علي بن مهدي الحميري

علي بن مهدي الحميري

Ali ibn Mahdi al-Himyari of al-Uthr on Zabid's coasts; raised in his father's piety, withdrawn in worship, he made the hajj, sat with Iraq's scholars and took preaching from their preachers — a memorizing, eloquent man whose foretellings of his own affairs came true, so the people inclined to him, his sermon-cry 'the time is near' pointing to his own rising; when Umm Fatik of Zabid died in 545 the mountain folk swore to him, his cause flared, he crushed the Najahids and took Zabid in 554 ending their house — and all Tihama, the mountains and Yemen passed from the Sulaymanids' hands into Banu Mahdi's.