Clothing the Kaaba

Now, on his way south, heading back to Yemen, the tribe of Hawāzin — they had a problem between them and Quraysh, they had a problem with the people of Makkah — so they wanted to make a fitnah, to start a division or cause a problem between Tubbaʿ Asʿad and Makkah, and they succeeded. So Tubbaʿ Asʿad was contemplating attacking Makkah. Now these two Jewish rabbis told him, "This is another town that is protected by Allah, you shouldn't attack Makkah. In fact, you should go into Makkah and make the ṭawāf around the Kaaba." He said, "Well, let's go." They said, "No, we can't join you." "How come?" "We are scholars, and it isn't appropriate for us as scholars to go and make ṭawāf around the Kaaba when it's surrounded by idols."

So he went in and he made ṭawāf, and Tubbaʿ Asʿad was the first person ever to clothe the Kaaba. He was the first one to clothe the Kaaba, and he would clothe it once a year, and the way they would do it in the past is: they would bring the new clothing and place it over the old, because they consider the clothing of the Kaaba to be sacred, and they can't take it off. So they would keep on piling up one cloth over another, until the weight of it just became — the sheer weight of it was so heavy — eventually they decided that they're going to have to take it off, and just place one clothing at a time.

Tubbaʿ Asʿad went with these two Jewish rabbis to Yemen, and they were given freedom and encouragement to spread their religion among the Yemeni tribes, and many of the tribes in Yemen did embrace the Jewish faith. So there were two types of Jews in Arabia: ethnic Jews in Khaybar and Madīnah, and then Jews by conversion in Yemen. So the Jews of Yemen are ethnically Arab, but they adopted the Jewish faith. It can be seen, then, that at some moments of time, Jews did preach their religion. Now they might not do that, but there were points in history where they did preach their religion to others, and an example is Yemen. So that's how the Jewish religion was introduced into Arabia.