702 AD Aksum Raid: Umayyad Civil War & the Birth of the Dahlak Sultanate

Was the 702 AD Aksumite raid on Jeddah a religious war between Christianity and Islam, or a reactive economic strike triggered by the Umayyad suppression of the Second Fitna?

Contrary to the traditional narrative of a simple clash of civilizations, the 702 AD sack of Jeddah by the African Kingdom of Aksum was a direct consequence of the internal fractures within the early Islamic Caliphate. The transcript reveals that the Red Sea had become a “Zubayrid-Aksumite Lake” of cooperation during the Second Fitna, where local Arabian rebels and Aksumite traders thrived under a rival caliphate. When the Umayyads crushed this...