Actually Muhammed went to Medina as a mediator. Why do you inflate the Jewish presence in Arabia? They weren't too popular after the Jewish king burned the Christians of Najran in an attempt at forced conversion.
Mohammad is the one who was quoted as speaking much about the Jews around Medina.
But I agree he originally played mediator between Jewish factions.
The king who burned Christians of Najran seems not only to be a recent covert, but seriously unstable.
{....
Ibn Hisham's
Sirat Rasul Allah (better known in English as
the Life of Muhammad), describes the exploits of Yūsuf Dhū Nuwās. Ibn Hisham explains that Yūsuf was a convert
Jew who grew out his
sidelocks (
nuwas), and who became known as "he of sidelocks." The historicity of Dhū Nuwās is affirmed by
Philostorgius and by
Procopius (in the latter's
Persian War). Procopius writes that in 525, the armies of the
Christian Kingdom of Axum in
Ethiopia invaded Yemen at the request of the
Byzantine Emperor,
Justin I, to take control of the Jewish kingdom in Ḥimyar, then under the leadership of Yūsuf Dhū Nuwās, who rose to power in 522, probably after he assassinated
Dhu Shanatir. Ibn Hisham explains the same sequence of events under the name of "Yūsuf Dhū Nuwās." Indeed, with this invasion, the Ḥimyarites were smitten, and as such the supremacy of the Jewish religion in the Kingdom of Ḥimyar, as well as in all of Yemen, came to an abrupt end.
Imrū al-Qays, the famous
Yemeni poet from the same period, in his poem entitled
taqūl lī bint al-kinda lammā ‘azafat, laments the death of two great men of Yemen, one of them being Dhū Nuwās, whom he regards as the last of the Himyarite kings:
...
According to
Ibn Ishaq, the king of Himyar named Dhu Nuwas had burned the Christians in Najran, and an invading army from
Aksum (Habashah) occupied Yemen. Dhu Nuwas decided to kill himself by drowning himself in the sea. Arab tradition states that Dhū Nuwās committed suicide by riding his horse into the
Red Sea. The Himyarite kingdom is said to have been ruled prior to Dhu-Nuwas by the Du Yazan dynasty of Jewish converts, as early as the late fourth century.
[5]
According to a number of medieval historians, who depend on the account of
John of Ephesus, Dhū Nuwās announced that he would persecute the
Christians living in his kingdom because Christian states persecuted his fellow co-religionists in their realms; a letter survives written by Simon, the bishop of Beth Arsham in 524 CE, recounting Dimnon (who is probably
Dhū Nuwās') persecution in
Najran in
Arabia.
[6]
Based on other contemporary sources, after seizing the throne of the Ḥimyarites in ca. 518 or 523 Dhū Nuwās attacked Najran and its inhabitants, capturing them and burning their churches. After accepting the city's capitulation, he massacred those inhabitants who would not renounce Christianity. According to the Arab historians, Dhū Nuwās then proceeded to write a letter to the
Lakhmid king
Al-Mundhir III ibn al-Nu'man of
al-Ḥīrah and King
Kavadh I of
Persia, informing them of his deed and encouraging them to do likewise to the Christians under their dominion. Al-Mundhir received this letter in January 519, as he was receiving an embassy from
Constantinople seeking to forge a peace between the
Roman Empire and al-Ḥīrha.
[7] He revealed the contents of the letter to the Roman ambassadors who were horrified by its contents. Word of the slaughter quickly spread throughout the Roman and Persian realms, and refugees from Najran even reached the court of the Roman emperor
Justin I himself, begging him to avenge the martyred Christians.
...}
en.wikipedia.org
