Muhammad (11 page)

The building was completed in April, 623, about seven months after the hijrah. In the northern wall, a stone marked the qiblah, the direction of prayer, orienting the people towards Jerusalem. At first there was no official summons to salat, but this was obviously unsatisfactory, as everybody came at different times. Muhammad thought of using a ram’s horn, like the Jews, or a wooden clapper, like the local Christians, but one of the Emigrants had an important dream. A man, clad in a green cloak, had told him that somebody with a loud, resonant voice should announce the service, crying
Allahu Akhbar
(“God is greater”) as a reminder of a Muslim’s first priority. Muhammad liked the idea and Bilal, the former Abyssinian slave with the big voice, was an obvious choice. Every morning he climbed to the top of the tallest house in the vicinity of the mosque, and sat on the rooftop waiting for dawn. Then he would stretch out his arms, and before beginning the call, would pray: “O God, I praise Thee and ask Thy help for Quraysh that they may accept Thy religion.”
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The Muslims may have changed their qiblah to Jerusalem, but they had not forgotten Mecca. When Muhammad learned that many of the Emigrants were deeply homesick, he prayed: “Lord, make us love this town as much as you made us love Mecca, and even more so.”
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The immense uprooting of the hijrah meant that even though they still used the old tribal terminology, the Muslims had to create an entirely different type of community. One of the first things Muhammad did was set up a system of “brothering” whereby each Meccan was assigned an Ansar “brother” to help Muslims to bond across the lines of kinship. The political separation of Emigrants and Helpers was soon dropped: when the first of the twelve Ansari “overseers” died, Muhammad simply took over his position.
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The Muslims were gradually creating a “neo-tribe,” which interpreted the old kinship relationships differently. Those who had made the hijrah were to regard themselves as distinct from the Muslims who had remained behind in Mecca, even though they all belonged to the same blood group. Whatever their tribe or clan, Muslims must never fight one another. Emigrants and Helpers must become as solidly united as any conventional tribe.
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Like the tribe, the ummah was “one community to the exclusion of all men,” and would make “confederates” of non-Muslim allies in the usual way.
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As chieftain of the ummah, Muhammad could now implement his moral and social reforms in a way that had been impossible in Mecca. His goal was to create a society of hilm. Those who kept the faith (
mu’min
) were not simply “believers.” Their faith must be expressed in practical actions: they must pray, share their wealth, and in matters that concerned the community, “consult among themselves” to preserve the unity of the ummah. If attacked, they could defend themselves, but instead of lashing out in the old, uncontrolled jahili way, they must always be prepared to forgive an injury. Automatic, vengeful retaliation—the cardinal duty of muruwah
—
could be a great evil. “Hence, whoever pardons [his foe] and makes peace, his reward rests with God,” the Qur’an insisted tirelessly. “If one is patient in adversity and forgives—this, behold, is indeed something to set one’s heart upon.”
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But this transformation could not be achieved overnight, because the old spirit of jahiliyyah still lurked in Muslim hearts. Shortly after the hijrah, one of the pagan Arabs noticed a crowd of Muslims, which included members of both Aws and Khazraj, chatting together amicably as though their tribes had never been sworn enemies. He was furious. Clearly Islam was making them soft and feeble! He ordered a young Jewish man to sit near the group and recite poems that reminded them of the old bitter feuds. It was not long before the engrained tribal chauvinism flared up, and the Muslims were soon at one another’s throats. Muhammad hurried to the scene in great distress. “Are you still tempted by the call of jahiliyyah when I am here among you?” he demanded, “when God has guided you . . . honored you, and cut off thereby the bond of jahiliyyah from you, delivered you from a state of defiant ingratitude (
kufr
)
,
and made you friends of each other?” Deeply ashamed, the Ansar wept and embraced.
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Not all the Muslims of Medina were committed to change. Some had embraced Islam purely for material gain, and they were sitting on the fence, waiting to see how this new venture would turn out. The Qur’an called these people the “waverers” or the “Hypocrites,” (
munafiqun
) because they were not sincere and kept changing their minds.
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When they were with devout Muslims, they cried: “We believe [as you believe],” but in the company of other doubters, they assured them: “Verily, we are with you; we were only mocking!”
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Their leader was Ibn Ubayy, who had become a Muslim but remained resentful and critical of the new faith. Muhammad always behaved respectfully to him, and allowed him to address the community every week during the Friday prayers, but from time to time his buried hostility came to the surface. “Don’t be hard on him,” one of the Helpers begged Muhammad after a particularly unpleasant incident, “for before God sent you to us we were making a diadem to crown him, and by God, he thinks you have robbed him of a kingdom.”
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Some of the Jews were also becoming hostile to the newcomers. Muhammad did not expect them to convert to Islam, and their quarrel with him was not primarily religious but political and economic. The Jews’ position in the oasis had deteriorated, and if Muhammad succeeded in uniting Aws and Khazraj, they would have no chance of regaining their former supremacy. Hence three of the larger Jewish tribes thought it wiser to support Ibn Ubbay and the pagan Arabs in the oasis who remained opposed to Muhammad.
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The early Muslim historians tell us that they mounted a scholarly polemic against the theology of the Qur’an, but this probably reflected Jewish-Muslim debate during the eighth and ninth centuries.
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The Jews of seventh century Medina had only a limited knowledge of Torah and Talmud, were not strictly observant, and most were used to seeing their faith as a variant of Arabian religion.
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The idea of an Arabian prophet was not a strange idea to them: they had a prophet of their own called Ibn Sayyad, who, like Muhammad, wrapped himself in a cloak, recited inspired verses, and claimed to be the apostle of God.
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But if there were no learned rabbinical debates, the Muslims probably encountered a good deal of populist religious chauvinism in Medina. Ibn Ishaq tells us that when they came to the mosque, some of the Jews would “laugh and scoff ” at the Qur’an.
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Many Jews were friendly and Muhammad probably learned a great deal from them, but some of the People of the Book had ideas that he found very strange indeed. The idea of an exclusive religion was alien to Muhammad; he hated sectarian quarrels,
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and was offended by the idea of a “chosen people” or the conviction that only Jews or Christians could get to Paradise.
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He was also bewildered to learn that some Christians believed that God was a trinity and that Jesus was the son of Allah.
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But he remained convinced that these peculiar notions were the heretical deviations of a deluded minority.
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The Qur’an reminded Muslims that many of the People of the Book were “upright people,” who

recite God’s messages throughout the night and prostrate themselves [before him]. They believe in God and the Last Day, and enjoin the doing of what is right and forbid the doing of what is wrong, and vie with one another in doing God’s works; and these are among the righteous.
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Muslims must remember that every community had its own specially revealed din, so they must not take part in these pointless squabbles; if the People of the Book attacked their faith, Muslims must behave with hilm, and courteously reply: “God knows best what you are doing.”
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To avoid this sterile controversy, Muhammad, like the hanifs, decided to return to the “religion of Abraham,” who was neither a “Jew” nor a “Christian,” because he had lived long before either the Torah or the Gospel.
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After the hijrah, the Qur’an started to apply the words “hanif ” and “hanifiyyah” to the Muslims and Islam, but gave them a new interpretation. For Muhammad, hanifiyyah simply meant total submission to God; this had been the original, unadulterated message of the prophets, before it had been corrupted by sectarian chauvinism. Abraham, for example, had not belonged to an exclusive cult. He had simply been a muslim, “one who surrendered himself ” and a “man of pure faith” (hanif ).
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When Abraham and Ishmael had rebuilt the Kabah together, they had not developed an exclusive theology, but had simply wanted to give their lives entirely to Allah. “O our Sustainer!” they had prayed, “Make us surrender ourselves unto Thee, and show us our ways of worship.” Muslims had been driven out of Mecca because of religious intolerance, so they must avoid all exclusivity.
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Instead of stridently insisting that they alone had the monopoly of truth, the true Muslims merely said: “Behold, my prayer, and [all] my acts of worship and my living and my dying are for God [alone], the Sustainer of all the worlds.”
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It was idolatry to take pride in belonging to a particular religious tradition rather than concentrating upon Allah himself.

Towards the end of January 624, Muhammad received a revelation while he was leading the Friday prayers, and made the congregation turn around and pray in the direction of Mecca instead of Jerusalem. They would now face the house built by Abraham, the man of pure faith.

We have seen thee [O Prophet] often turn thy face towards heaven [for guidance], and now We shall indeed make thee turn too in prayer in a direction which will fulfil thy desire. Turn then thy face towards the Inviolable House of Worship; and wherever you all may be, turn your faces towards it [in prayer].
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It was a reminder that they were not following any of the established religions, but God himself. It was a declaration of independence. Muslims need no longer feel that they were following lamely in the footsteps of the older faiths. “Hold them not in awe,” God said, “but stand in awe of me and [obey me].”
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The new qiblah delighted both the Emigrants and the Helpers, and would bind them more closely together. They all loved the Kabah, which was more deeply rooted in Arab tradition than the distant city of Jerusalem. But there was a problem. The Kabah was in Mecca, and relations with the Quraysh had recently become more strained than ever before.

Chapter Four

Jihad

T
HE CHANGE OF QIBLAH
had occurred at the end of a period of uncertainty. Muhammad and the community had been restlessly “turning this way and that,” searching for guidance in their confusion. Muhammad knew that a prophet had to make a difference to the world. He could not simply withdraw from the mainstream. He had to put God’s revealed will into practice and create a just, egalitarian society. But the hijrah had pushed the Muslims into a peripheral and anomalous position. Even though Muhammad had begun to implement his social reforms, he knew that he would make no lasting impression on Arabia as long as he was confined to and isolated in Medina. Mecca, the “mother of cities,” was crucial to the development of the peninsula. Arabia needed the commercial genius of the Quraysh. Mecca was now the center of the Muslim world. They yearned towards it in prayer several times a day, but it was coming to seem like an absent, inaccessible lover.
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Muslims could not even make the hajj, like other Arabs. Muhammad realized that Mecca was the key to his mission. The hostility of the Quraysh had eradicated the ummah from the tribal map and pushed it into a political limbo. Without Mecca, Islam was doomed to marginality. Somehow Muhammad would have to make peace with his people. But after the first shock of the hijrah, most of the Quraysh seemed to have forgotten all about the Muslims. Before Muhammad could seek reconciliation with Mecca, he had to make the Quraysh take notice of him.

He also had to secure his position in Medina. He knew that, as far as most of the Medinese were concerned, he was still on trial. They had defied the might of the Quraysh by taking the migrants in because they expected some material advantage, and here too, Muhammad had to deliver. At the very least, he had to ensure that the Emigrants did not become a drain upon the economy. But it was difficult for them to earn a living. Most of them were merchants or bankers, but there was very little opportunity for trade in Medina, where the wealthier Arab and Jewish tribes had achieved a monopoly. The Emigrants had no experience of farming, and in any case all the available land had already been taken. They would become a burden to the Helpers, unless they found an independent source of income, and there was one obvious way to achieve this.

Medina was well placed to attack the Meccan caravans on their way to and from Syria, and shortly after Muhammad had arrived in Medina, he had started to send bands of Emigrants on raiding expeditions.
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Their aim was not to shed blood, but to secure an income by capturing camels, merchandise, and prisoners, who could be held for ransom. Nobody would have been particularly shocked by this development. The ghazu was a normal expedient in times of hardship, though some of the Arabs would have been surprised by the Muslims’ temerity in taking on the mighty Quraysh, especially as they were clearly inexperienced warriors. During the first two years after the hijrah, Muhammad dispatched eight of these expeditions. He did not usually go himself but commissioned people such as Hamzah and ‘Ubaydah ibn al-Harith, but it was difficult to get accurate information about the caravans’ itinerary, and none of these early raids was successful.

The Quraysh were not a warlike people. They had left the nomadic life behind long ago and had lost both the habit and skill of the ghazu; the Qur’an shows that some of the Emigrants found the very idea of fighting distasteful.
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But Muhammad was not discouraged. Even though the Emigrants desperately needed an income, plunder was not his primary objective. The raiders may have come back empty handed, but they had at least brought the Muslims to the attention of Mecca. The Quraysh were rattled. They had to take precautions that had never been necessary before. Merchants complained that they felt more vulnerable; they had to make inconvenient detours and the flow of trade in and out of Mecca was slightly disrupted. In September 623, Muhammad himself led a ghazu against a large caravan led by Ummayah ibn Khalaf; the spoils looked so promising that a record 200 Muslims volunteered for the expedition. But yet again the caravan eluded the raiders and there was no fighting.

In the steppes, the ghazu needed no theoretical justification; it was seen as an unavoidable necessity in time of scarcity. But Muhammad had been determined to transcend the old tribal norms. The Qur’an had instructed Muslims to say “Peace be with you!” to the kafirun, not attack them while they were going about their business. Shortly after Muhammad arrived in Medina, he received a revelation that took a more militant line.

Permission [to fight] is given to those against whom war is being wrongfully waged—and, verily, God has indeed the power to succor them—those who have been driven from their homelands against all right for no other reason than their saying “Our Sustainer is God!”

For if God had not enabled people to defend themselves against one another, [all] monasteries and churches and synagogues and mosques—in [all of ] which God’s name is abundantly extolled—would surely have been destroyed [ere now].
⁴

The Qur’an had begun to develop a primitive just war theory. In the steppes, aggressive warfare was praiseworthy; but in the Qur’an, self-defense was the only possible justification for hostilities and the preemptive strike was condemned.
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War was always a terrible evil, but it was sometimes necessary in order to preserve decent values, such as freedom of worship. Even here, the Qur’an did not abandon its pluralism: synagogues and churches as well as mosques should be protected. The Muslims felt that they had suffered a fearful assault; their expulsion from Mecca was an act that had no justification. Exile from the tribe violated the deepest sanction of Arabia; it had attacked the core of the Muslims’ identity.

But Muhammad had embarked upon a dangerous course. He was living in a chronically violent society and he saw these raids not simply as a means of bringing in much-needed income, but as a way of resolving his quarrel with the Quraysh. We have discovered in our own day, that waging war for the sake of peace is a high-risk venture. The ruthlessness of battle can lead to actions that flout the very principles that the warriors are fighting for, so that in the end neither side can claim the high moral ground. Muhammad tried to give his ghazu ethical grounding but he had no experience of a long military campaign, and would learn that, once it has started, a cycle of violence achieves an independent momentum, and can spin tragically out of control.

At first, Muhammad fought according to the traditional rules, but in January 624, just before the change of the qiblah, he had his first experience of the unpredictability of warfare.
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The Emigrants were becoming more confident. During the winter months, the Quraysh sent their caravans south, so they no longer had to pass Medina. But ever anxious to attract their attention, Muhammad sent a small raiding party of nine men to attack one of these southbound caravans. It was the end of Rajab, one of the “sacred months” when all fighting was forbidden. On the last day of Rajab, the Muslims came upon a small caravan encamped in Nakhlah. What should they do? If they waited until the following day, when the truce ended, the caravan would be able to return unscathed to Mecca. They decided to attack. The first arrow killed one of the merchants, most of the others fled, but the Muslims took two prisoners whom they brought back to Medina with the captured merchandise.

But instead of greeting the raiders as conquering heroes, the Muslims were horrified to hear that the raid had violated the sacred month. For a few days, Muhammad did not know how to respond. He had, after all, abandoned much Meccan religion and may have imagined that he could jettison the forbidden months too. The raid had been a success. Not only were there rich pickings, but he had shown the Quraysh that he could attack them almost on their own doorstep. He had also impressed many of the Medinese. But there was something dubious about the whole business. Muhammad had never condemned the practice of the forbidden months before; the sources seem uneasy about the incident. Muhammad had discovered that however idealistic your war might be at the outset, something distasteful is likely to occur sooner rather than later.

Eventually Muhammad received a new revelation that reiterated the central principle of his just war. Yes, it had been wrong to break the sacred truce, but the policy of the Quraysh in driving the Muslims from their homes had been even more heinous. “They will not cease to fight against you till they have turned you away from your faith,” the Qur’an warned Muhammad. As to fighting during the forbidden month, this was indeed an “awesome thing,”

But turning men away from the path of God and denying Him and [turning them away from] the Inviolable House of Worship and expelling its people therefrom—[all this] is far more awesome in the sight of God, since oppression is more awesome than killing.
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Muhammad, therefore, accepted the booty and reassured the community; he divided the spoils equally among the Emigrants and began negotiations with the Quraysh for an exchange of prisoners: he would trade the Meccan captives for two Muslims still living in Mecca who wanted to make the hijrah. But one of the prisoners was so impressed by what he saw in Medina that he decided to remain and convert to Islam. The incident is a good example of the way Muhammad was beginning to work. In his novel position, he could not rely on customary procedure. He was feeling his way forward step by step, responding to events as they unfolded. He had no fixed master plan and, unlike some of his more impetuous companions, he rarely responded to a crisis immediately but took time to reflect until finally—sometimes pale and sweating with the effort—he would bring forth what seemed an inspired solution.

A few weeks later, during the month of Ramadan (March 624), Muhammad led a large Muslim contingent to intercept a Meccan caravan that Abu Sufyan was bringing back from Syria.
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This was one of the most important caravans of the year and, encouraged by the success of Nakhlah, a large contingent of Helpers volunteered to join the raid. About 314 Muslims set out from Medina and rode to the well of Badr, near the Red Sea coast, where they hoped to ambush the caravan. This expedition would be one of the most formative events in the early history of Islam, but at the outset it seemed just another ghazu and several of the most committed Muslims stayed at home
,
including ‘Uthman ibn ‘Affan, whose wife Ruqayyah, the Prophet’s daughter, was dangerously ill.

At first it looked as though the caravan would, as usual, escape. Abu Sufyan got wind of the Muslims’ plan and instead of taking his usual route across the Hijaz, he turned sharply away from the coast and dispatched a local tribesman to Mecca to get help. The Quraysh were incensed at Muhammad’s insolence, which they regarded as a slur on their honor, and all the leading men were determined to rescue the caravan. Abu Jahl, of course, was eager for the fray. The obese Ummayah ibn Khalaf was crammed into his armor, and even members of Muhammad’s own family rode out against him, convinced that this time he had gone too far. Abu Lahab was sick, but two of Abu Talib’s sons, his uncle ‘Abbas, and Khadijah’s nephew Hakim joined the thousand men who rode out of Mecca that night and took the road to Badr.

In the meantime, Abu Sufyan had managed to elude the Muslims and taken the caravan beyond their reach. He sent word that the merchandise was safe and that the army should turn back. The sources make it clear that when it came to the point many of the Quraysh were reluctant to fight their kinsmen. But Abu Jahl would have none of this. “By Allah!” he cried. “We will not go back until we have been to Badr. We will spend three days there, slaughter camels, and feast and drink wine; and the girls shall play for us. The Arabs will hear that we have come and will respect us in the future.”
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But these defiant words showed that even Abu Jahl did not expect a battle. He had little conception of the horror of war, which he seemed to envisage as a kind of party, complete with dancing girls. The Quraysh were so far removed from the steppes that warfare had become a chivalric sport that would enhance the prestige of Mecca.

There was a very different spirit in the Muslim camp. After the trauma and terror of the hijrah, the Emigrants could not view the situation in such a confident, carefree light. As soon as Muhammad heard that the Meccan army was approaching, he consulted the other chiefs. The Muslims were vastly outnumbered. They had expected an ordinary ghazu, not a full-scale battle, which was a very different matter. Muhammad was not the commander-in-chief; he could not command obedience, but the men decided to fight it out. As Sa‘d ibn Mu‘adh said on behalf of the Helpers:

We have given you our word and agreement to hear and obey; so go where you wish and we are with you, and by God, if you were to ask us to cross this sea and you plunged into it, we would plunge into it with you. We do not dislike the idea of meeting your enemy tomorrow. We are experienced in war, trustworthy in combat.
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Unlike the Quraysh, the Aws and Khazraj were practiced soldiers, after years of tribal warfare in Yathrib. But even so, the odds were overwhelmingly against them and all the Muslims hoped that they would not have to fight.

For two days, the two armies gazed bleakly at one another from opposite ends of the valley. The Quraysh looked impressive in their white tunics and glittering armor and despite Sa‘d’s stirring words, some of the Muslims wanted to retreat. There was great fear in the camp. The Prophet tried to rouse their spirits. He told them that in a dream God had promised to send a thousand angels to fight alongside them.
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But while the Quraysh were feasting and drinking, certain that the Muslims would surrender, Muhammad was making practical preparations. He lined up his troops in close formation and positioned his men by the wells, depriving the Quraysh of water and forcing them, when the time came, to advance uphill, fighting with the sun in their eyes. But when he looked at the huge Meccan army, he wept. “O Allah,” he prayed, “If this band that is with me perishes, there will be no one after me to worship You; all the believers will abandon the true religion.”
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He realized that this battle would be decisive. If the Muslims allowed the Quraysh to force them back to Medina, the ummah would make no lasting impact on Arabia. Something of his determined resolve must have been conveyed to his men. The Qur’an describes the great peace that descended upon the soldiers at this frightening moment. There was a sudden rainstorm, which seemed a good omen.
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