24 Preface وَجَدتُها وَقَومَها يَسجُدونَ لِلشَّمسِ مِن دونِ اللَّهِ وَزَيَّنَ لَهُمُ الشَّيطانُ أَعمالَهُم فَصَدَّهُم عَنِ السَّبيلِ فَهُم لا يَهتَدونَYusuf Ali“I found her and her people worshipping the sun besides God:1 Satan has made their deeds seem pleasing in their eyes, and has kept them away from the Path,- so they receive no guidance,-The ancient religions of the people of Saba' (the Himyar or Sabæans) consisted in the worship of the heavenly bodies, the sun, the planets, and the stars. Possibly the cult was connected with that of Chaldea, the homeland of Abraham: see 6:75-79 and notes thereon. Yemen had easy access to Mesopotamia and the Persian Gulf by way of the sea, as well as with Abyssinia. That accounts for the Christians of Najrān and the Jewish dynasty of kings (e.g., Dhu Nuwas, d. 525 A.C.) who persecuted them in the century before Islam-also for the Christian Abyssinian Governor Abraha and his discomfiture in the year of the Prophet’s birth (S. 105), say 570 AC. Jewish-Christian influences were powerful in Arabia in the sixth century of the Christian era. The religion of these Sabæans (written in Arabic with a Sin) should not be confounded with that of the Sabians (with a Sad), as to whom see n. 76 to 2:62.