After Hashim the Arab sources speak no more of commerce at Mecca, not, in any event, in connection with his son and the Prophet's grandfather, Abd al-Muttalib, who was a rather famous man at Mecca, though not as a trader.
A CELEBRATED GRANDFATHER
Abd al-Muttalib's earliest days have an odd cast to them. To begin with, his name was Shayba, and "Abd al-Muttalib," "Slave of al- Muttalib," was his sobriquet. Al-Muttalib was not, however, the name of a deity, as we might expect in such a combination, but the boy's uncle. Ibn Ishaq recounts the curious history of the title as he had heard it.
Hashim had gone to Medina and married
Salma, the daughter of Amr, one of the Banu Adiyy. Before that she had
been married to Uhayha ibn al-Julah . . . and bore him a son called Amr.
On account of the high position she held among her people she would only
marry on condition that she should retain control of her own affairs. If
she disliked a man, she left him.
To Hashim she bore Abd al-Muttalib and
called his name Shayba. Hashim left him with her while he was still a little
boy. Then his uncle [that is, Hashim's younger brother] al-Muttalib came
to take him away and bring him up among his people in his town. But Salma
declined to let the boy go with him. His uncle argued that his nephew was
now old enough to travel and was an exile away from his own tribe, who
were the people of the (Meccan) shrine, of great local reputation, and
holding much of the government (of Mecca) in their hands. Thus, it was
better for the boy that he should be among his own family, and therefore
Muttalib refused to depart without him.
It is popularly asserted that Shayba
refused to leave his mother without her consent; and this she eventually
gave. So his uncle Muttalib took him away to Mecca, riding behind him on
his camel, and the people cried: "It is al-Muttalib's slave whom he
has bought," and that is how he got the name of Abd al-Muttalib [or
"slave of al-Muttalib]. His uncle cried out: "Rubbish! This
is my nephew whom I have brought from Medina." (Ibn Ishaq 1955,
p. 59)
We assume that Hashim was dead at this point. With his passing his younger brother al-Muttalib had taken over the traditional Abd Manaf family right and privilege of supplying food and water to the pilgrims, but now, with the return of Hashim's son to his native city, it was this latter, and not al-Muttalib's own sons, who succeeded to these important and lucrative posts:
Following his uncle al-Muttalib, Hashim's son Abd al-Muttalib took over the duties of watering and feeding the pilgrims and carried on the practices of his forefathers with his people. He attained such eminence as none of his forefathers enjoyed; his people loved him and his reputation was great among them. (Ibn Ishaq 1955, pp. 59-61)
One event that contributed to the persistence of Abd al-Muttalib's reputation among the later Quraysh was a political initiative he undertook with some possibly troublesome neighbors, the Khuza'a, and their use to help solve some of Mecca's own internal problems. There had been, from the moment of Qusayy's death, and perhaps even earlier, tension among the Quraysh. They were, after all, nomads but recently come in from the steppe, all their rivalries intact and presumably enhanced within the narrow confines of their assigned "quarters" in the hollow of Mecca. We are told that a treaty made in the generation after Qusayy, when the two factions of Abd Manaf and Abd al-Dar took their oaths at the Ka'ba, held until the coming of Islam. That may have been true as regards that particular social fissure, but there were other problems and other rents in the tribal fabric. It is reported, for example, that Abd al-Muttalib had a falling out with near relatives over some properties and was on the point of invoking his powerful mother's relatives from Medina when he was offered an alliance by a closer source, the same Khuza'ai tribesmen whom Qusayy had expelled from Mecca and who were still living in the neighborhood. A treaty was drawn up in writing in the council hall and was then made public in the usual way: it was posted up on the wall of the Ka'ba.
An alleged version of the agreement is preserved by a later historian. The document is written in the rhymed prose typical of parts of the Quran and the utterances of contemporary soothsayers, but the elevated style is no guarantee of the document. When Muhammad later in his own career was about to come to terms with his Meccan enemies, the Khuza'a entered flourishing a "writing" they had made with Abd al-Muttalib, andÔ
The Rediscovery of the Sacred Well of Zamazm
The Zamzam, as we have seen, is the well near the Ka'ba that God had miraculously uncovered for Hagar when her infant Ishmael was near death from thirst. It was known and used, presumably as a sacred source, throughout the era of the Ishmaelites and their successors, the Jurhum. It was the Jurhum, we are told, who filled up the Zamzam and so concealed its exact location from the Khuza'a and the Quraysh. And so it remained until the time of Abd al-Muttalib.
While Abd al-Muttalib was sleeping in the hijr, he was ordered in a vision to dig up the Zamzam. Yazid ibn Abi Habib told me [through a number of intermediaries] that Ali ibn Abi Talib was heard telling the story of the Zamzam. He said that Abd al-Muttalib said: "l was sleeping in the hijr when a supernatural visitant came and said, "Dig Tiba." And I said "What is Tiba?" Then he left me. I went to bed again the next day and slept, and he came to me and said "Dig Barra." When I asked what Barra was he left me. The next day he came again and said "Dig al-Madnuna." When I asked him what that was, he went away again. The next day he came while I was sleeping and said "Dig Zamzam., I said, "What is Zamzam?" He said:
"'Twill never fail and never run dry,
'Twill water the pilgrim company.
It lies twixt the dung and the flesh bloody,
By the nest where the white-winged ravens fly,
By the nest where the ants to and fro ply."
When the exact spot had been indicated to him and he knew that it corresponded with the facts, Abd al-Muttalib took a pick-axe and went with his son al-Harith-for he had none other at that --and began. When the top of the well appeared he cried "God is Great." Thus the (other) Quraysh knew that he had obtained his object...
Immediately a controversy arose as to the ownership of this piece of property that was both sacred and valuable.
The Quraysh came to him and said, "This is the well of our father Ishmael, and we have a right to it, so give us a share in it." "I will not," he answered. "I was specially told of it and not you, and I was the one to be given it." They said, "Do us justice, for we shall not leave you until we have got a judicial decision in this matter." He said, "appoint anyone you like as umpier between us." He agreed to accept a woman diviner of the Banu sa'd Hudhaym, who dwelt in the uplands of Syria. So Abd al-Muttalib, accompanied by some of his relations and a representative from all of the tribes of the Quraysh, rode away. (Ibn Ishaq 1955, p. 62)
A tribal dispute and an appeal to a holy person from a distant locale to arbitrate it-suddenly we are in the same circumstances that carried Muhammad to Medina in 622 A.D. Here the parties were going to the seer, however, though they did not have to complete their journey. In the course of their trip, when all the travelers were threatened by death from thirst, it came about that it was Abd al-Muttalib who discovered water. This was accepted by the Quraysh accompanying him that God's judgment had indeed rested upon Abd al-Muttalib.
Ibn Ishaq supplies another version with more circumstantial detail on the actual discovery of the well:
The next day Abd al-Muttalib and his son al-Harith . . . went and found
the ants' nest and the raven pecking beside it between the two idols Asaf
and Na'ila at which the Quraysh used to slaughter their sacrifices. He
brought a pick-axe and began to dig where he had been commanded. The Quraysh,
seeing him at work, came up and refused to allow him to dig between their
two idols where they sacrificed. Abd al-Muttalib then told his son to stand
by and protect him while he dug, for he was determined to carry out what
he had been commanded to do. When they saw he was not going to stop work,
they left him severely alone.
He had not dug deeply before the stone top of the well appeared, and
he gave thanks to God knowing that he had been rightly informed. As the
digging went further, he found the two gazelles of gold which the Jurhum
had buried there when they left Mecca. He also found some swords and coats
of mail from Qal'a. The Quraysh claimed they had a right to share in this
find.
Once again Abd al-Muttalib agreed to submit the dispute to divine judgment, though in this version it is to a form of divination through the casting of arrows.
Abd al-Muttalib said he would make two arrows for the Ka'ba, two for
them [that is, the Quraysh] and two for himself. The two arrows which came
out from the quiver would determine to whom the property belonged. This
was agreed, and he made two yellow arrows for the Ka'ba, two black ones
for himself and two white ones for the Quraysh. They were then given to
the priest in charge of the divinatory arrows, which were thrown down beside.
Hubal was an image in the middle of the Ka'ba, indeed, the greatest of
the images...
Abd al-Muttalib began to pray to God, and when the priest threw the
arrows, the two yellow ones for the gazelles came out in favor of the Ka'ba.
The two black ones allotted the swords and coats of mail to Abd al-Muttalib,
and the two arrows of the Quraysh remained behind (in the quiver). Abd
al-Muttalib made the swords into a door for the Ka'ba and overlaid the
door with the gold from the gazelles. This was the first golden ornament
of the Katba, or so they allege. Then Abd al-Muttalib took charge of the
supply of Zamzam water to the pilgrims. (Ibid., p. 64)
It is difficult to know whether to credit the story. Other sources tell us that Abd al-Muttalib was already in inherited possession of the siqaya, the right to provide water to the pilgrims. In Islamic times, or perhaps even from this juncture forward, the stories about the Hajj or the Haram inevitably identify the siqaya with the Zamzam, which, as this story testifies, it clearly was not for a long stretch of Meccan history. Again, the "discovery" story does not much avert to the fact that in or near that same place the early inhabitants used to cast their votive offerings to the gods of the Ka'ba, and that what Abd al-Muttalib most likely "discovered"-other accounts add swords and jewels to the gazelles-was the treasury of the sanctuary.
The Binding of Abdullah
The cleromantic practice of divination through arrows reappears in connection with another famous story told, though manifestly not with Ibn Ishaq's complete confidence, about the Prophet's grandfather.
It is alleged, and God only knows the truth, that when Abd al- Muttalib
encountered the opposition of the Quraysh when he was digging up the Zamzam,
he vowed that if he should have ten sons to grow up and protect him, he
would sacrifice one of them to God at the Ka'ba. Afterwards, when he had
ten sons who could protect him, he gathered them together and told them
about his vow and called on them to keep faith with God. They agreed to
obey him and asked what they were to do. He said that each one of them
must get an arrow, write his name on it, and bring it to him. This they
did, and he took them before Hubal in the middle of the Katba. Hubal stood
by a well there. It was that well in which gifts made to the Katba were
stored.
Abd al-Muttalib said to the man with the arrows, "Cast the lots
for my sons with these arrows," and he told him of the vow he had
made. Each one gave him the arrow on which his own name was written. Now
Abdullah was his father's youngest son.... It is alleged that Abdullah
was Abd al-Muttalib's favorite son, and his father thought that if the
arrow missed him, he would be spared. (He was the father of the Apostle
of God.) When the man took the arrows to cast lots with them, Abd al-Muttalib
stood by Hubal praying to God. Then the man cast lots and Abdullah's arrow
came out. His father led him by the hand and took a large knife; then be
brought him up to Asaf and Na'ila, two idols of the Quraysh at which they
slaughtered sacrifices, to sacrifice him. (Ibn Ishaq l955, pp. 66-67)
This was not to be, however, as we might have suspected since the Abdullah in question was the future father of the Prophet. On the advice of the Quraysh, Abd al-Muttalib consulted a female seer at Medina or the Jewish oasis of Khaybar, as others said. She advised him to take the standard bloodprice of ten camels and cast lots between them and his son. If the lot fell upon his son, he was to add ten more camels to the price and cast again until the Lord should be satisfied at the price and so allow the lot to fall upon the camels. Abd al-Muttalib returned to Mecca and did as he had been advised. When the bloodprice finally reached the sum of 100 camels, the Lord caused the lot to fall on the camels rather than Abdullah, and Abd al-Muttalib redeemed his son for that price. As for the camels, "they were duly slaughtered and left there and no man was kept back or hindered (from eating them)."
An act of divine providence, which had first apparently condemned Abdullah to death, now brings him salvation, this time mediated through the activity of yet another female seer. Are we to understand that there were human sacrifices at Mecca no more than twenty-odd years before the birth of the Prophet? It may be so because there is parallel and contemporary evidence for such practices elsewhere among the Arabs. Or it may be we are simply in the presence of a moral tale, one with a distant echo of Abraham's near sacrifice of his son.
ABRAHA
There is no hint in any of this of the tumultuous events taking place in the Yemen: the first Abyssinian invasion, Dhu Nuwas's violent reaction to Christian Abyssinian hegemony in his land, and a second intervention from across the Red Sea. Only with the withdrawal of this second Abyssinian force and the rise to power |in Himyar of the Negus' deputy Abraha do the careers of the |Hijaz and the Yemen begin to draw together in the sources.
Once again Procopius supplies the details of what occurred in Himyar after Ella Asbeha returned to Ethiopia after his invasion in 525 A.D.:
In the Ethiopian army there were many
slaves and others of a lawless disposition who did not wish to follow the
king. Left behind, they stayed there (in South Arabia) out of a desire
to acquire the land of the Himyarites, for it is extremely rich. Not long
after this mob, together with some others, revolted against Esimiphaios
[that is, Samu Yafa'] and put him in prison in one of the fortresses in
that land, appointing another king for the Himyarites, by name Abraha.
This Abraha was indeed a Christian, but
a slave of a Roman citizen in an Ethiopian city, Adulis, staying there
to conduct his commercial undertakings by sea.
On hearing of these events Ella Asbeha wished to requite Abraha and
the rebels for their treatment of Samu Yafa', sent an army of 3,000 men
against them and one of his family as ruler. This army, which was composed
of men who were no longer willing to do their duty and return home but
inclined rather to stay on in a rich land, opened negotiations with Abraha
without the knowledge of the king, and came to terms with their adversaries.
When the battle was joined they killed the ruler (sent out with them),
joined the enemy army and stayed on there.
In great anger Ella Asbeha sent out another
armyh, which eventually fought an engagement against the followers of Abraha.
But they were defeated and shortly thereafter returned home. Thereafter
out of fear the Ethiopian king sent no more expeditions against Abraha.
When Ella Asbeha was dead, Abraha agreed
to pay tribute to his successor in the rule over the Ethiopians and in
that way Abraha secured legitimate rule...(Procopius, Wars, vol.
1, 20.2-8)
The death of Ella Asbeha, and so the recognition of Abraha, likely occurred sometime after 535 A.D., when, as Procopius says, "he was most securely established." Somewhat later, perhaps in 544 A.D., Justinian made to the new ruler of Himyar the same request he had to his predecessors; namely, to take up arms against the Persians. And Abraha's response was identical to the others': "Even Abraha, later when he was most securely established as a ruler, though he frequently promised the Emperor Justinian to raid Persian territory, only started out on that expedition on one occasion, and retired immediately. . . " (Procopius, Wars, vol. 1, 20.13).
THE MEN WHO HAVE THE ELEPHANT
The pre-Islamic Arabs had no fixed annual dating system of their own, and so the Muslim authorities were uncertain in precisely what year the Prophet was born. One tradition connects it, not entirely implausibly, with an event that shook the Mecca of that era, a march against the holy city from the Yemen. It was led by Abraha, the former Abyssinian viceroy who was now established as the independent and aggressive ruler of Himyar.
Muhammad's biographer Ibn Ishaq, who had traced Abraha's rise to power in the wake of the destruction of Dhu Nuwas, now resumes his narrative:
Then Abraha built the church in San'a
(in the Yemen), such a church as could not be seen elsewhere in any part
of the world at that time.
He wrote to the Negus [that is, the ruler
of Abyssinia] saying, "I have built a church for you, O king, such
as has not been built for any king before you. I shall not rest until I
have diverted the Arabs' pilgrimage to it.'' When the Arabs were talking
about this letter of his, one of the calendar intercalators was enraged.
He was of the Banu . . . Kinana. The intercalators are those who used to
adjust the months for the Arabs in the Age of Ignorance. They would make
one of the holy months profane, and make one of the profane months holy
to balance the calendar. It was about this that God sent down the verse
"Postponement (of a sacred month) is but an added infidelity by which
those who disbelieve are misled. They make it (the month) profane one year
and make it sacred the next, that they may make up the number of months
that God has made sacred." (Quran 9:37) . .
The Kinanite went forth until he came
to the church (at Santa) and defiled it. Then he returned to his own country.
Hearing of the matter, Abraha made inquiries and learned that the outrage
had been committed by an Arab who had come from the shrine in Mecca where
the Arabs went on pilgrimage, and that he had done this in anger at Abraha's
threat to divert the Arabs' pilgrimage to the church, showing thereby that
it was unworthy of reverence. Abraha was enraged and swore that he would
go to this shrine and destroy it . . .
So he commanded the Abyssinians to prepare
and make ready, and sallied forth with the elephant. News of this incident
plunged the Arabs into alarm and anxiety and they decided that it was incumbent
upon them to fight against him when they heard he meant to destroy the
Katba, God's Holy House. (Ibn Ishaq 1955, pp. 21-23)
After some local opposition from a member of the former royal house, Dhu Nafr, whom he captured and held, Abraha proceeded, according to Ibn Ishaq, to the outskirts of Mecca.
Arrived here, Abraha sent an Abyssinian
. . . with some cavalry as far as Mecca, and the latter sent off to him
the plunder of the people of the Tihama, the Quraysh and others, among
it 200 camels belonging to Abd al-Muttalib ibn Hashim [the Prophet's grandfather],
who at that time was the leading shaykh of the Quraysh. At first the Quraysh,
Kinana, Hudhayl and others who were in the holy place meditated battle,
but seeing that they had not the power to offer resistance, they gave up
the idea.
Abraha sent Hunata the Himyarite to
Mecca instructing him to inquire who was the chief notable of the country
and to tell him that the king's message was that he had not come to fight
them, but only to destroy the shrine. If they offered no resistance, there
would be no cause for bloodshed, and if he wished to avoid war he would
return with him. On reaching Mecca Hunata was told that Abd al-Muttalib
ibn Hashim ibn Abd Manaf ibn Qusayy was the leading notable, so he went
to him and delivered Abraha's message. Abd al-Muttalib replied: God knows
that we do not wish to fight him for we have no power to do so. This is
God's sanctuary and the shrine of His friend Abraham-or words to that effect.
If He defends it against Abraha, it is His shrine and His sanctuary; and
if He lets him have it, by God we cannot defend it!" Hunata replied
that he must come with him to Abraha, for he was ordered to bring him back
with him. (Ibn Ishaq 1955, p. 23)
Abd al-Muttalib is now portrayed by Ibn Ishaq as the ruler of Mecca, and through the good of fices of Dhu Nafr, whom he knew and who was under arrest in Abraha's camp, he gained an audience with Abraha at the latter's camp.
Abraha sat upon his carpet and made Abd
al-Muttalib sit beside him there. Then he told his interpreter to inquire
what he wanted, and the reply was that he wanted the king to return the
200 camels of his which he had taken. Abraha replied through the interpreter:
"You pleased me much when I saw you; then I was much displeased with
you when I heard what you said. Do you wish to talk to me about 200 camels
of your which I have taken and say nothing about your religion and the
religion of your forefathers which I have come to destroy?" Abd al-Muttalib
replied: "I am the owner of the camels but the shrine has its own
owner who will defend it." . . .
When they left Abraha, Abd al-Muttalib
went back to the Quraysh and having given them the news ordered them to
withdraw from Mecca and take up defensive positions on the peaks and in
the passes of the mountains for fear of the excesses of the soldiers. Abd
al-Muttalib took hold of the metal knocker of the Ka'ba, and a number of
Quraysh stood with him praying to God and imploring His help against Abraha
and his party.... Abd al-Muttalib then let go of the knocker of the door
of the Ka'ba and went off with his Quraysh companions to the moutain tops
where they took up defensive positions waiting to see what Abraha would
do when he occupied Mecca.
Thus, the way the story is made to unfold, it is up to Allah, the Lord of the Katba, to defend His own House. The point is clear: there will be no human intervention; all is in the hands of God.
In the morning Abraha prepared to enter the town and made his elephant ready for battle and drew up his troops. His intention was to destroy the shrine and then return to the Yemen. When they made the elephant -- its name was Mahmud -- face Mecca, Nufayl ibn Habib came up to its flank and taking hold of its ear said: "Kneel, Mahmud, or go straight back whence you came, for you are in God's holy land!" He let go of its ear and the elephant knelt, and Nufayl made off at top speed for the top of the mountain. The troops beat the elephant to make it get up but it would not; they beat its head with iron bars; they stuck hooks into its underbelly and scarified it; but it would not get up. Then they made it face the Yemen and immediately it got up and started off. When they faced it towards the north and the east it did likewise, but as soon as they directed it toward Mecca, it knelt down. (Ibn Ishaq 1955, pp. 25-27)
After describing the quite exemplary prayer habits of Abraha's elephant-like a good Muslim of a later generation, it bows down in veneration only in the direction of the Katba-Ibn Ishaq turns to an early verse in the Quran that the Muslim tradition construed-again, the Quran provides no context-as a reference to Abraha's expedition:
"Did you not see how your Lord dealt
with the men who have the elephant? Did He not reduce their guile to sheer
terror? And He sent upon them flocks of birds, throwing hard clay stones
upon them, making them as blades of grain that have been devoured."
(Quran 105)
Then [Ibn Ishaq continues] God sent upon
them birds from the sea like swallows and starlings; each bird carried
three stones, like peas and lentils, one in its beak and two between its
claws. Everyone who was hit died, but not all were hit. They withdrew in
flight the way they came, crying out for Nufayl ibn Habib to guide them
on the way to the Yemen.... As they withdrew they were continually falling
by the wayside, dying miserably by every waterhold. Abraha was smitten
in his body, and as they took him away his fingers fell off one by one.
Where the fingers had been there arose an evil sore exuding pus and blood,
so that when they brought him to San'a he was like a young fledgling. They
allege that as he died, his heart burst from his body.
And then in a final note, Ibn Ishaq offers, almost as an aside, what may have actually befallen the expedition: "Ya'qub ibn Utba told me that he was informed that that year was the first time that measles and smallpox had been seen in Arabia. .. " (Ibn Ishaq 1955, p. 27).
When did all this occur? The question is an important one not only for the history of Mecca but for the career of Muhammad because a substantial part of the Muslim historical tradition places the birthdate of Muhammad in this very same "Year of the Elephant." The following Sabean inscription was found at the well of Murayghan in South Arabia, and though the site is far to the east of the ways connecting the Yemen and Mecca, it describes a military encounter at a place called Taraban, a known oasis only 100 kilometers east of Ta'if. Indeed, the inscription appears to commemorate a part of the very same campaign recalled in Sura 105 of the Quran.
By the power of the Merciful and His Messiah. The king Abraha Za Bayman, king of Saba and Dhu Raydan and Hadramawt and Yamamat, and his Arabs, on the high plateau and the open coast, have written this document when the Ma'add undertook their spring raiding, in the month of Dhu Tabtan, while all the Banu Amir rose up. And the king placed Abgabar at the head of the Kinda and the Al, and Bashir, son of Husn, at the head of the Satid. And they struck (?) and joined battle at the head of the troop: Kinda against the Banu Amir and . . . Murad and Sa'id in the valley (?) on the route of Turaban. And they were killed and taken prisoner. And those who fled was struck by the king at Haliban. And the Mutadd disappeared like a cloud. And they gave pledges. And afterwards Amr, the son of Mundhir, gave his guarantee, and he [Mundhir?] seconded his son to them and set him up as governor over the Ma'add. And they returned from Haliban by the power of The Merciful, in the year 662 (of the Sabean era).
That is, in 552 A.D. or thereabouts Abraha directed, or rather sent, an expedition made up not of his own troops but of the Kinda and other bedouin allies against the Arab Ma'add, who were by then the vassals of the Persians. And in connection with the same northern campaign, an Abyssinian force seems to have unsuccessfully attacked Mecca, an event that was still being recalled in that latter city a half-century later and gave its name to the "Year of the Elephant."
THE SECURITY OF THE QURAYSH
Ibn Ishaq connected the assault of the "men who have the elephant" with two different suras of the Quran, the first, as we have seen, is Sura 105, with its apparently direct reference to the confrontation; the second is the sura immediately following it, of which notice has already been taken in connection with Hashim. Sura 106 of the Quran, the one called "The Quraysh," had, in fact, a critical role, perhaps the critical role, in the later Muslims' view of their ancestors at Mecca, and through them, in the modern interpretation of the entire Meccan enterprise before Islam.
For the covenants of security of the Quraysh,
The covenants (covering) the journey of winter and of summer,
Let them worship the Lord of this House,
Who provides them with food against hunger and security against fear.
(Quran 106)
This is the by now standard translation-interpretation of the sura, which might be paraphrased as "Because the Lord granted (or perhaps guaranteed) the treaties enjoyed by the Quraysh, treaties that have made possible their annual commercial journeys, let the Quraysh recognize this and worship the Lord of the Katba who has, through these treaties and their consequences, provided the Quraysh with both sustenance and security." This is intelligible in English, but the Arabic of the sura has posed serious linguistic and syntactical problems that have bothered commentators from the beginning. The sura begins (1) abruptly-early suras commonly open with some type of adjuration- (2) with an subordinate clause, and (3) with a term, ilaf, that was apparently so difficult to construe that a number of secondary readings were quickly put forward. A secondary tradition in both texts and commentaries suggests, on the other hand, that Suras 105 and 106 were once a single unit, a juncture that would solve most of the linguistic and interpretative difficulties that surround the latter and, in addition, provide a somewhat different interpretation of the whole:
Do you not see how the Lord dealt with the men of the elephant?
Did He not make their treacherous plan go astray?
And He sent against them flights of birds,
Striking them with stones of baked clay.
Then He made them like an empty field of stalks and straw, all eaten
up,
So that He might make the Quraysh secure,
The security of the journey of winter and of summer,
So let them worship the Lord of this House,
Who provides them with food against hunger and security against fear.
The primary emphasis of God's benevolence shifts, then, away from the "treaties" of the Quraysh to the providential destruction of Abraha, which in turn permitted to the Quraysh the "easement" of the winter and summer journey. Another consequence of joining the suras is that there is an easier and more natural sense to the ilaf of the opening verse of 106, a word that has been vari- ously understood as "covenants" or "commercial treaties," a technical usage induced by the difficult reading. In the new construction the technical term disappears, to be replaced by the ordinary sense of ilaf as "protection" or "easement," with the nature of that easement spelled out in the following clause, "their easement of the journey of winter and of summer.''
The widespread understanding of ilaf as "treaties" appears to have affected the interpretation of the following " journey of winter and of summer" as commercial enterprises, an interpretation that reflected backward not only upon ilaf but upon the entire history of Qurayshite Mecca since the days of Hashim, the alleged founder of those international "commercial treaties." As has recently been pointed out, there is little evidence or even likelihood for such international trade under either Hashim or one of his successors in Mecca, and our conviction is strengthened when we understand that the same Quranic commentators who were certain that the "journey of winter and of summer" were trading ventures had no clear idea of either their timing or their destination.
The Arab accounts of the expedition of Abraha reveal something else. The Abyssinians had Arab allies against Mecca, tribesmen from both the north and the south, the same putative ilaf confederates in the Meccan trading company. Mecca apparently did not yet enjoy its special status at that point, which is precisely the point of the combined Suras 105-106, and Ibn Ishaq under- lines the implication. "When Allah turned back the Abyssinians from Mecca, and inflicted upon them His vengeance, the Arabs admired Quraysh and said: "They are the people of Allah. He has fought for them, and spared them the trouble of their enemies." (Ibn Ishaq 38 = Ibn Ishaq 1955, p. 28).
This is exactly how a number of exegetes understood Sura 106; here, for example, Ibn Qutayba:
The meaning of the sura is that the Quraysh were secure within the Haram from the danger of being attacked in it by the enemies, and from any harassment when they went out of it for their trade. The people said, "The Quraysh are the inhabitants of the Haram of Allah, they are the people of Allah and the custodians of His House..." They had two journeys each year, a journey to the Yemen in winter and journey to Syria in the summer. Were it not for these journeys, they would not have survived at Mecca, and were it not for the protection derived from their dwelling near the House they would not have been able to conduct their affairs.
All of this came together, we are told because of the newly enhanced prestige of the Quraysh in the wake of the battle against Abraha and the "men who have the elephant." The Quraysh were recognized as the genuine "people of the House," who shared in the sanctity of the place whose guardians they were. The result, the Quran tells us, was that the Lord of the House provided them with "food against hunger and security against fear" (Quran 106:4).
The Muslim commentators read the last verse of Sura 106 as a consequence of what preceded, the "journey of the winter and the summer," which were in turn understood to be commercial caravan trips to Syria and the Yemen. when and where the journeys took place was not clearly understood, as we have seen, nor was it entirely clear how they were "eased" for the Quraysh, and how that "easement" was connected with a guaranteed food supply, as Sura 106 asserts. Tabari's attempt at clarification, taken from Ibn Abbas, is not untypical:
Allah ordered them to worship the Lord of this House, and He spared them the hardships. Their journey took place in winter and summer, and they did not have rest during winter nor during summer. Afterwords he provided them with food against hunger and protected them against fear, and (henceforth) they journeyed at their pleasure, i.e., if they wished they set out, and if they wished they remained (at Mecca). This belonged to the benevolence of Allah towards them. (Tabari, Tafsir, vol. 2, p. 198)
In Ibn Abbas's mind the two journeys were connected with subsistence and were a matter of necessity. Then, "afterward," presumably aafter the battle with the Abyssinians, the Quraysh had no longer to travel for (or to earn?) food because it was provided by God, and so the need of the journeys passed. Ibn Abbas makes it sound as if the Quraysh had to trabel to get food, but other commentators convert the journeys into capital ventures that earned the Quraysh wealth with which to buy bood. Neither is very convincing. The Quran itself seems to offer a far better explanation. In 2:126 Abraham begged God to "make this a secure land and sustain its people with fruits," and again in Sura 14: "O our Lord, I have made some of my offspring dwell in this valley without cultivation, by Your sacred House, in order that they might establish prayer-services. So fill the hearts of some men with yearning for them, and sustain them with fruits..." (Quran 14:37).
Abraham's prayer for sustenance for his descendants was answered by the Quraysh's victory over Abraha, which guaranteed security to the Meccan sanctuary, and the connection between a "secure sanctuary" and Mecca and the Meccans being provided with food necessary for life is most clearly established in Sura 38, where God declares: "Have We not established for them a secure sanctuary (haram amina), to which are brought as tribute fruits of all kinds, a sustaining provision from Us" (Quran 28:57).
This verse brings together all the complex notions of God, Mecca and its sanctuary that are scattered throughout the Quran and the prophetic traditions. Through God's mercy Mecca was made into a haram. This may have been done originally for Abraham and his immediate descendents (14:35; 2:126), but in some of its early passages, the lesson of that benevolence is being underlined for the benefit of its contemporary beneficiaries. According to Sura 106, no other than the Quraysh now, after the defeat of Abraha, enjoy God's providence. Mecca, in its "valley without cultivation," had no resources of its own, and the inhabitants would surely have perished, the Quran assures them, except for the fact that Mecca is a "secure sanctuary," of which the Quraysh, the "people of the House" (ahl al-bayt), were the masters and guardians.
BUYING AND SELLING IN THE SACRED MONTHS
Not every one read the "two journeys," which God had "eased" and to which the prosperity f the Quraysh ws linked, as an expanded opportunity for trade. Al-Razi for one thought that the "journey of winter and of summer" referred to the traveling of pilgrims to Mecca, the one referring to the umra of the month Rajab and the other to the Hajj of the month Dhu al-Hijja. If it was a guess, it was an inspired one. Muslim commentators, who lived in an era and a society without intercalation and so without seasonal festivals, would have difficulty in imagining seasonal pilgrimages, as all such were in pre-Islamic days. Such pilgrimages would surely have been "eased" if they took place under the authority and protection of the now saintly Quraysh. Thus, in this reading of the Quran, every year, twice a year during the sacred months, pilgrims were drawn to Holy Mecca on pilgrimage, and their fee of homage was the provisions, on which the Quraysh and the other Meccans lived. Trade enters nowhere in this equation, particularly not the long-distance trade read by some of the commentators into verse 2 of Sura 106.
Trade may have been a background issue, however, or rather the Quraysh's participation in it; and some of Muhammad's audience appear to have opposed it, or such seems to be the sense of verse 198 in Sura 2, "It is no fault for you to aspire to the Lord's bounty," immediately preceded and followed by detailed prescriptions regarding the pilgrimage "in the well-known months." The historians had a good deal of information on the circumstances and places where the "Lord's bounty" was reaped by interested parties; namely, the holy-day fairs (muwasim). That trade should be tied to the pilgrimage was natural to most of the participants, save perhaps to the puritanical Hums with their fierce and, as we shall see, exclusive devotion to Mecca. Peoples who, by reason or danger or distance, did not normally associate came together in and around Mecca under the protection of the truce of God, to worship and, it seems clear, to trade.
Al-Azraqi's is the most detailed sketch of the market fairs:
"...And the Hajj was in the month of Dhu al-Hijja. People went
out with their goods and they ended up in Ukaz on the day of the new moon
of Dhu al-Qa'da. They stayed there twenty nights during which they set
up in Ukaz their market of all colors and all goods in small houses. The
leaders and foremen of each tribe oversaw the selling and buying among
the tribes where they congregate in the middle of the market.
After twenty days they leave for Majanna,
and they spend ten days in its market, and when they see the new moon of
Dhu al-Hijja they leave for Dhu al-Majaz, where they spend eight days and
nights in its markets. They leave Dhu al-Majaz on th"eday of tawarif"
so-called because they depart from Dhu al-Majaz for Urfa after they have
taken water (for their camels) from Dhu al-Majaz. They do this because
there is no drinking water in Urfa, nor in Muzdalifa.
The "day of tawarih"
was the last day of their markets. The people who were present at the markets
of Ukaz and Majanna and Dhu al-Majaz were merchants, and those who wanted
to trade, and even those who had nothing to seel and buy because they can
go out with their families. The non-merchants from Mecca left Mecca on
the "day of tawarih."
Pilgrims, then, who were making the pre-Islamic Jahh traded at various locations in the vicinity of the pilgrimage sites before performing their rituals and, as seems likely, at Mina and Arafat as well, a practice that did not extend, as we shall see, to Mecca. Therefore the wealth of the pre-Islamic Quraysh had nothing to do, as it certainly did in the Islamic era, with trading with pilgrims at Mecca during the Hajj season. If Meccans traded, it was elsewhere, either at the fairs outside of Mecca -- fairs they did not themselves control -- or else as a function of the regional trading network set up as a result of Hashim's arrangements with the bedouin and the Quraysh's own status as a holy tribe, a condition formally institutionalized not long before Muhammad's birth by the confederation known as the Hums.
A RELIGIOUS SODALITY: THE HUMS
The Meccan historian al-Azraqi provides a succinct definition of the pre-Islamic religious association that the Muslims later remembered as Hums:
...we are the people of the Haram. We do not leave the Haram. We are Hums, and the Quraysh become Hums and all who are born to the Quraysh. Humsis and the tribes that became Humsis with them were so called because they were strict fundamentalists in their religion, and so an ahmasi (sing.) Is a man who is religiously conservative. (Al-Azraqi, 1858, p. 115)
A great many additional more historical and ritualistic nuances to the portrait can be supplied from Ibn Ishaq:
I do not know whether it was before or after the Year of the Elephant [that is, 552 A.D.] that the Quraysh invented the idea of Hums and put it into practice. They said, "We are the sons of Abraham, the people of the holy territory, the guardians of the shrine and the citizens of Mecca. No other Arabs have rights like ours, or a position like ours. The Arabs recognize none as they recognize us, so do not attach the same importance t the outside country as you do to the sanctuary, for if you do, the Arabs will despise your taboo and will say They have given the same importance to the outside land as to the sacred territory'." So they [that is, the Hums] gave up the halt at Arafat and the departure from it, though they recognized that these were institutions of the Hajj and the religion of Abraham. They considered that other Arabs should halt there and depart from the place, but they said, "We are the people of the sanctuary, so that it is not fitting that we should go out from the sacred territory and honor other places as we, the Hums, honor that; for the Hums are the people of the sanctuary." They then proceeded to deal in the same way with the Arabs who were born within and without the sacred territory. Kinana and Khuza'a joined them in this.
The Hums were, then, tribesmen of the Quraysh, the Kinana, the Khuza'a, and the Amir ibn Sa'sa'a who embraced, or perhaps had even newly embraced, what was later called the religion of Abraham, Muhammad's own later phrase to describe Islam, and which the members strongly identified with the cult of the Ka'ba in Mecca, even to the exclusion of the other pilgrimage rituals, chiefly the Hajj, which was focused on other places, like Mina and Arafat. In this view, and we have no reason to doubt it, the original Hajj had nothing to do with the "religion of Abraham," and the Quraysh as Hums did not recognize the Hajj because some of its rituals took place outside the Haram, as appears from this passage in Ibn Ishaq which seems to draw the Hums definition of the Haram somewhat short of Arafat:
The Hums used to say, "Do not respect anything profane and do not go outside the sacred area during the Hajj." So they cut short the rites of pilgrimage and the halt at Arafat, it being in the profane area, and owuld not halt at it or go forth from it. They made their stopping place at the extreme end of the sacred territory at Namira at the open space of al-Ma'ziman, stopping there the night of Arafat and sheltering by day in the trees of Namira and starting from it to Muzdalifa. When the sun turbaned the tops of the mountains, they set forth. They were called Hums because of the strictness of their religion. (Ibn Ishaq 1955, p. 115).
These limited cult excursions outside of Mecca may have been by way of concession to some of the bedouin members of the sodality, or to newcomers who found it difficult to break old habits, because other reports stress the Hums' narrower definition of the area immediately around the Ka'ba, as in this from Muqatil ibn Sulayman:
The Hums -- they were Quraysh, Kinana, Khuaz'a and Amir ibn Sa'sa'a -- said: "The Safa and the Marwa do not belong to the sacred sites of Allah." Int he Age of Barbarism there was on (Mount) Safa an idol named Na'ila and on (Mount) Marwa an idol named Asaf. They [that is, the Hums] said: "It is improper for us to make a turning (Tawaf) between them," and therefore they did not make a turning between them. (Muqatil, Tafsir, ms. 1:25b)
If we are to believe this, the Hums attempted, perhaps not entirely successfully, to exclude even Safa and Marwa, within a stone's throw from the Ka'ba, from their own particular rites. Or perhaps not. Muslim commentators were continuously attempting to supply the historical background for the Quran's great number of verses without context. One such directly addresses Safa and Marwa and what appears to be a group of Meccans who hesitated to accept the cult there: "Safa and Marwa are among the indications of Allah. It is therefore no sin for him who is on pilgrimage to the House of God, or visiting it, to go round them..." (Quran 2:158).
Limiting their cult rituals to the Haram of Mecca was only one aspect of Hums' observance. There were dietary and domestic taboos and a great deal of emphasis upon the clothes connected with the ritual:
The Hums went on to introduce innovations for which they had
no warrant. They thought it wrong to eat cheese made of sour milk or clarified
butter while they were in a state of ritual taboo. They would not enter
tents of camel-hailr or seek shelter from the sun except in leather tents
while they were in this state. They went further and refused to allow those
outside the Haram to bring food in with them when they came on the great
or little pilgrimage. Nor could they circumambulate the House except in
the garment of the Hums. If they had no such garments they had to
go round naked. If any man or woman felt scruples when they had no Hums
garments, then they could go round in their ordinary clothers; but they
had to throw them away afterwards so that neither they nor anyone else
could make use of them. The Arabs called these clothers "the cast-off."
They imopsed all these restrictions on the Arabs, who accepted them and
halted at Arafat, hastened from it, and circumambulated the house naked.
The men at least went naked, while the women laid aside all their clothers
except a shift wide open back and front....(Ibn Ishaq 1955, p. 87)
...When the Quraysh let an Arab marry
one of their women, they stipulated that the offspring should be an
ahmasi following their religion.... The Hums strictly observed the
sacred months and never wronged their proteges therein nor wronged anyone
therein. They went round the Ka'ba wearing their clothers. If one of them
before and at the beginning of Islam was in a state of taboo, if he happened
to be one of the housedwellers, that is, living in the houses or villages,
he would dig a hole at the back of his house and go in and out by it and
not enter by the door. ...The year of Hudaybiyya the Prophet was entering
his house. One of the Ansar (from Medina) was with him and he stopped at
the door, explaining that he was an ahmasi. The Apostle said "I
am an ahmasi too. My religion and yours are the same," so the
Ansari went into the house by the door as he saw the Apostle do.
If the report of Muhammad's claim that he too was a member of the Hums has any credibility, it must refer to his other later boast that he was an adherent of the "religion of Abraham" because, at Medina at least, he did not venerate the Quraysh, he did not exclude Arafat from the Islamic Hajj, nor did he appear to practice any of the Hums' clothing taboos described by Azraqi:
Abu Abbas said: there were Arab tribes, among them the Banu Amir (ibn
Sa'sa'a), who circumambulated the House naked, the men during the day and
the women during the night. When one of them reached the entry of the Haram,
he would say to the Hums, "Who will lend clothers to a man
who needs them?" If an ahmasi gave him his clothes he would
circumambulate in them, otherwise he would throw off his own clothes at
the entry of the Haram and then circumambulate seven times naked. And they
used to say, "We cannot circumambulate in our own clothers because
we have committed sins in them." ...Some of their women used to take
belts with them which they hung around their loins in order to cover themselves.
(Al-Azraqi 1858, p. 124)
If a man or a woman went to the Hajj
without being a member of the Hums, they could not circumambulate
the House unless they were either naked or wearing the clothes of the ahmasi,
which they borrowed or rented. Such a man (not of the Hums) would
stand at the entry to the Haram and say: "Who will lend someone an
outfit?" If one of the Hums lends him an outfit, or if he is
able to rent one, then he can circumambulate; else he will have to remove
his (own) clothes outside the Haram and then enter naked. He starts from
Asaf and moves to the Black Stone; then he turns right and circumambulates
seven times, returning to the pillar, and then on to Na'ila to end the
circumambulation. He goes out (of the Haram) and there finds his clothes
just as he left them...
The Hums used to circumambulate
in their own clothes, and if a non-Humsi noble, a man or a woman,
wanted to circumambulate and had another set of clothes, he can circumambulate
in one outfit and then throw away what he was wearing between Asaf and
Na'ila and no one would touch (the first set) and no one use them until
they disintegrated from being under foot and from the sun and rain and
wind. (Ibid., p. 121)
Finally, we can approach the belief system of the Hums from another side. Among the liturgical acclamations called talbiyya -- "We are present (labbayka), O Lord, We are present" -- is one purporting to be the ritual cry of the Hums. In it Allah is addressed not only as "Lord of the Ka'ba," as we might suspect, but also as "Lord of Manat, al-Lat, and al-Uzza," and even as "Lord of Sirius." Both sentiments are exprsesed in the Quran, the first in references to the goddesses as the "daughters of Allah," a notion that was embraced on at least one occasion -- that of the "Satanic verses" -- and the second as part of a kind of a credo (Quran 53:49) associated with a scriptural monotheist. Allah, we seem to be told in this labbayka, was not the only god, but he was assuredly the master of the other gods, another sentiment exactly echoed in the Quran:
Do they attribute to Him as partners things that can create nothing but are themselves created? No aid can come from them, nor can they even aid themselves. If you call them for guidance, they will not obey. As for you, it is all the same whether you call upon them or hold your peace. In truth, those whom you call upon besides Allah are servants (of Allah) like yourselves...(Quran 7:191-194)
THE PERSIAN OCCUPATION OF THE KINGDOM OF HIMYAR
According to the Arab-Muslim tradition, Abraha, once the viceroy of the Abyssinian Negus in the Yemen and more recently an autonomous king there, met his death in a vain attempt to take Mecca, with important effects on that latter city. The attack was said to have taken place in the same year as Muhammad's birth, which, if it is placed in 570 A.D., leaves little time for the succession of two of Abraha's sons in turn, Yaksum and Masruq.
When Abraha died, his son Yaksum became king of the Abyssinians. [Tabari, Annals, vol. 1, p. 945: Himyar and the tribes of the Yemen were humiliated under the heel of the Abyssinians. They took their women and killed their men and seized their young men to act as interpreters.] When Yaksum ibn Abraha died his brother Masruq ibn Abraha reigned over the Abyssinians in the Yemen. (Ibn Ishaq 1955, p. 31)
The rule of the Abyssinian occupiers eventually was by then intolerable to the local Himyarite aristocracy, and during the reign of Masruq one of them, Sayf ibn dhi Yazan went to Constantinople to seek help from the unbalanced Justin II (r. 565-578).
When the people of the Yemen had long endured oppression, Sayf ibn Dhi Yazan, the Himyarite, who was known as Abu Murra, went to the Byzantine emperor and complained of his troubles, asking him to drive out the Abyssinians and take over the country. He asked him to send what forces he pleased and promised him the kingdom of the Yemen.
Failing to gain a hearing in Byzantium, Sayf made contact with the Lakhmid prince of al-Hira, Amr ibn Mundhir, who introduced him to the shah's court. He complained that his country had been taken over by "ravens," that is, blacks. From Abyssinia or Sind, Khusraw wanted to know. Abyssinians, he was told. "And I have come to your for help and that you may assume the kingship of my country." Though he cmposed a poem "in the Himyarite language" in praise of the shah, he received no firm commitment from Khusraw, who remarked: "Your country is far distant and has little to attract me. I cannot endanger a Persian army in Arabia and there is no reason why I should do so." (Ibn Ishaq 1955, p. 31).
Sayf died at the shah's court while still awaiting a response, but his son Ma'di-karib appears to have had somewhat better luck with Khusraw. An army was put together from 800 tough prisoners routed out of Iranian jails, and they set sail for the Yemen under an elderly knight, Vahriz (ar. Wahriz).
Khusraw gathered his advisers together and asked their opinion about
the man and his project. One of them reminded the king that in his prisons
were men condemned to death. If he were to send them (to the Yemen) and
they were killed, that one merely be the fate determined for them; on the
other hand, if they conquered the country, he would have added to his empire.
Thereupon Khusraw sent those who were confined in his prisons to the number
of 800 men.
He put in command of them a man called
Wahriz who was of mature age and of excellent family and lineage. They
set out in eight ships, two of which foundered, so that only six reached
the shores of Aden....(Ibn Ishaq 1955, pp. 31-32)
Despite these losses enroute, the Persian expeditionary force found some local support for Ma'di-karib and removed Masruq from the scene (575 A.D.) Vahriz returned to Iraq with a great deal of gold, but before leaving, he instructed his new client on his repsonsibility for levying land and poll taxes and sending the proceeds to the shah, which was exactly the practice followed in the Hijaz.
Ma'di-karib's reign lasted no more than two years; in 577 he was assassinated by an Abyssinian conspiracy. Khusraw had once again to send out Vahriz, this time with 4000 Persian regular troops.
When the Persian king heard of this (insurrection against his Himyarite
client) he sent Wahriz with 4,000 Persians and ordered him to kill every
Abyssinian or child of an Abyssinian and an Arab woman, great or small,
and not leave alive a single man with crisp curly hair. Wahriz arrived
and in due course carried out these instructions and wrote to tell the
king he had done so. The king then gave him viceregal authority and he
ruled under Khusraw until his death. (Ibid, 1955, p. 34)
After this bloody massacre of the Abyssinians
Vahriz was in the Yemen to stay as the shah's regent and tax collector.
What followed thereafter is difficult to discern. Tabari says that Vahriz's
son and grandson rule the Yemen in the shah's name. But at least one of
them was called marzban, which has suggested to one scholar that the Yemen
was organized as a frontier province of the Sasanian Empire and governed
by a possibly hereditary Persian military governor.
These events took place in the late
570s, during the earliest years of Muhammad at Mecca, if we accept the
traditional dating of the Prophet's birth to the "Year of the Elephant."
It makes no difference, however, if the Persian occupation of the Yemen
took place just before or just after Muhammad's birth. The results were
the same. The shah of Iran now controlled not only the overland trade routes
to the Farther East but the Middle East's own primary sources of spices,
the former "Araby the Blest" in the Yemen. The occupation of
the richest corner of Arabia should have been an enormous commercial boon
for the Sasanians, but there is no sign that it was in fact such. What
the evailable evidence does show is that after the first decades of the
sixth century South Arabia was in a state of political, social and economic
disarray: its agriculture was in ruin, and its affiliated Arab tribes were
moving out of their sedentary ways back into the nomadic life of the steppe.
By the mid-sixth century Arabia was in the full grip of what has been called
the bedouinization of Arabia.
THE BIRTH OF MUHAMMAD IBN ABDULLAH
It is alleged in popular stories -- and only God knows the truth -- that Amina, daughter of Wahb, the mother of God's Apostle, used to say when she was pregnant with God's Apostle that a voice said to her, "You are pregnant with the lord of this people, and when he is born, say: "I put him in the care of the One from the evil of every envier'; then call him Muhammad." As she was pregnant with him she saw a light come forth from her by which she could see the castles of Bostra in Syria. Shortly afterwards Abdullah, the Apostle's father, died while his mother was still pregnant.
Thus rapidly does Muhammad's father pass from history, the same Abdullah nearly sacrificed by his own father, Abd al-Muttalib.
The Apostle was born on Monday, the 12th of First Rabi' in the Year of the Elephant.... It is said that he was born in the house known as Abu Yusuf's, and it is said that the Apostle gave it to Aqil ibn Abi Talib who kept it until he died. His son sold it to Muhammad ibn Yusuf, the brother of al-Hajjaj, and he incorporated it into the house he built. Later Khayzuran separated it therefrom and made it into a mosque. (Ibn Ishaq 1955, pp. 69-70)
This apparently confident chronology is belied by most of the other information we possess about the life of the Prophet. To begin with, not all the authorities date his birth in the so-called Year of the Elephant. Muhammad, like most others of his contemporaries and people in similar circumstances for many centuries after, had little or no idea when he was born and thus of his exact age at his death. Most of the authorities make him anywhere between 60- and 65-years-old when he died, a quite advanced age in that culture and quite at odds with the impression given by the sources of his vitality and of the unexpectedness of his death when it did occur.
As it turns out, the reported age of Muhammad was a function not of the memory of his followers, who had no way of knowing it, but of a calculation based on quite another set of considerations. This is one example:
The Quraysh reckoned (time), before the (beginning of the) era of the Prophet, from the time of the Elephant. Between the Elephant and the Sinful Wars, they reckoned forty years. Between the Sinful Wars and the death of Hisham and the (re)building of the Ka'ba they reckoned nine years. Between the (re)building of the Ka'ba and the departure of the Prophet for Medina, they reckoned fifteen years; he stayed five years (of these fifteen) without receiving the revelation. Then the reckoning (of the usual chronology) was as follows...(Ibn Asakir, Ta'rikh, vol. 1. p. 28)
One nonhistorical element in the calculation was the notion that the Prophet should have been at the ideal age of 40 when he received his first revelation, and another, less frequently invoked, is that he should not have yet reached the age of responsibility when he took part in the so-called Sinful Wars. The consequent calculations have led to numerous anomalies, like obliging Khadija to bear Muhammad eight children after she had passed the age of 40.
Later Muslim authorities seem to give tacit recognition to the uncertainty of any of the chronological indications passed on about the Prophet's life at Mecca. They, like us, must have felt that the historical ground grew firm only at Muhammad's migration to Medina; it was that date, in any event, that they chose to begin the Muslim calendrical era.
We return to Ibn Ishaq's canonical account of the early years of Muhammad, what was been called the Infancy Gospel of Islam, filled, as it appears, with the same miracles and presentiments of the future as are found in the opening pags of Matthew and Luke:
Salih ibn Ibrahim ... said that his tribesmen said that Hassan ibn Thabit
said, "I was a well-grown boy of 7 or 8, understanding all that I
heard, when I heard a Jew calling out at the top of his voice from the
top of a fort in Yathrib [that is, Medina]: O company of Jews' until they
all came together and called out, Confound you, what is the matter?' He
answered: Tonight has risen a star under which Ahmad is to be born.'..."
After his birth his mother sent to tell
his grandfather Abd al-Muttalib [Muhammad's father, it will be recalled,
died before he was born] that she had given birth to a boy and asked him
to come and look at him. When he came she told him what she had seen and
what was said to her and what she was ordered to call him. It is alleged
that Abd al-Muttalib took him before Hubal in the middle of the Ka'ba,
where he stood and prayed to Allah thanking him for this gift. Then he
brought him out and delivered him to his mother, and he tried to find foster
mothers for him. (Ibn Ishaq 1955, pp. 69-70)
A foster mother was found for the newborn, a certain Halima from among the tribe of the Banu Sa'd ibn Bakr, and this suckling interval in his life was the setting for some of the more extraordinary stories that grew up around Muhammad.
Thawr ibn Yazid, from a learned person who I think was Khalid ibn Ma'dan
al-Kala'i, told me that some of the Apostle's companions asked him to tell
them about himself. He said: "I am what Abraham my father prayed for
and the good news of my brother Jesus. When my mother was carrying me she
saw a light proceeding from her which showed her the castles of Syria.
I was suckled among the Banu Sa'd ibn Bakr, and while I was with a brother
of mine behind our tents shepherding our lambs, two men in white raiment
came up to me with a gold basin full of snow. Then they seized me and opened
up my belly, extracted my heart and split it; then they extracted a black
drop from it and threw it away; then they washed my heart and my belly
with that snow until they had thoroughly cleaned them. Then one said to
the other, "Weigh him against ten of his people." They did so
and I outweighed them. Then they weighed me against a hundred and then
a thousand and I outweighed them. He said, "Leave him alone, for by
God, if you weighed him against all his people, he would outweigh them."
The Apostle of God used to say, "There
is no prophet but has shepherded a flock," When they said, "You
too, Apostle of God?," he said "Yes."
The Apostle of God used to say to his
companions, "I am the most Arab of you all. I am of the Quraysh and
I was suckled among the Banu Sa'd ibn Bakr. It is alleged by some, but
God knows the truth, that when his foster mother brought him to Mecca,
he escaped her among the crowd while she was taking him to his people.
She sought him and could not find him, so she went to Abd al-Muttalib and
said: "I brought Muhammad tonight and when I was in the upper part
of Mecca he escaped me and I dn't know where he is." So Abd al-Muttalib
went to the Ka'ba praying to God to restore him. They assert that Waraqa
ibn Nawfal and another man of Quraysh found him and brought him to Abd
al-Muttalib saying We have found this son of yours in the upper part of
Mecca.' Abd al-Muttalib took him and put him on his shoulder as he went
round the Ka'ba confiding him to God's protection and praying for him;
then he sent him to his mother Amina."
A learned person told me that what urged
his foster mother to return him to his mother, apart from what she told
his mother, was that a number of Abyssinian Christians saw him when she
brought him back after he had been weaned. They looked at him, asked questions
about him, and studied him carefully, then they said to her, "Let
us take this boy and bring him to our king and our country; for he will
have a great future. We know all about hm." The person who told me
this alleged that she could hardly get him away from them. (Ibn Ishaq 1955,
pp. 72-73)