The Origins Of Christianity By Najr �� N - 1598 Words

5.2 Origins of Christianity in NajrÄ n The story of arriving Christianity to NajrÄ n is shrouded by controversy Muslim and Christian sources. This controversy can be seen in arguing particular issues such as the approximate date of arrival, the country where Christianity came from and the first person who evangelised to Christian faith. For Eastern Christian sources, the oldest date was claimed by Ä «bn MattaÃŒ  (1896), tells that the Saint Mar Marry, one of the 70th evangelists who spread after the time Jesus Christ, preached to Christianity in Arab lands, residents of tents, Yemen and NajrÄ n. Differently, the history of Church introduces other versions of that arrival, one of them offered by Eusebius (1998), who lived in the first half of the†¦show more content†¦The Nestorian works, especially the Chronicle of Seert (anonymous, 1907) and AkhbaÌ„r fatÃŒ £aÌ„rikat kursiÌ„ al-Mashriq min KitaÌ„b al-Majda (Ä «bn SulaymaÌ„n, 1899) provide another version for the introduction of Christianity to NajrÄ n. Both tell that the NajrÄ nite trader called HÃŒ £ayyÄ n traveled to the capital of Byzantium, Constantinople for trade and then he went to al-HÄ «ra (HÄ «rat al-Nu’man), an ancient city in south of Mesopotamia (Iraq), in the reign of the Sasanian emperor, Yazdegerd I 399 -420 AD (ibid). The story states that HÃŒ £ayyÄ n saw how Christians prayed and worshiped and subsequently he converted to Christianity and had baptized in its church (ibid). After returning to NajrÄ n, HÃŒ £ayyÄ n invited his family and other NajrÄ nites to his religion and Christianity became spread among many people of NajrÄ n and near HÃŒ £imyarite regions (ibid: 3). In addition, there is Abyssinian version for reaching the Christianity to Najran, states that the priest Azkir could establish new church and baptised 38 Christians in Najran by the second half of fifth century (Budge, 1928). For Muslim sources, there are two similar versions of arriving Christianity to NajrÄ n. In the first, historians such as Ibn-IshÃŒ £Ã„ q (1955), al-Mas’udi (1981) and Ibn HishÃŒÅ'aÌ„m (1994) relate that Christianity brought by a Christian ascetic called FaymiyÃ… «n (Phemion), coming from Syria (ShaÌ„m) to Arabia for working as a