Christian Monasticism in Western and Southwestern Arabia: Fifth–Eighth Centuries

ABSTRACT Whether Christianity had an organised presence in Ḥiǧāz and the broader western Arabia remains contested in scholarship, and besides brief and occasional discussions of the data for monasticism in the region, a systematic survey of the known evidence has hitherto been lacking. This article examines the presence of monasticism in western and southwestern Arabia during the late antique and early Islamic periods, surveying six monastic sites known from ʾUmayyad‐era poetry and archaeological finds, as well as verses attributed to mukhaḍram Ḥiǧāzī poets and Qurʾānic passages that reflect familiarity with asceticism. It additionally advances hypotheses about the nature and confessional identity of these monastic communities. The assessed evidence points to a substantial Christian monastic presence in western Arabia, as part of the wider ecclesial landscape of the late antique Near East.