Page 99 - Arabiab Studies (IV)

Foreign Interventions and
Occupations of
Kamaran Island

John Baldry

A small island only eleven miles long and five-and-a-half wide at
its largest extent and situated some four-and-a-half miles from the
North Yemen mainland off the $allf Peninsula, Kamaran has the
dubious distinction of having undergone more foreign occupations
than any other part of the Arabian Peninsula.

Kamaran in prc-Islamic times
Little is known of the early history of the island. However, in the
last two centuries B.C., the Red Sea was frequented by merchants
trading between Egypt on the one hand and South Arabia,
Ethiopia and India on the other and it is quite possible that their
ships called at Kamaran for supplies. Diodorus Siculus, the Greek
historian (c. 80-20 B.C.), refers to ‘prosperous islands’ in the Red
Sea ‘visited by sailors from every part and especially from Potana,
the city which Alexander founded on the Indus river’.1 Kamaran
may have been one of these islands.
The earliest definite reference to Kamaran does not occur until
about 525 A.D. when forces of Ella A$beha, King of Axum, invaded
Yemen in response to an appeal from the local Christians who
were suffering persecution at the hands of Dhu Nuwas, their
Jewish ruler. It is said that Kamaran was occupied by the
Ethiopians during their short-lived occupation of Yemen.2
Moreover, the Ethiopian King styled himself ‘King of Aksum ...
Raydan, Saba ... and of Yemenites and of Tihamat’,3 and it would
be safe to assume that Kamaran comprised part of what was
termed Tihamat.
The harshness of Ethiopian rule led Sayf b. DhT Yazan to call on
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