Page 3 - Arab Christians_Neat

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languages. Nabateans were some of
the earliest inhabitants of Arabia,
settling in the Southern Levant as early
as the 1st Millennium BC and were also
among the first tribes to convert to
Christianity in as early as the 1st
Century CE. The Roman and Byzantine
Empires offered protection as well as
refuge to many of these early Arab
Christians, but members of few
Christian-affiliated sects such as the
non-Chalcedonians faced persecution
from the Byzantine Empire as heretics.
The center of Arab Christianity during Countries With The Most Protestant
the pre-lslamic period was in Najran, an Christians
ancient city situated in southern Arabia.
The Roman Catholic Church even
canonized the leader of Arab Christians
in the city, Al-Harith as St. Aretas. Arab
Christians in the city of Najran faced
great persecution in the hands of Dhu
Yawas, King of Yemen who had
converted to Judaism.

Anertne ran or byzannne ruie in Araoia
and the expansion of Islamic rule
between the 6th and 7th centuries,
Arab Christians came under Islamic
rule. During this period, Arab Christians
were more accepted by the Islamic
rulers and were allowed to practice their
religious beliefs without interference.
Arab Christians were however required
to pay taxes known as “Jizyah” to the
ruling Islamic Caliphate, as was the
case to all other non-lslamic inhabitants
who refused to convert to Islam. The
taxes were payable in the form of
money, goods, or livestock. Arab
Christians were better treated under
Islamic rule than they were when under
the Byzantine Empire as religious
persecution became a thing of the past.
Islamic Arabs related well with the Arab
Christians who they referred to as
“people of the book" and by the 9th
century, the Islamic rulers had
physicians who were Christians. During
the early Islamic period, Christians
continued to write their books in either
Greek or Coptic script, but after many
vears of Islamic rule, thev beaan writino