in creating problems between Thabbaan Asad and the people of Mecaa. Thabbaan Asad started contemplating attacking Mecca.

The two Jewish Rabis, accompanying Thabbaan, told him, “This is another city protected by Allah. You shouldn’t attack it. In fact you should go to Mecca and make tawaaf around Kaaba.”

He said, “Well, then let’s go”

“We can not join you”, they replied.

“How come?”

“We are scholars and it is not appropriate for us as scholars to go and make tawaaf around Kaaba when it is surrounded by idols.”

So Thabbaan Asad went in and made tawaaf. He was the first person ever to clothe al-Kaaba. He would clothe it once every year in such a way that they would bring the new cloth and place it over the old. They considered the clothing of the Kaaba sacred that they can’t take them off. They would keep on piling up one cloth over the other increasing the weight on Kaaba until they realized they have to take them off replacing new one every year.

Thabbaan Asad went to Yemen with the Jewish Rabis and they were given freedom to spread the religion among the Yemeni tribes. Many of the tribes in Yemen did embrace the Jewish Faith. So we have two types of Jews in Arabia – the ethnic ones settled in Khaibar and Madina; and the other being the converted ones in Yemen. The Jews in Yemen are ethnically Arab, but they adopted the Jewish Faith. So we can see that, at some moments of time, Jews did preach their religion.

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