Islam: A Guide for Jews and Christians - Electric Scotland

86 t CHAPTER FOUR
the Kaaba, all save one of Jesus and Mary that the Prophet allowed
to remain.
Note: The Kaaba had been rebuilt during Muhammad’s youth—he
had assisted in the project, as we have seen—out of timbers from a
recent shipwreck on the Red Sea coast. The project was under the
direction of one of the survivors, named Baqum (Pachomius), since
the Meccans, whose dwellings were of mud brick, had little idea how
to construct a timber roof. The pictures may have come from the
wreck, or perhaps they were the work of that same shipwrecked
Christian. Whatever the case, they disappeared in later reconstructions
of the building.
The Quraysh were treated with what appears to be remarkable
leniency. “Go,” Muhammad said, “You are freed.” And he left the
town. Muhammad had little to fear. Mecca had fallen to the
Prophet long before he actually entered it.
The Bedouin, the camel and sheep steppe nomads among the
Arabs, were opportunists, but they were not blind to oasis politics.
Some among the tribes scented danger in the rise of the new master
of Medina. We cannot follow all the workings of what followed—
the internal history of the Bedouin is written in sand—but there
was enough fear of where Muhammad was heading to generate a
coalition of tribes that made one final attempt at taking him down.
The Bedouin collected their forces at a place called Hunayn, and
Muhammad led his Muslims out of Medina to meet them. The
Muslims were superior in numbers, but the circumstances of this
kind of “display” battle may have been new to them, and initially
there was some panic in the Muslim ranks. They rallied, however,
and in the end it was the Bedouin who broke and ran. Once again
the Quran makes one of its few contemporary allusions. “On the
day of Hunayn,” it instructed the Muslims, “God sent hosts you
could not see and punished those who did not believe” (9:25–26).
As on the fields of Badr (8:9) and Uhud (3:121–125), God had
intervened through his angels on behalf of his Prophet.