The Massacre of Najran (Ashab al-Ukhdud)

The trench of Najran: the burning of Najran's Christians by Dhu Nuwas, the Judaized Himyarite king, in October 523 CE — the "People of the Trench" of Sura al-Buruj.

Judaism entered Yemen through the convert Tubba' As'ad Abu Karib, who had adopted it at Yathrib and brought two rabbis to Yemen; when his son Yusuf Dhu Nuwas ruled he attacked the Christians of Najran and called on them to adopt Judaism ¹.

When they refused he dug the trench for them and burned them with fire, making no distinction between man and woman, small child and aged elder; the dead are said to have numbered between twenty and forty thousand, in October of 523 CE ².

The Qur'an recounted part of this story in Sura al-Buruj: "slain were the People of the Trench" (al-Buruj 4 and what follows) ².

This stirred militant Christianity to conquest and expansion under the Roman emperors over the Arabs' lands; they incited the Abyssinians and prepared the fleet for them, who occupied Yemen in 525 CE ¹.