Chapter 25 : The Birth of Hasan and Husain
On the 15th of Ramadan of 3 A.H. (March 625), God was pleased to bless the daughter of His Messenger, Muhammad, with the birth of her first child. Muhammad Mustafa came radiating happiness; he took the infant in his arms, kissed him, read adhan in his right ear, and iqama in his left; and called him Hasan.
One year later, i.e., on the 3rd of Sha'aban of 4 A.H. (February 626), God was pleased to give the daughter of His Apostle, her second child. The Apostle came, all smiles and cheers, took the infant in his arms, kissed him, read adhan in his right ear, and iqama in his left, and called him Husain.
The birth of each of these two princes was the occasion of immense rejoicing for Muhammad. He considered them among the greatest of God's blessings, and thanked Him for them. At the birth of each of them, the Muslims poured into the Great Mosque to congratulate him. He greeted them with smiles and thanks, and shared his happiness with them.
There was never a day when the Prophet did not visit the house of his daughter to see her children. He loved to see them smile, so he tickled them and bounced them; he cuddled them and coddled them, and he regarded their every step and every word as wondrous.
When these two princes grew up a little, and were able to toddle around, they very frequently wandered out of their house into the Mosque. If their grandfather was in the midst of a sermon, he immediately stopped, descended from the pulpit, took them in his arms, carried them back, seated them beside himself on the pulpit, and then resumed his speech. If he was leading the public prayers, and was in sajdah (resting his forehead on the ground), both children, very often, climbed onto his neck and back. He preferred to prolong the sajdah rather than to disturb them, and rose from sajdah only when they dismounted from his neck or back voluntarily. If he went out of his home or the Mosque, they rode his shoulders. The people of Medina called them "the Riders of the Shoulders of the Messenger of God." They were much more attached to him than they were to their own parents.
Muhammad, the Prophet of Islam, was never happier than when he was with Hasan and Husain. They were the apples of his eyes, and the joy of his heart, and in their company alone he found true and perfect relaxation. He played hide and seek with them, and if they were playing with other children, he lingered near them just to hear the lilt of their laughter. For their sake, he could put off even important affairs of state. When they smiled, he forgot all the burdens and anxieties of state and government. He loved to read every message that they wrote for him in their angelic smiles.
Earlier, the Messenger of God had brought up his own daughter, Fatima Zahra, whom he called the Lady of Heaven. Now he took charge of bringing up her two children – Hasan and Husain – whom he called the Princes of the Youth of Heaven. For him, their education was a matter of paramount importance, and he personally attended to every detail in it. His aim was clear: he wanted them to be the finest products of Islam, and they were. He built his own character into their character, and made them a model for his umma (community, people) which it (the umma) had to imitate to the end of time itself.
Ali and Fatima Zahra also had two daughters – Zaynab and Umm Kulthoom. When they grew up, they were married to their cousins – the sons of Jaafer ibn Abi Talib, the Winged Martyr of Islam. Zaynab was married to Abdullah ibn Jaafer, and Umm Kulthoom was married to Muhammad ibn Jaafer.
Hasan, Husain, Zaynab and Umm Kulthoom, all four children were pampered by their grandfather, Muhammad Mustafa, the Apostle of God; and the happiest days in the lives of all five of them were those which they spent.
The Death of Fatima bint Asad, the Mother of Ali ibn Abi Talib
In 4 A.H. (A.D. 626) Fatima bint Asad, the widow of Abu Talib and the mother of Ali, died in Medina. She had reared Muhammad, the future Prophet, as her own son, and he called her his mother. She was the second lady in Arabia to accept Islam, the first being Khadija, the wife of the Prophet.
Muhammad was deprived of his mother early in life but he soon found a second mother in Fatima bint Asad. He, therefore, did not miss the love and affection that a mother alone can give. When his foster-mother died, he attended the funeral, and said: "May God bless your noble soul. You were to me like my own mother. You fed me while you yourself went hungry. Your aim in doing so was to please God with your deeds." He gave his own cloak for her shroud, and she was given burial in it. He often said, "I was an orphan and she made me her son. She was the kindest person to me after Abu Talib."
When the grave was made ready, Muhammad, the Messenger of God, entered it; he lay down in it, and said: "O God! Life and death are in Thy hands. Thou alone will never die. Bless my mother, Fatima bint Asad, and give her a mansion in Heaven. Thou art the Most Merciful."
When Fatima bint Asad was buried, Muhammad Mustafa repeated Allah-o-Akbar (God is Great) forty times, and prayed: "O God! Put her in the Light, and fill her heart with Light."
Muhammad Mustafa was the Executor of the last will and testament of Fatima bint Asad.
Fatima bint Asad was a most remarkable lady since two of the children she brought up, Muhammad and Ali, turned out to be the two most remarkable men in the history of Islam. Her home was the real cradle of Islam. Both Muhammad, the future Prophet of Islam, and Ali, the future paladin of Islam, were born in her house, and they grew up in it. Both of them were the "products" of her education.
Fatima bint Asad was also the mother of Jaafer, the hero of the battle of Mootah, and the Winged Martyr of Islam. The name of her husband, Abu Talib, figures in history as the greatest benefactor of Islam, but her role in the service of Islam was no less important than his. She shares the distinction with him of rearing and educating Muhammad, the future Messenger of God. If her husband protected Muhammad from his enemies outside, she provided him love, comfort and security at home.It was in her home that Muhammad found emotional security and the emotional closeness of a family.
If Khadija was the first Muslim lady and the greatest benefactress of Islam, Fatima bint Asad was the second Muslim lady, and the second greatest benefactress of Islam. May God be pleased with His slaves, Khadija and Fatima bint Asad, and may He bless them.
Chapter 26 : The Battle of the Trench
After the battle of Uhud, Abu Sufyan and the other pagan leaders realized that they had fought an indecisive action, and that their victory had not borne any fruits for them. Islam had, in fact, resiled from its reverse at Uhud, and within an astonishingly short time, had reestablished its authority in Medina and the surrounding areas.
The pagans considered Islam a threat to their economic security and political supremacy in Arabia, and they could never be reconciled to its existence. They knew that if they could kill Muhammad, their interests would be safeguarded, and their hegemony would be restored in Arabia. With this aim they decided to strike a final and a crushing blow upon Medina, and to exterminate all Muslims.
Montgomery
The strategic aim of the Meccans was nothing less than the destruction of the Muslim community as such, or – what amounts to the same thing – the removal of Muhammad from his position of authority (Muhammad, Prophet and Statesman)
Inspired by this aim, and by their ardor to make restitution for failures of the past, the Makkan leaders began preparations for an all-out war; a war that would put an end to all other wars by blotting Islam out!
In two years the Quraysh raised a fighting force of ten thousand warriors. This was the largest force ever assembled by the Arabs till that time. With great fanfare and aplomb, this formidable force left Makkah in February 627 to capture Medina and to obliterate Islam.
Muhammad Husayn Haykal
When news of this tremendous mobilization reached Muhammad and the Muslims in Medinah, it struck them all with panic. The mobilization of the whole of Arabia against them instilled fear in their hearts as they faced the prospect of being not only defeated but wiped out. The gravity of the situation was evident in the fact that the army the Arab tribes had now raised surpassed in number and equipment anything the Peninsula had ever seen before... (The Life of Muhammad, Cairo, 1935)
The Prophet convened an emergency meeting of his principal companions to consult them in the matter of defending the city. One thing was obvious. The Muslims were so few in number and so poor in equipment that they could not meet the invading force on the open ground. Medina had to be defended from within. But how? How could the tiny Muslim garrison prevent the Makkan army from overrunning Medina which would be overwhelmed by sheer numbers, was a question on everyone's mind.
One of the closest friends of Muhammad, the Messenger of God, was Salman the Persian. He was born and brought up in Persia (Iran) but had spent many years in Syria and Palestine, and he had familiarity with the warfare and the siege operations of both the Persians and the Romans. Medina had natural or man-made defenses on three sides but was exposed on one, i.e., the north side. Salman told the Prophet that if a trench were dug on the north side, the city could perhaps be defended successfully.
The idea, though new and unconventional in Arabia, appealed to the Prophet. He accepted it and ordered Muslims to dig the trench.
Muhammad Husayn Haykal
Salman al-Farsi, who knew far more of the techniques of warfare than was common in the Peninsula, advised the digging of a dry moat around Medina and the fortifications of its buildings within. The Muslims hurried to implement this counsel. The moat was dug and the Prophet – may God's peace and blessings be upon him – worked with his hands alongside his companions lifting the dirt, encouraging the Muslim workers, and exhorting everyone to multiply his effort. (The Life of Muhammad, Cairo, 1935)
Since the Makkan army was known to be approaching Medina rapidly, there was no time to lose, and the Muslims worked frantically – in relays. In six days the trench was dug, just in time to prevent the invaders from taking the town by assault.
The Makkan cavalry came like a whirlwind but was suddenly checked, in its career, by the trench. The horsemen reined in their horses at its edge. Their grand strategy had been to take Medina by storm in a few hours but now it appeared to them that they could not do so. Here there was a trench, a new obstacle which they could not surmount. How did it fit into their strategy? They were utterly nonplused by the trench.
Eventually, and after long deliberation, the Makkan commanders decided to lay siege to Medina, and to force the Muslims to surrender, through attrition. They sealed all exits from Medina, and hemmed in the Muslims. Medina was in a state of siege!
Though it was Abu Sufyan who had organized the whole campaign, and he was its director of operations, he was no fighting man himself. The fighting man of his army was Amr ibn Abd Wudd, the fiercest of the warriors of pagan Arabia. Abu Sufyan's hopes of a swift and decisive victory over the Muslims lay in him. M. Shibli, the Indian historian, and Abbas Mahmood Al-Akkad, the Egyptian historian, say that Amr ibn Abd Wudd was reckoned, by the Arabs of the time, to be more than a match for one thousand cavaliers.
Amr ibn Abd Wudd had no interest in the static warfare of a siege. He panted for action. When a few days had passed, and nothing had happened, he lost patience, and he decided to capture Medina by personal action. One day, prowling around Medina, he and three other Makkan knights discovered a rocky point where the trench was not too wide. They spurred their horses from it, and succeeded in clearing the trench!
Now Amr was inside the perimeter of Medina. He boldly advanced into the Muslim camp, and challenged the heroes of Islam to come out and fight against him in the classical Arabian tradition of duels.
Amr's first challenge went unanswered whereupon he repeated it but still got no answer. Such was the prestige of his name that no one in the Muslim camp dared to meet him in a trial of strength. If the idolaters saw in him their hope of victory, the Muslims saw in his challenge the sentence of their death.
Amr ibn Abd Wudd threw his insolent challenge a third time and taunted the Muslims at the same time for their cowardice.
To Amr it must have seemed that the Muslims were paralyzed with fear, which most of them, in fact, were. Al-Qur’an al-Majid has also drawn a portrait of the state of the Muslims at the siege of Medina in the following verses :
Behold! They came on you from above you and from below you, and behold, the eyes became dim and the hearts gaped to the throats, and you imagined various (vain) thoughts about God! (Chapter 33; verse 10)
Behold! A party among them said: "you men of yathrib! You cannot stand (the attack). Therefore go back" and a band of them asked for leave of the Prophet saying, "truly our houses are bare and exposed." Though they were not exposed: they intended nothing but to run away. (Chapter 33; verse 13)
Amr ibn Abd Wudd even expressed amazement that the Muslims were not showing any eagerness to enter paradise where he was ready to send them.
It is true that most of the Muslims were terror-stricken but there was one among them who was not. He had, in fact, volunteered to accept Amr's very first challenge but the Prophet had restrained him, hoping that someone else might like to face him (Amr). But he could see that no one dared to measure swords with him.
The young man who was willing to take up Amr's challenge was no one other than Ali ibn Abi Talib, the hero of Islam. When Amr hurled his third challenge, and no one answered him, Ali rose and solicited the Prophet's permission to go out and to fight against him.
The Prophet of Islam had no choice now but to allow his cousin, Ali, the Lion of Islam, to go and to silence the taunts and the jibes of Amr ibn Abd Wudd.
Ali put on the battle-dress of the Prophet of Islam. The latter himself suspended the Dhu'l-Fiqar to his side, and prayed for his victory, saying: "O Allah! Thou hast called to Thy service, Obaida ibn al-Harith, on the day the battle of Badr was fought, and Hamza ibn Abdul-Muttalib, on the day the battle of Uhud was fought. Now Ali alone is left with me. Be Thou his Protector, give him victory, and bring him back safely to me."
When the Prophet saw Ali going toward his adversary, he said: "He is the embodiment of all Faith who is going to an encounter with the embodiment of all Unbelief."
A few moments later, Ali was standing before Amr. The two heroes identified themselves, and sized up each other. Ali had a set of principles which he applied in all situations whether of war or of peace. In the battle of the Trench, the Muslims and the pagans saw a demonstration of the application of those principles. Whenever he confronted an enemy, he offered him three options. They were :
1.Ali presented Islam to his opponent. He invited him to abandon idolatry and to accept Islam. This invitation made Ali a missionary of Islam in the battlefield itself.
2.If the enemy did not accept Ali's invitation to accept Islam, he advised him to withdraw from the battle, and not to fight against God and His Messenger. Fighting against them, he warned him, would only bring eternal damnation upon him in the two worlds.
3.If the enemy did not accept the second option also, and refused to withdraw from the battle, then Ali invited him to strike the first blow. Ali himself was never the first to strike at an enemy.
Amr ibn Abd Wudd disdained even to consider the first and the second options but accepted the third, and struck a mighty blow with his ponderous sword which cut through the shield, the helmet and the turban of Ali, and made a deep gash in his forehead. Blood leapt out from the wound in a jet but Ali was not dismayed. He rallied, and then struck a counter-blow with the famous Dhu'l-Fiqar, and it cleft the most formidable warrior of Arabia into two!
When Amr was killed, the three knights in his entourage turned round and spurred their horses to retreat. Ali let them retreat. It was one of his principles not to pursue a fleeing enemy. Whoever wished to save his life, Ali let him save it.
The death of Amr ibn Abd Wudd broke the back of the Makkan offensive against Islam, and destroyed their morale. The elements also declared against them. The temperature fell to freezing point, and a dust storm arose which blew in their faces. Discouraged and disheartened, the fickle tribesmen began to desert their Makkan allies, first in ones and twos and threes, and then in tens and twenties, and a little later, in hundreds. The confederacy began to dissolve visibly. Abu Sufyan was compelled to raise the siege, and to give the signal to his army to retreat from Medina. His army was dispersed, and his campaign was a dismal failure. Medina was saved.
The failure of the siege of Medina by the idolaters of Makkah was a most significant event in the history of Arabia. It meant that they would never be able to mount another invasion of Medina. After the battle of the Trench, the initiative passed, finally and unmistakably, from the polytheists of Makkah to the Muslims of Medina.
Medina and Islam had been saved by an idea and a hero. The idea was the trench which immobilized the Makkan cavalry. It was an entirely new concept in Arabian warfare, and the Arabs had no familiarity with it. Without the trench, the ten thousand marauding tribesmen would have overrun Medina, and they would have killed everyone in it. The honors for saving Medina-tunNabi, the City of the Prophet, and the Capital of Islam, go to Salman the Persian, and to his master, the Prophet himself. The former broached a new idea in military doctrine; the latter showed himself receptive to it, and immediately implemented it.
Everyone in Medina claimed that he was a friend or companion of Muhammad, the Messenger of God. That city had its own share of tuft-hunters. But there were a few, in fact very few, men whom Muhammad himself acknowledged as his friends. Salman the Persian belonged to this select group, the inner circle of the friends of the Messenger of God.
Salman was a man of gigantic stature and prodigious physical strength. When the trench was being dug, he worked as much as six other men. This prompted one of the Muhajireen to claim that Salman was one of them, i.e., the Muhajireen. But he was at once challenged by the Ansar one of whom said that Salman was an Ansar and not a Muhajir. The two groups were still arguing when the Apostle arrived on the scene. He too heard the claims of both sides and was amused by them. But he put an end to the argument by giving his own "verdict". He said that Salman was neither a Muhajir nor an Ansar but was a member of his own house – his Ahlul-Bait – a member of the House of Mohammed Mustafa himself!
The Arab historian, Ibn Atheer, has quoted the Prophet in his book, Tarikh Kamil, vol. 2, p. 122, as saying: "Salman is one of us. He is a member of our household." This is the greatest honor ever bestowed upon any of his companions by Muhammad, the Messenger of God.
Salman was a Christian living in Ammuria in Asia Minor when he first heard vague reports of the appearance of a prophet in Hijaz. To verify these reports, he came to Medina. When his first glance fell on the face of the Prophet, he exclaimed: "This cannot be the face of a man who has ever told a lie," and he forthwith accepted Islam.
Islam adopted Salman as much as he "adopted" Islam. Islam became the synthesis of his emotions, and he became a part of its "blood-stream." In Medina, a stranger once asked him the name of his father. His answer was: "Islam! The name of my father is Islam. I am Salman the son of Islam." Salman "blended" into Islam so thoroughly that he became indistinguishable from it.
The threat to the security of Medina, however, did not pass with the digging of the trench. Medina was still vulnerable. At a point where the trench was narrow, the general of the Makkan army and three other champions, were able to leap over it and to ride into the Muslim camp. If they had succeeded in establishing a bridgehead over the trench, the whole Makkan cavalry and infantry, and the irregular freebooters would have entered the city and captured it. But Ali checkmated them. Thus the wits of Salman, the sagacity of Muhammad and the sword of Ali proved to be the best defense of Islam against the most formidable coalition of the polytheists in the history of Arabia.
It was a custom in Arabian warfare to rob a vanquished foe of his weapons, his armor and his horse. At the siege of Medina, Amr was wearing the finest armor in all Arabia. Ali killed him but did not touch anything that belonged to him to the great surprise of Umar bin al-Khattab. Later, when Amr's sister came to his corpse to mourn his death, she too was surprised to notice his weapons and armor intact. When she was told that it was Ali who had killed him, she composed some verses praising him (Ali). These verses have been quoted by the Egyptian historian, Abbas Mahmood Al-Akkad, in his book, Al-Abqariyyat Imam Ali (the Genius of Imam Ali), and can be roughly translated as follows :
"If someone other than Ali had killed Amr,
I would have mourned his death all my life.
But the man who killed him is a hero and he is peerless.
His father was also a lord."
Commenting upon these lines, Abbas Mahmood Al-Akkad says that a tribe did not consider it a disgrace if any of its heroes was killed by Ali. Ali was the most gallant and most chivalrous of foes, and also he was invincible.
After the failure of the siege of Medina, all the tribes between Medina and the Red Sea and between Medina and Yammama to the east, signed treaties of peace with the Prophet of Islam.
In the same year, i.e. in 5 A.H. (A.D. 627), Hajj (pilgrimage to Makkah) was made mandatory for all those Muslims who were in good financial standing and were in good physical health.
Chapter 27 : The Muslims and the Jews
In A.D. 70, the Roman general, Titus, captured Jerusalem and put an end to the Jewish rule of Palestine. Following the Roman conquest, many of the Jews left their homeland and wandered into other countries. Some Jewish tribes crossed the Syrian desert and entered the Arabian peninsula where they settled in Hijaz. In course of time they built up numerous colonies in Medina and between Medina and Syria. They are also said to have converted many Arabs to Judaism.
At the beginning of the seventh century A.D., there were three Jewish tribes living in Medina (Yathrib). They were Banu Qainuka'a, Banu Nadhir and Banu Qurayza. All three tribes were rich and powerful, and also, they were more civilized than the Arabs. Whereas the Arabs were all farmers, the Jews were the entrepreneurs of industry, business and commerce in Arabia, and they controlled the economic life of Medina (Yathrib). The two Arab tribes – Aus and Khazraj – were debt-ridden to the Jews perennially.
Besides Medina, the strong centers of the Jews in Hijaz were Khyber, Fadak and Wadi-ul-Qura. The lands in these valleys were the most fertile in all Arabia, and their Jewish cultivators were the best farmers in the country.
The migration of Muhammad, the Prophet of Islam, from Makkah to Medina (then Yathrib), brought him into contact with the Jews for the first time. At the beginning they were friendly to him. He granted them the famous Charter of Medina, and they acknowledged him the ruler of their city, and agreed to abide by his decisions in all disputes. They also agreed to defend the city in the event of an invasion by an enemy.
But, unfortunately, this friendship did not last long. It soon became obvious that the Jews had given their friendship to Muhammad with many reservations. In their own interest, they ought to have acted their part of the agreement faithfully but they did not. For this change in their attitude, there were many reasons, among them :
1. When Muhammad arrived in Medina, he reformed the life of the Arabs or whoever became a Muslim. He taught them to be temperate and moderate in everything, and taught them the value of discipline in life. They stopped drinking and gambling both of which were the causes of their ruin in the past; and they gave up taking loans at high rates of interest from the Jews. When the Arabs stopped taking loans and paying interest on them, a rich source of revenue suddenly dried up for the Jews, and they bitterly resented this. They could now see that their grip on the economic life of Medina was beginning to loosen.
2. The Jews also realized that Islam was an enemy of the system of exploitation, and of the capitalist system. They began to see Islam as a threat to their economic interests.
3. The Jewish priests hated Muhammad as much as the Jewish money-lenders. He had shown to the Jews how their priest followed deviant interpretations of their scriptures, and how they distorted their text. The priests, on their part, tried to convince their flocks that Muhammad did not have knowledge of their scriptures, and they tried to point out to them the "errors" in the Qur’an.
The Jews also believed that they were safe only as long as the two Arab tribes of Medina, the Aus and the Khazraj, were fighting against each other. Peace between the Aus and the Khazraj, they thought, would pose a threat to their survival in Arabia. For this reason, they were always fomenting trouble between them.
Of the three Jewish tribes of Medina, the Banu Qainuka'a and the Banu Nadhir had already been expelled after the battles of Badr and Uhud respectively, and they had left with all their baggage, and herds of animals, and had resettled in Khyber.
The third and the last tribe of the Jews in Medina was the Banu Qurayza. According to the terms of the Charter of Medina, it was their duty to take an active part in defending the city during the siege of A.D. 627. But not only they did not contribute any men or materials during the siege but were actually caught conspiring with the enemy to compass the destruction of the Muslims. Some Jews even attacked a house in which many Muslim women and children had taken refuge as it was considered a safer place for them than their own houses. If Amr ibn Abd Wudd had overcome the resistance of the Muslims, the Jews would have attacked them from the rear. Between the pagans of Makkah and the Jews of Medina, the Muslims would have been massacred. It was only the presence of mind of Muhammad and the daring of Ali that averted such a disaster.
R.V.C. Bodley
The Jews were not at first inclined to listen to Abu Sofian's proposal (to attack Muslims from the rear), but after a while they compromised and agreed to betray the Moslems when the time seemed opportune. (The Messenger – the Life of Mohammed)
The conduct of the Jews during the siege of Medina was high treason against the State. Therefore, when the confederate army broke up and the danger to Medina was averted, the Muslims turned their attention to them.
The Jews shut themselves up in their forts and the Muslims besieged them. But some days later, they requested the Prophet to raise the siege, and agreed to refer the dispute to arbitration.
The Prophet allowed the Jews to choose their own arbitrator. Here they made a very costly blunder. They should have chosen Muhammad himself – the embodiment of mercy – to be their judge. If they had, he would have allowed them to depart from Medina with their baggage and their animals, and the incident would have been closed.
But the Jews didn't choose Muhammad as their judge. Instead, they chose Sa'ad ibn Muadh, the leader of their former allies, the Aus. Sa'ad was a man who was utterly reckless with life – his own as well as that of others.
Sa'ad had received a mortal wound during the battle of the Trench, and in fact died soon after he had passed judgment on the fate of the Jews. He declared treason to be an unpardonable offense, and his verdict was inexorable. He invoked the Torah, the Scripture of the Jews, and sentenced all men to death, and women and children to slavery. His sentence was carried out on the spot.
The Jews of the tribe of Qurayza were massacred in the spring of A.D. 627. From this date, the Jews ceased to be an active force in the social, economic and political life of Medina.
