Friday, March 31st, 2006

lethargic_man: (reflect)

At primary school we learn that the Temple was destroyed nineteen hundred years ago, and that was the last time Jews got to rule anywhere until the State of Israel was founded in 1948; but of course, like everything you learn in primary school that's a bit of a simplification.

Hence, as exceptions, we have the likes of:

  • Bulan, king of the Khazars who converted, along with at least the upper echelons of Khazaria in the early ninth century, to maintain a state of neutrality between the Christian Byzantine Empire on one side and the Muslim Caliphate on the other (since both religions gave Judaism some respect as a forebear of their own); the kingdom remained Jewish whilst it lasted.
  • Saul Wahl, king of Poland for a day in 1586 according to legend.
  • Queen Judith, the church-destroying tenth century allegedly Jewish ruler of Ethopia. (*boggle*)
  • Yūsuf Dhū Nuwas, last king of Himyar in present-day Yemen, in the sixth century. He too persecuted the Christians of his realm, on the grounds that Christian states persecuted Jews. He made the mistake, however, of writing to King Mundhir of Hīra (the first Arab kingdom outside Arabia) encouraging him to do the same, when in fact Mundhir was receiving a Roman embassy seeking to make peace between Constantinople and Hīra. The Romans, being Christian, were horrified by this and eventually Kaleb king of Axum (in Ethiopia), with the help of the Roman emperor Justin, crossed over to Yemen and defeated Dhū Nuwas, the cur.*
    Moral of the story, I suppose: two wrongs do not make a right.
  • Izates of Adiabene in Mesopotamia. He, his brother and their mother Helena converted to Judaism in the first century. Helena donated treasures to the Temple, and some of Izates' sons were present during the siege of Jerusalem in the First Judaean Revolt against the Romans.
  • The bandit leaders Asinaeus and Anilaeus who, in the first century, set up their own state and kept it independent of the Parthians for fifteen years.

* Pun, not political comment.

Any more anyone can think of?

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Lethargic Man (anag.)

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