Abraha, apart from promoting construction projects and…

Abraha, apart from promoting construction projects and massacres of Jews, is chiefly famous for the military expedition that he leads northward against the city of Mecca in the same year as Muhammad's birth, about 570.

Although elephants support the expedition, it fails, and later Muslims, who will remember this year as “the Year of the Elephant,” will profess the belief that Mecca had escaped capture only through a miracle.

According to Islamic tradition, it was in this year that Muhammad was born.

Recent discoveries in southern Arabia suggest that Year of the Elephant may have been 569 or 568, as the Sassanid Empire overthrew the Axumite- and Roman-affiliated regimes in Yemen around 570.