Guillaume--Life of Muhammad.pdf - Radical Truth

3S
26 The Life of Muhammad
to God and imploring his help against Abraha and his army. As he was
holding the knocker of the temple door, 'Abdu'I-Mugalib said:
0 God, a man protects his dwelling so protect Thy dwellings. I
Let not their cross and their craft tomorrow overcome Thy craft (39).'
'Ikrima b. 'Amir b. Hashim b. 'Abdu Manaf b. 'Abd aI-Dar b. Qu~ayy
said:
o God, humiliate al-Aswad b. Maf~iid
Who took a hundred camels wearing their collars;
Between Hid' and Thabir and the deserts,
He shut them in when they should be pasturing freely,
And delivered them to the black barbarians,
Withdraw from him thine aid, 0 Lord, for Thou art worthy to be
praised (4-0).
'Abdu'l-Mullalib then let go the knocker of the door of the Ka'ba and
went off with his Quraysh companions to the mountain tops where they
took up defensive positions waiting to see what Abraha would do when he
ocoupied Mecca. 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 temple and then return to the Yaman. When they made
the elephant (its name was Mal:>miid) face Mecca, Nufayl b. Habib came
up to its flank and taking hold of its ear said: 'Kneel, Mal:>miid, or go
straight back whence you came, for you are in God's holy land I' He let go
of its ear and the elephant knelt, and Nufayl made off at t,Q~ speed for the
top of the mountain. The troops beat the elephant to maRe 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 Yaman and immediately it got up and started off. When they set
it towards the north and the east it did likewise, but as soon as they directed
it towards Mecca it knelt down.
Then God sent upon them birds from the sea like swallows and
36 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 by the way they came, crying out for
Nufayl b. Habib to guide them on the way to the Yaman. When he saw
the punishment which God had brought down on them Nufayl said:
Where can one flee when God pursueth?
AI-Ashram is the conquered not the conqueror (4-1).
I /fildl. the plural of billa, means a collection of houses and also the people who live
therein. For, TOJ;lahU al-Shahrastiini, Milal, has billahu 'his neighbour', and for ghadwan
'tomorrow' 'at!wan, which could be rendered 'hostile' here. For qiblatand he has Ka'batana.
20 mibal here is said by C. andAbu Dharr to mean strength and power; but it really means
'guile', 'strategy accompanied by force'. 'Craft', d. Kraft, appears to be the best rendering.
The passage is a reminiscence of Sura 13. 14, and the- idea may be found in the Quranic
saying of God: Khayru l-maki,in, 3. 47. T. has preserved four lines of no poetic merit which
I.H. preferred to excise.
Nufayl also said:
The Life of Muhammad
Our greetings, Rudllfna!
You rejoice our eyes this morning!
[Your fuel-seeker came to us last night,
But we had naught to give hjm.]
If you had seen, but you will not see, Rudayna,
What we saw on al-Muhassab's side J
You would have forgive~ ~e and praised my action
And ~ot have been vexed at what has passed and gone.'
I praised God when I saw the birds
And I feared the stones that might fall upon us.
Everyone was asking for Nufayl
As though lowed the Abyssinians a debt.
As they withdrew they were continually falling by the wayside dying
mIserably by every waterhole. Abraha was smitten in his body and as they
took him away his fingers fell off one by one. Where the fing~r had been
t~ere arose ,a:; evil sore. exuding pus and blood, so that when they brough~
hIm to ~an a he was hke a young fledgeling. They allege that as he died
his heart burst from his body. (A. Deserters from the army, labourers
and campfollowers remained in Mecca and became workers and shepherd~
for the population.)
Ya'~iib b. 'Utba told me that he was informed that that year was the
first tIme that measles and smallpox had been seen in Arabia' and too
t~t it was the first time that bitter herbs like rue, colocynth, and Asclepr:a.:
gtgantea were seen.
. When God sent Muhammad he specially recounted to the Quraysh
his goodnes~ and favour in turning back the Abyssinians in order to
preserv~ theIr state and permanence. 'Did you not see how your Lord
dealt WIth the owners of the elephant? Did He not reduce their guile to
sheer terror? And sent upon them flocks of birds, throwing hard clay
stones upon them, making them as blades ofcorn that have been devoured."
And again: 'For. the uniting of Quraysh, their uniting the caravans to 37
ply summer and wlllter. Then let them worship the Lord of this temple
who has fed them so that they hunger not, and made them safe from fear',;
: A pl~ce betwee? Mecca.and Mini in the valley of Mecca. See Yiqut.
PosslblY'hayna 18 a poetical form of haynand, 'between us'. The line is based on SUra
57· 23·
3 Sura 105.
4 Sura 106. A good discussion of this difficult passage will be found in Lane's uric
p. 79h ~d c. There are three. riv~1 r~adings: iltif (adopted by our author), iltif, and #i:
Accor~g to all three the meamng IS satd to be 'for their keeping to the journey etc.' Other
authontlea ~ay that the ~rst rea~ing means 'for the preparing and fitting out'. Others say
~t accordm~ to the .t~rd reading the meaning is 'the protecting'. According to Ibn al.
A dbI the po~t of this .18 that the. f~ur 80m of 'Abdu ManAf were given freedom to travel
by the .Byzantines, Perstan, AbY88IDlana, and l:Iimyaris respectively and so were able to go
and bnng com from neiahbourina territories. There may be a sound hi,tonca1 kernel to
T· 942
Au. 91