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Christianity was a prominent monotheistic religion in pre-Islamic Arabia. Christianization was a major phenomena in Arabian late antiquity, driven by missionary activities from Syrian Christians in the north and by Christianity's entrenchment in South Arabia after the conquest of this area (518 to 525) by the Ethiopian Christian Kingdom of Aksum.
In pre-Islamic Arabia, while there were a number of faiths with a noteworthy presence—including Christianity, Judaism, Zoroastrianism, and Mandaeism—the dominant religious practice was that of Arab polytheism, which was based on the veneration of various deities and spirits, such as the god Hubal and the goddesses al-Lāt, al-‘Uzzā, and Manāt.
This community is the most famous case of the expression of Christianity in pre-Islamic Arabia. According to the Arab Muslim historian Ibn Ishaq , Najran was the first place where Christianity took root in South Arabia .
According to Pew Research Center, the percentage of Christians in Saudi Arabia in 2018 constituted 4.4% of the country's population. [28] However, the percentage of Saudi Arabian citizens who are Christians is zero de jure, [29] as Saudi Arabia forbids religious conversion from Islam and punishes it by death. [13] [30]
Christians developed Arabic-speaking Christian media, including various newspapers, radio stations, and television networks such as Télé Lumière, Aghapy TV, CTV, and SAT-7, which is a Christian broadcasting network that was founded in 1995; it targets primarily Arab Christians in North Africa and the Middle East. [103]
Abraha sought to promote Christianity in the predominantly Jewish kingdom while also attempting to antagonise the Kaaba in Mecca, a major religious centre for the adherents of Arab polytheism. Abraha, therefore, ordered the construction of the Al-Qalis Church (also known as Al-Qulays and Al-Qullays, from the Greek ekklēsía ) [ 3 ] in Sanaa.
Pre-Islamic Arabia is the Arabian Peninsula and its northern extension in the Syrian Desert before the rise of Islam. This is consistent with how contemporaries used the term Arabia or where they said Arabs lived, which was not limited to the peninsula. [1] Pre-Islamic Arabia included both nomadic and settled populations.
This practice occurred among pre-Islamic Christian, Jewish, and other populations unaffiliated with either one of the two major Abrahamic religions at the time. Monotheism became a religious trend in pre-Islamic Arabia in the fourth century CE, when it began to supplant the polytheism that had been the common form of religion until then.