Many of the Arab chiefs were bound by the ties of friendship and gratitude to the service of Abrahah. To Muhammed Ibn Chozaa he had given the sceptre of the Modarites. Muhammed and his brother Kais proceeded to the land of Kenanah, to further the object of Abrahah, by compelling the devotees of the Kaaba to turn their steps to Sanaa; but the people of the Tehama rose against them, and Muhammed was slain with an arrow by Orwa Ibn Hiads Almalatsi. Kais fled to the court of Hamyar.[1]
The wrath of the king of Hamyar was doubly inflamed by the profanation of his church, and by the death of the king of Modar, and he vowed to take exemplary vengeance by the reduction of the tribe of Kenanah, and the entire demolition of the temple at Mecca.[2] At the head of an army, accompanied by numerous elephants, Abrahah marched towards Hedjaz, himself seated on one of these animals which was named Mahmoud, and was distinguished by its bulk and its skin of pure white.[3] The progress of the invader was opposed by Dzu Nepher, Ibn Habib, and other chiefs, at the head of the tribes of Hamedan and Chethamah, and their allies; but they were soon defeated, their leaders taken, and the army of Hamyar experienced little opposition, till it approached the neighbourhood of Mecca.
The chief of the tribe of Koreish, and the guardian
