The accepted version of history is that, in obedience to the tradition, 'Two religions shall not remain in the land of the Arabs', 'Umar drove all Jews and Christians out of Arabia, because that was the land of Islam and Islam alone. This is an exaggeration. The dhimmis were never banished from Yemen, and Hamdani mentions a village with two hundred Jewish inhabitants in the east of the peninsula.1 Dhimmis were excluded from the Hedjaz, but even this was contrary to the practice of the Prophet, was opposed to the views of some of the great lawyers, and was not carried out consistently.