https://historyinthehorn.wordpress.com/ ... -of-aksum/
The Kingdom of Aksum emerged from the port city of Adulis at the turn of the 3rd century, when the unnamed conqueror of the Monumentum Adulitanum conquered far inland and established a new capital at Aksum, in the geographic center of his new empire within the land of the Aua people. Within the lifetime of this conqueror, probably the king known as Gadara or Gadarat, the Empire of Aksum emerged from essentially nowhere, conquering a dozen different tribes and small states in the Ethiopian interior and extending his rule across the Red Sea into Najran and deep into Yemen. For the next 500 years, Aksum would be a force to be reckoned with.
Originally worshiping the ancient south Arabian gods, particularly Mahrem (Mars the war god is the Greco-Roman equivalent) the Empire of Aksum would conquer upper Nubia and the ancient city of Merowe under Ezana, who’s throne name was Ela Abreha, who among his other titles listed “Son of the Invincible Mahrem”. In the 13th year of Ezana’s reign, in 333, Coptic Christianity would become the official state religion. A quirk of their conversion was that their kingdom did not have enough bishops to convene their own metropolitan bishop, which was by design in order that the Patriarch of Alexandria retained the power to personally nominate the leader of the Christian religion in Ethiopia.
Little is known of the successors to Ezana and his brother Saizana (throne name Ela Atzbeha) which probably just means that their deeds were confined to the interior of East Africa where classical historians show remarkably little interest. A few of the kings would take interest in Arabian politics but things would shift dramatically with a series of events brought about by the king of Himyar, Yusuf Asar Yathar ibn Sharhabil, better known as Dhu Nuwas.
Yusuf Asar Yathar was a fanatical devotee of the Jewish religion. Over the centuries that Aksum had ruled over Najran, a number of churches had been built there and the population had mostly converted to Christianity. Dhu Nuwas was a member of the Tubba dynasty of Himyar, which had both Christian and Jewish branches, but he was fanatically devoted to Judaism and sought to cleanse the heresy of Christianity from the land of Yemen. His armies attacked and massacred the Christians of Najran and burned the churches in 524.
It is at this point that the most famous king of Aksum enters history. Kaleb, throne name Ela Atzbeha, was the great-great-great-grandson of Ezana, and himself a very pious man. When Najran was attacked by Dhu Nuwas, he mobilized the armies of Aksum and sailed across the Bab el-Mandeb, and conquered Himyar. Dhu Nuwas killed himself by jumping into the sea, and Aksum reached its greatest extent. This moment marks the high water mark for Aksumite power and influence, ruling an empire from the Danakil Depression, to Merowe in Upper Nubia, to the Blue Nile in the south and the southern Hejaz in the north.
Following the conquest of Yemen, Kaleb eventually abdicated the throne and retired to a monastery. Kaleb’s successors were not as capable rulers and due to probable incompetence (late or inadequate pay, or perhaps just the charisma of the instigator) a few decades after Kaleb’s retirement, the soldiers of Yemen mutinied and declared their general Abreha to be King of Yemen. Aksum sent a few armies across the sea to retake Yemen but Abreha defeated them all. After this point, never again would an Ethiopian state ever hold land in Yemen.
Abreha’s ambitions were not limited to Yemen, and the self-made King of Yemen sent an army of African war elephants against Mecca in an unsuccessful invasion in the Year of the Elephant, the same year that the Prophet Muhammed was born, in 570. The Tubba dynasty never accepted the rule of Aksum or Abreha, and fought an unsuccessful struggle to retake their family lands from the Tubba dynasty’s northern lands in Kindah, especially the king Yazid ibn Kabshat. The Sassanid Persian Empire sent an army under the great general Vahriz, but liberation was not forthcoming as the Persians annexed Yemen into their empire instead.
The war of Christian against Jewish in Yemen spread to Ethiopia, where a significant segment of the Aksumite Empire were Jewish, the Beta Israel of the southwest. In 700, this religious violence led to civil war, when the Jewish and Christian sons of a different Kaleb, throne name Qwestantinos, tore the kingdom apart. Disorder spread rapidly and the coast of Eritrea became a haven for pirates. The pirates attacked Jeddah in 714, triggering a strong response from the Ummayad Caliphate who seized most of Eritrea, built a fort at what is now Massawa to keep the pirates away, and appointed a Naib at Arkiko.
By this point, Aksum had declined massively. In the mid 9th century, the capital was moved from Aksum southeast to Lake Hayq, to a city known in medieval times as Ku’bar. In the mid 10th century, a succession dispute weakened the kingdom sufficiently that the Beta Israel invaded and conquered Aksum under Queen Gudit. While the Christian Kingdom would continue on, first under Kaleb’s dynasty and later under the Zagwe and a “restored” Solomonic dynasty from Bulga in southern Ethiopia, the Empire of Aksum was effectively dead, with all of its core historical areas ruled by others.