The siege of Sanaa is a pre-Islamic battle fought in the 6th century by the Kingdom of Aksum and the Sasanian Empire, during the Aksumite–Persian wars. It took place when the Sasanian under general Vahrez besieged the Aksumite city of Sanaa in 570.
bn Hishām transmits a poem attributed to ʿAdī ibn Zayd describing the fall of the Aksumite kingdom following the Persian invasion. The poem includes the line: “On the day they call upon Āl Barbar and al-Yaksūm (Aksum), none of its fugitives shall escape.”Ibn Hishām, ʿAbd al-Malik. Al-Sīra al-Nabawiyya. Edited by Muṣṭafā al-Saqqā, Ibrāhīm al-Abyārī and ʿAbd al-Ḥafīẓ Shalabī. Cairo: Muṣṭafā al-Bābī al-Ḥalabī, 1955, vol. 1, p. 69. the poem was made in reference to the joint axumite barbar retreat from Siege of Sanaa (570).Al-Suhaylī, Al-Rawḍ al-Unuf fī Sharḥ al-Sīra al-Nabawiyya li-Ibn Hishām, commentary on the verse "يوم ينادون آل بربر واليكسوم". See also Ramzi Rouighi, "The Berbers of the Arabs," Studia Islamica 106 (2011): 49–76.
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