The Flight to
Abyssinia
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A
16th century map of Abyssinia
– modern day
Ethiopia
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The converts of the first
four years were mostly humble folk unable to defend
themselves against oppression. So cruel was the
persecution they endured that the Prophet advised all
who could possibly contrive to do so to immigrate to a
Christian country,
Abyssinia . And still in spite of persecution and
emigration the little company of Muslims grew in number.
Quraysh were seriously alarmed. The idol worship at the
Ka`bah, the holy place to which all
Arabia made pilgrimage, ranked for them, as guardians of
the Ka`bah, as first among their vested interests. At
the season of the pilgrimage they posted men on all the
roads to warn the tribes against the “madman” who was
preaching in their midst. They tried to bring the
Prophet to a compromise offering to accept his religion
if he would so modify it as to make room for their gods
as intercessors with Allah, offering to make him their
king if he would give up attacking idolatry; and, when
their efforts at negotiation failed, they went to his
uncle Abu Talib offering to give him the best of their
young men in place of Muhammad, to give him all that he
desired, if only he would let them kill Muhammad and
have done with him. Abu Talib refused.
Conversion of Omar
The exasperation of the
idolaters was increased by the conversion of Omar, one
of their stalwarts. They grew more and more embittered,
till things came to such a pass that they decided to
ostracize the Prophet’s whole clan, idolaters who
protected him as well as Muslims who believed in him.
Their chief men caused a document to be drawn up to the
effect that none of them or those belonging to them
would hold any intercourse with that clan or sell to
them or buy from them. This they all signed, and it was
deposited in the Ka`bah. Then for three years, the
Prophet was shut up with all his kinsfolk in their
stronghold which was situated in one of the gorges which
run down to Makkah. Only at the time of pilgrimage could
he go out and preach, or did any of his kinsfolk dare to
go into the city.
Destruction of the
Document
At length some kinder
hearts among Quraysh grew weary of the boycott of old
friends and neighbors. They managed to have the document
which had been placed in the Ka`bah brought out for
reconsideration; when it was found that all the writing
had been destroyed by white ants, except the words
Bismik Allahumma (“In thy name, O Allah”). When the
elders saw that marvel the ban was removed, and the
Prophet was again free to go about the city. But
meanwhile the opposition to his preaching had grown
rigid. He had little success among the Makkans, and an
attempt which he made to preach in the city of
Ta’if was a failure. His mission was
a failure, judged by worldly standards, when, at the
season of the yearly pilgrimage he came upon a little
group of men who heard him gladly.
The Men from Yathrib
hey came from Yathrib, a
city more than two hundred miles away, which has since
become world-famous as al-Madinah, “the City” par
excellence. At Yathrib there were Jewish tribes with
learned rabbis, who had often spoken to the pagans of a
Prophet soon to come among the Arabs, with whom, when he
came, the Jews would destroy the pagans as the tribes of
‘Aad and Thamud had been destroyed of old for their
idolatry. When the men from Yathrib saw Muhammad they
recognized him as the Prophet whom the Jewish rabbis had
described to them. On their return to Yathrib they told
what they had seen and heard, with the result that the
next season of pilgrimage a deputation came from Yathrib
purposely to meet the Prophet.
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Quraysh dreaded what the
Prophet might become if he escaped from them and
so plotted to kill him
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First Pact of al-‘Aqabah
These swore allegiance to
him in the first pact of al-‘Aqabah. They then returned
to Yathrib with a Muslim teacher in their, company and
soon “there was not a house in Yathrib wherein there was
not mention of the messenger of Allah.”
Second pact of al-‘Aqabah
In the following year, at
the time of pilgrimage, seventy-three Muslims from
Yathrib came to Makkah to vow allegiance to the Prophet
and invite him to their city. At al-‘Aqabah, by night,
they swore to defend him as they would defend their own
wives and children. It was then that the Hijrah, the
flight to Yathrib, was decided.
Plot to Murder the
Prophet
Soon the Muslims who were
in a position to do so, began to sell their property and
to leave Makkah unobtrusively. Quraysh had wind of what
was going on. They hated Muhammad in their midst, but
dreaded what he might become if he escaped from them. It
would be better, they considered, to destroy him now.
The death of Abu Talib had removed his chief protector;
but still they had to reckon with the vengeance of his
clan upon the clan of the murderer. They cast lot and
chose a slayer out of every clan. All these were to
attack the Prophet simultaneously and strike together,
as one man. Thus his murder would be blamed on all
Quraysh. It was at this time (Ibn Khaldun asserts, and
it is the only satisfactory explanation of what happened
afterwards) that the Prophet received the first
revelation ordering him to make war upon his persecutors
“until persecution is no more and religion is for Allah
only.”
The Hijrah (
June 20th, 622
C.E.)
The last of the able
Muslims to remain in Makkah were Abu Bakr, Ali and the
Prophet himself. Abu Bakr, a man of wealth, had bought
two riding camels and retained a guide in readiness for
the flight. The Prophet only waited for God’s command.
It came at last. It was the night appointed for his
murder. The slayers were before his house. He gave his
cloak to Ali, bidding him lie down on the bed so that
anyone looking in might think Muhammad lay there. The
slayers were to strike him as he came out of the house,
whether in the night or early morning. He knew they
would not injure Ali. Then he left the house and, it is
said, blindness fell upon the would-be murderers so that
he put dust on their heads as he passed by-without their
knowing it.
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The Hijrah counts as the beginning of the
Muslim era
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He went to Abu Bakr’s
house and called to him, and they two went together to a
cavern in the desert hill and hid there till the hue and
cry was past, Abu Bakr’s son and daughter and his
herdsman bringing them food and tidings after nightfall.
Once a search party came quite near them in their
hiding-place, and Abu Bakr was afraid; but the Prophet
said: “Fear not! Allah is with us.” Then, when the coast
was clear, Abu Bakr had the riding-camels and the guide
brought to the cave one night, and they set out on the
long ride to Yathrib.
After traveling for many
days of unfrequented paths, the fugitives reached a
suburb of Yathrib, whither, for weeks past, the people
of the city had been going every morning, watching for
the Prophet till the heat drove them to shelter. The
travelers arrived in the heat of the day, after the
watchers had retired. It was a Jew who called out to the
Muslims in derisive tones that he whom they expected had
at last arrived.
Such was the Hijrah, the
Flight from Makkah to Yathrib, which counts as the
beginning of the Muslim era. The thirteen years of
humiliation, of persecution, of seeming failure, of
prophecy still unfulfilled, were over.
*Taken,
with some editorial changes, from Pickthall’s
introduction to his translation of the Qur’an.
