The Year of the Elephant: the story behind Sūrat al-Fīl, in three films

Long ago, this valley in western Arabia had no water, no crops and no people. One day a House would stand in it, the Kaaba, and a town would grow around it: Mecca. In the year a baby was born there, an army would come to destroy the House. The baby was Muḥammad ﷺ, whom Muslims follow as the Prophet of God. What was that you said after his name? A short prayer: peace and blessings be upon him. Muslims say it whenever they

name him, as the Qurʾān asks of believers. Other prophets, when first named, have: peace be upon him; his Companions, those who knew him: may Allah be pleased with him, or with her. Allah is the Arabic word for God; Christians who speak Arabic use it too. But why would an army march on one house? To answer that, we begin where the House began. This is the Year of the Elephant.

Part 1: the House of God. How can anyone know what happened so long ago? The way a detective does: gather the witnesses, and ask how close each one was. Every passage wears a colored tag. Gold is the Qurʾān. Teal is the Prophet ﷺ in his own words, in collections whose chains of narrators were tested.

Green is a Companion, who knew him; olive, a pupil of the Companions. Orange is a historian: Ibn Isḥāq, through his editor Ibn Hishām. His words, so they claim, tell you how sure he is. Gray is a report that reached Ibn Saʿd through al-Wāqidī; we always name al-Wāqidī. When witnesses disagree, we show both, and look for what they agree on.

How did anyone come to live in a valley with no water? Ibn ʿAbbās ؓ, a cousin of the Prophet ﷺ, tells this story, and al-Bukhārī records it. Its tag is green: a Companion. Abraham ؑ brought Hagar, his wife, and their baby son, Ishmael ؑ, to this valley, where the House would one day stand. No one lived there, and there was no water. He left them dates and a skin of water, and turned to go.

She followed him and called: Abraham, where are you going, leaving us in this valley with no one and nothing in it? She asked again and again, and he did not turn around. Then she asked: did Allah command you to do this? He said: yes. She said: then He will not let us be lost. And she went back. Was she not afraid?

Ibn ʿAbbās gives only her words, and her going back. Abraham walked on. At a mountain pass, out of their sight, he turned toward the House, raised his hands and prayed. The voice you will hear is Sheikh ʿAbd al-Bāsiṭ ʿAbd al-Ṣamad of Egypt, who died in 1988. He recites the reading of Ḥafṣ, from his teacher ʿĀṣim: a handed-down way of reciting.

Ibn al-Jazarī, a master of the readings, traces it through ʿĀṣim and his three teachers to five Companions, and from them to the Prophet ﷺ. Its weight rests on that chain, not on a fine voice alone. Yet the Prophet ﷺ said: beautify the Qurʾān with your voices. His prayer, from the chapter named after Abraham. Listen. [Recitation · Shaykh ʿAbd al-Bāsiṭ ʿAbd al-Ṣamad]

Our Lord, I have settled some of my descendants in an uncultivated valley near Your sacred House, our Lord, that they may establish prayer. So make hearts among the people incline toward them and provide for them from the fruits that they might be grateful. When the water ran out, both grew thirsty. She watched her son twist in his thirst, and could not bear to look.

She climbed al-Ṣafā, the nearest hill, and looked across the valley for anyone. No one. She ran across to al-Marwa, and looked again. Seven times she went between them. The Prophet ﷺ said: that is why people walk between the two hills. On al-Marwa she heard a voice: at the spot later called Zamzam stood an angel, and water came up.

The angel said: do not be afraid of being lost. Here is the House of Allah, which this boy and his father will build, and Allah does not abandon His people. How did the angel bring the water up? Report 3364 says: he dug with his heel, or he said, with his wing. A narrator was unsure of one word, so he kept both. Report 3365, from Ibn ʿAbbās by another chain, names the angel, Gabriel ؑ, and

gives the heel. Ibn Isḥāq agrees. Every telling has an angel, the ground struck, and water. Pause and think. Why keep a doubt like heel or wing in a book of tested reports? So we know exactly what was heard. Another chain settles it: the heel. Did she stay alone in the valley? Travelers of the tribe of Jurhum saw a bird circling over the valley and guessed

there was water. They asked Hagar if they might camp by her spring. She said: yes, but the water stays ours. The Prophet ﷺ said: it came to Hagar when she loved company. Ishmael grew up among them, learned Arabic from them, and married among them. Is this the same Hagar who is in the Bible? Genesis, in the Bible, also tells of Hagar and her son Ishmael, whose name means God

hears: water in the wilderness, and a promise of a great nation. Genesis places it near Beersheba, far to the north; the Islamic sources, in the valley of Mecca. Both tell of a mother, a thirsty child and water from God. And the House itself? Years later, Abraham came back. He found Ishmael sharpening arrows under a tree near Zamzam.

Allah has commanded me to build a house here, he said, and pointed to a rise in the ground. Ishmael brought the stones, and Abraham laid them. When the walls grew high, Ishmael brought a stone for his father to stand on. In another telling, Ibn ʿAbbās calls it the stone of the Standing Place: the Standing Place of Abraham that the Qurʾān names. As they built, they prayed. Listen.

[Recitation · Shaykh ʿAbd al-Bāsiṭ ʿAbd al-Ṣamad] And when Abraham was raising the foundations of the House and with him Ishmael, saying, “Our Lord, accept this from us. Indeed You are the Hearing, the Knowing.” Why build a house where nothing grows? Remember his prayer: make hearts incline toward them. The Qurʾān calls it the first

House set up for people, blessed, and a guidance for the worlds. And God told Abraham: proclaim the pilgrimage to the people. They will come to you on foot and on every lean camel, from every distant pass. Remember those pilgrims. In Part 2, a ruler in Yemen will want them for his own church. Then how did idols end up around it?

Ibn Isḥāq marks it: so they claim. As the children of Ishmael grew too many for the valley, some moved away, each taking a stone from the sacred ground, out of honor for it. In time they worshipped stones they liked, and then idols. Yet they kept pieces of the way of Abraham: honoring the House, walking around it, the pilgrimage. In a report Ibn Isḥāq gives through Abū Hurayra ؓ, the Prophet ﷺ named the first

man to change the religion of Ishmael and set up idols: ʿAmr ibn Luḥayy, of Khuzāʿa. Later, an idol called Hubal stood inside the House itself. And Zamzam? The tribe of Jurhum, who ruled Mecca, grew unjust. They wronged visitors and took the gifts brought to the House, and other tribes, Khuzāʿa among them, drove them out.

Before they left, a man of Jurhum, ʿAmr ibn al-Ḥārith, took two golden gazelles that belonged to the House. He buried them in Zamzam, and covered the well over. Who looked after the House after that? Generations later, Quṣayy, of the tribe of Quraysh, won the House from Khuzāʿa and gathered his scattered people into the valley. He held its keys, the water and the food for the pilgrims, the council and the

banner of war: all the honor of Mecca, Ibn Isḥāq says. He told Quraysh: you are the neighbors of Allah. The pilgrims are the guests of Allah and the visitors of His House, the guests most deserving of honor. So each year Quraysh paid to feed them. That feeding went on into Islam, Ibn Isḥāq says. The grandson of Quṣayy, ʿAmr, broke bread into broth for his people, Ibn Isḥāq says,

so they called him Hāshim, the bread-breaker. And, so they claim, he began the two trading journeys of Quraysh, in winter and in summer. How could traders from one small valley cross an emperor’s lands? Ibn Saʿd, through al-Wāqidī, says Hāshim obtained a pact from Caesar, the emperor of Rome, for safe passage. Caesar also wrote to the Negus of Abyssinia to let

them in. Remember that letter. In Part 2, Caesar writes to the Negus again. So who were Quraysh? The Prophet ﷺ answered that himself, in Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim, from a Companion. Allah chose Kināna from the children of Ishmael, and chose Quraysh from Kināna. And He chose the clan of Hāshim from Quraysh, and chose me from the clan of

Hāshim. So one line runs from Ishmael in this valley to the child of this story. Hāshim married Salmā, a woman of standing in Yathrib, the town later called Medina. Their son was Shayba. Hāshim died trading, at Gaza in Syria, and the boy grew up with his mother. His uncle, al-Muṭṭalib, came to bring him to Mecca. So they claim, the boy would not

leave without his mother’s permission, and she gave it. What happened when they reached Mecca? Ibn Isḥāq: Quraysh saw the boy behind his uncle and said: ʿAbd al-Muṭṭalib; he bought him! The uncle said: shame on you! He is the son of my brother Hāshim. Ibn Saʿd, through al-Wāqidī: this is ʿAbd al-Muṭṭalib, they said; and the uncle, shame on you! He is my brother’s son, Shayba son of ʿAmr.

Two wordings, one story: a mistake as they rode in, and a name that stayed for life. After his uncle, ʿAbd al-Muṭṭalib fed and watered the pilgrims, and rose higher among his people, Ibn Isḥāq says, than any of his fathers. Did anyone ever find Zamzam again? He did. Ibn Isḥāq gives his own words, through a chain that reaches ʿAlī ؓ, a cousin of the Prophet ﷺ.

I was sleeping by the House, he said, when someone came and said: dig the good one. I asked: what is the good one? And he was gone. On other nights: dig the generous one; dig the hidden treasure. Then: dig Zamzam. I asked: what is Zamzam? He said: it will never run dry. It will water the great crowds of pilgrims. It lies where the raven pecks, by the ants’ nest.

Ibn Isḥāq gives a second telling, marked: so they claim. He was told: by the ants’ nest, where the raven will peck tomorrow. And Allah knows best which it was. In the morning he found them, between two idols where Quraysh made their sacrifices. With his only son, al-Ḥārith, to guard him, he dug while Quraysh protested. Then he struck the stone lining of the old well, and cried: Allah is greatest! Did Quraysh still know whose well it was?

They did. In the first telling they told him: it is the well of our father Ishmael, and we have a right in it. And the gold? Inside were the two golden gazelles that Jurhum had buried, Ibn Isḥāq says, with swords and armor. Lots were cast before Hubal: the gold fell to the House, the weapons to him.

He beat the swords into a door for the House, and set the golden gazelles in the door. So they claim, it was the first gold to adorn the House. From then on, he gave the pilgrims water from Zamzam. Why did it matter that he had only one son? Standing almost alone at Zamzam, ʿAbd al-Muṭṭalib made a vow. Ibn Isḥāq marks

it: so they claim, and Allah knows best. If Allah gave him ten sons who grew up to stand by him, he would sacrifice one of them to Allah at the House. Ten sons grew up. Lots were cast, and the lot fell on ʿAbd Allāh, who was, so they claim, the son he loved most. He would not really do it?

Quraysh stopped him. If you do this, they said, men will keep bringing their sons to be killed. What will become of people? They asked a seeress, one consulted about hidden things. What is the price of a life among you? she asked. Ten camels, they said. Then cast lots between him and ten camels, and add ten each time, until your Lord is satisfied. Ten, twenty, thirty. At one hundred, the lot fell on the camels. The camels were

sacrificed, and ʿAbd Allāh lived. A hundred camels, for one son? Remember that number. In Part 2, an army will take two hundred camels from ʿAbd al-Muṭṭalib. Does Ibn Saʿd tell it the same way? Not quite. In Ibn Isḥāq, Quraysh stop the father, and a seeress sets the price.

In Ibn Saʿd, through al-Wāqidī, his daughters weep, one asks him to cast lots with his camels, and the camels are sacrificed between al-Ṣafā and al-Marwa. Both keep the heart of it: the vow, the lot on ʿAbd Allāh, ten camels for a life, until a hundred. Pause and think. If two tellings differ, is the whole story in doubt? Not its heart: the vow, the lot and the hundred camels.

Did anyone still remember the way of Abraham? A few did. Asmāʾ ؓ, the daughter of Abū Bakr ؓ, saw one of them, Zayd ibn ʿAmr, leaning against the House and saying: people of Quraysh, not one of you follows the religion of Abraham but me. O Allah, if I knew how You wished to be worshipped, I would worship You so; but I do not know.

ʿAbd Allāh married Āmina, daughter of Wahb: then, Ibn Isḥāq says, the finest woman of Quraysh. He also tells, marked: so they claim, of a woman who saw a light in the face of ʿAbd Allāh; after the wedding, it was gone. Where did the light go? Part 3 will tell you what Āmina saw.

Ibn Isḥāq says ʿAbd Allāh died before his child was born; in another report, when the boy was a little over two. Allah knows which it was, he adds. And the baby? He was born in the year an army came to Mecca with an elephant. Remember. A mother trusted God in a valley with no water. Zamzam came up, and Abraham and Ishmael raised a House for the One God.

Idols came and Zamzam was buried; ʿAbd al-Muṭṭalib dug it again, and ransomed his son with a hundred camels. And every witness wore its tag. So when the army came, it came for Abraham’s House? It did. Who would protect it? That is Part 2. Check yourself. Report 3364 says: with his heel, or he said, with his wing. What do

the words: or he said, tell you? A narrator was unsure of one word, and kept his doubt. Reflection. Hagar asked Abraham one last question: did Allah command you to do this? When he said yes, she went back to a valley with no water. Why do you think his yes was enough for her?

Next: an army from Yemen. Who will protect the House? The Foundations Press, FISLI Standard.

Night, outside Mecca. The people of the town have left their homes, and climbed the mountains around it. On the plain below, an army is camped. At its head stands an elephant. Its commander has sworn to destroy one building: the Kaaba, the House at the heart of Mecca. Why would an army march all that way to destroy one house? That is the first question of this story. The second is harder: who would protect

the House? It happened in the year a baby was born in Mecca: Muḥammad ﷺ, whom Muslims follow as the Prophet of God. What was that you said after his name? A short prayer: peace and blessings be upon him. Muslims say it every time they name him, because the Qurʾān, which Muslims believe is the word of God, asks

believers to send blessings on him. When other prophets are first named, you will hear: peace be upon him. For his Companions, those who knew him: may Allah be pleased with him. Allah is the Arabic word for God; Christians who speak Arabic use it too. This is the Year of the Elephant. Part 2. Mecca, called Makkah in Arabic, lies in a dry valley in western Arabia, near the Red

Sea. South lies Yemen; across the sea, Abyssinia, ruled by a Christian king. North lie the lands of Rome; east, Persia. At the heart of Mecca stood the Kaaba, a plain house of stone. The Qurʾān says Abraham ؑ and his son Ishmael ؑ raised its foundations. The House from Part 1?

The same House. Arabs of every tribe came to it on pilgrimage. Its keepers were Quraysh, the tribe of Mecca. And the year was 570 or 571 of our calendar. The baby was born into the family of Hāshim, leaders of Mecca. His grandfather, ʿAbd al-Muṭṭalib, led Quraysh in the year of this story. His father was ʿAbd Allāh.

So he never met his father? Ibn Isḥāq, an early historian, says ʿAbd Allāh died before the baby was born. He gives another report, that ʿAbd Allāh died when the boy was a little over two, and adds: Allah knows which it was. Three questions for this part. Why did an army come to Mecca? What did ʿAbd al-Muṭṭalib say to its commander?

And how do we know? Where does the story of the elephant first appear? The earliest written witness is the Qurʾān, which Muslims believe was given to the Prophet ﷺ over twenty-three years. It has one hundred and fourteen chapters, called sūrahs. Near the end are two short ones, side by side: al-Fīl, the Elephant, and Quraysh.

Al-Fīl has five verses, called āyāt. A small round mark closes each one. Listen to it in Arabic, recited by Sheikh ʿAbd al-Bāsiṭ ʿAbd al-Ṣamad of Egypt, who died in 1988. [Recitation · Shaykh ʿAbd al-Bāsiṭ ʿAbd al-Ṣamad] [Recitation · Shaykh ʿAbd al-Bāsiṭ ʿAbd al-Ṣamad] [Recitation · Shaykh ʿAbd al-Bāsiṭ ʿAbd al-Ṣamad]

[Recitation · Shaykh ʿAbd al-Bāsiṭ ʿAbd al-Ṣamad] [Recitation · Shaykh ʿAbd al-Bāsiṭ ʿAbd al-Ṣamad] [Recitation · Shaykh ʿAbd al-Bāsiṭ ʿAbd al-Ṣamad] Have you not considered how your Lord dealt with the companions of the elephant? Did He not make their plan into misguidance? And He sent against them birds in flocks, striking them with stones of hard clay, and He made them like eaten

straw. The first words, word for word, ask the Prophet ﷺ a question: have you not seen? But if he was born that year, how could the sūrah ask him if he had seen it? Four scholars answer. Al-Ṭabarī reads it as: have you not looked, O Muḥammad ﷺ, with the eye of your heart? Al-Zarkashī: a question like this asks for attention, not information. Look with your

mind, and take note. Al-Qurṭubī reports from his scholars that when the sūrah was recited, many people in Mecca had seen the event with their own eyes. And al-Māwardī: have you not seen the traces of what your Lord did? For the Prophet ﷺ, he notes, did not see the army. Pause and think. The sūrah names no king and no army. Why could it leave them out?

Many of its first listeners, al-Qurṭubī reports, had seen it. How can anyone know what happened so long ago? The way a detective does: gather the witnesses, and ask how close each one was. Every passage wears a tag. Gold is the Qurʾān. Teal is the Prophet ﷺ in his own words, from the collections called ṣaḥīḥ, sound, whose chains of narrators have been tested.

A chain is the list of people who passed a report along, back to someone who was there. Green is a Companion, who knew the Prophet ﷺ; olive, a Successor, who learned from the Companions. Orange is a historian without a chain. Ours is Ibn Isḥāq, whose book reaches us through its editor, Ibn Hishām.

Gray is a report through al-Wāqidī, an early historian; we name him whenever a report comes through him. Purple is a poem; blue, a scholar reasoning; a dashed line, a narrator graded weak. When witnesses disagree, we show both, and look for what they agree on. Why would a story about Mecca begin in Yemen?

Because that is where the army came from, and it begins with a crime. Ibn Isḥāq says the last king of Ḥimyar, the old royal line of Yemen, was Dhū Nuwās. In the town of Najrān lived Christians who followed the Gospel of Jesus ؑ, whom Arabic calls ʿĪsā. Ibn Isḥāq calls them people of virtue and uprightness. Dhū Nuwās called them to his own religion, Judaism, and gave them the choice between that and death. They chose death.

He dug a trench of fire for them. Ibn Isḥāq says nearly twenty thousand were killed. Is that trench in the Qurʾān? A trench of fire is in the Qurʾān, in Sūrat al-Burūj, the chapter of the Constellations. Listen. [Recitation · Shaykh ʿAbd al-Bāsiṭ ʿAbd al-Ṣamad]

[Recitation · Shaykh ʿAbd al-Bāsiṭ ʿAbd al-Ṣamad] [Recitation · Shaykh ʿAbd al-Bāsiṭ ʿAbd al-Ṣamad] [Recitation · Shaykh ʿAbd al-Bāsiṭ ʿAbd al-Ṣamad] [Recitation · Shaykh ʿAbd al-Bāsiṭ ʿAbd al-Ṣamad] Cursed were the companions of the trench, containing the fire full of fuel, when they were sitting near it, and they, to what they were doing against the

believers, were witnesses. And they resented them not except because they believed in Allah, the Exalted in Might, the Praiseworthy. Start with the firmest witness, the Qurʾān. The verses name no place and no king. Then how do we know it was Najrān? We do not, from the verses. Ibn Isḥāq says they came down about Dhū Nuwās and Najrān,

with no chain. Al-Kalbī, an early scholar of the Qurʾān, also places it at Najrān. The Prophet ﷺ also told of a king, a boy who believed, and trenches of fire, and named no place. The scholar Muslim records it in his Ṣaḥīḥ, from Ṣuhayb ؓ. So which story is true? Ibn Isḥāq has a boy too: at Najrān, ʿAbd Allāh, sent to learn from a sorcerer, sat instead with a man of prayer, until he believed in one God.

Ibn Kathīr sets the two side by side and says they are in conflict: if Ibn Isḥāq is right, they were two different trenches. A report from ʿAlī ؓ places one in Persia. Al-Qurṭubī sums it up: the reports differ, and the meaning is close. So we sort the witnesses. The verses are certain; the story the Prophet ﷺ told is firm; neither names a place. Najrān is the reading of Ibn Isḥāq and al-Kalbī. At its

heart, all agree: believers who kept their faith, and a trench of fire. Back in Najrān, one man escaped the trench. He rode north to Caesar, the emperor of Rome, for help. Caesar answered: your land is far from us, but I will write to the king of Abyssinia, who shares this religion and is nearer to you. So the Negus, the king of Abyssinia, sent an army across the Red Sea under a

commander called Aryāṭ. Dhū Nuwās was beaten. Ibn Isḥāq says he rode his horse into the sea, and was never seen again. How big was that army? The witnesses disagree. Ibn Isḥāq says seventy thousand. Ibn Saʿd, the secretary of al-Wāqidī, says four thousand. In that army was a soldier called Abraha. He and Aryāṭ quarreled over who would rule

Yemen, and the army split in two. Ibn Isḥāq calls Abraha a man devout in his Christian faith. Abraha sent word: if the Abyssinians fight each other, nothing will be left of them; let us meet alone. Aryāṭ struck at the head of Abraha with a spear. It split his eyebrow, his nose, his eye and his lip. From that day he was called Abraha al-Ashram: the Split. A servant of Abraha killed Aryāṭ. The Negus swore to tread on the land of Abraha

and cut off his forelock. So Abraha shaved his head, and sent the king the hair, and a bag of the earth of Yemen to tread on, to keep his oath. In Sanaa, Abraha built a great church, al-Qullays, and wrote to the Negus: I have built for you, O king, a church the like of which was never built for any king before you. And I shall not stop until I turn the pilgrimage of the Arabs to it.

Why did the pilgrimage matter so much to him? Ibn Isḥāq gives only the letter. Ibn Saʿd, through al-Wāqidī, tells it as a scene: Abraha saw people readying for the pilgrimage, and asked where they were going. To the House of Allah in Mecca, they said. What is it made of? Stone. What covers it? Cloth from here, from Yemen.

By the Messiah, said Abraha, I will build you something better than it. When the Arabs heard of the letter, a man of the tribe of Kināna went to Sanaa and defiled the church, to show it was not worthy of the pilgrimage. Abraha grew angry, and swore to march on the House in Mecca and destroy it. Ibn Saʿd, through al-Wāqidī, names a different man, from the tribe of Khathʿam. Pause and think. Seventy thousand, or four thousand. A man of Kināna, or a man of

Khathʿam. When witnesses disagree, what can we still be sure of? What they agree on: Abyssinia came to Yemen, and Abraha swore to destroy the House. Did nobody try to stop him? Many did. Abraha marched north with his army and his elephant, Maḥmūd, as Ibn Isḥāq names it.

Arabs rose to stop him. Dhū Nafr, a noble of Yemen, called them to defend the House of Allah, fought, and was captured. Abraha spared him; Ibn Isḥāq calls Abraha a forbearing man. In the land of Khathʿam, Nufayl ibn Ḥabīb led his tribe against him, and was captured. To save his life he said: do not kill me, for I am your guide in the land of the Arabs.

At Taif, the men of Thaqīf, who had a house of their own, told Abraha: ours is not the House you want; you want the one in Mecca. They sent him a guide, Abū Righāl, who died at al-Mughammas, near Mecca; the Arabs, Ibn Isḥāq writes, stoned his grave. From there, Abraha sent horsemen to drive off the herds of the coastal lowland. Among them were two hundred camels of ʿAbd al-Muṭṭalib.

Is that a lot of camels? Twice the hundred that once ransomed his son ʿAbd Allāh, as Part 1 tells. And he will go to ask for them back. Abraha sent a messenger into Mecca: I have not come to fight you, only to destroy this House. ʿAbd al-Muṭṭalib answered: by Allah, we do not want war with him, and we have no

strength for it. This is the Sacred House of Allah, and the House of His friend Abraham. Ibn Isḥāq adds: or as he said. Marks like that are how a careful historian shows how sure he is. ʿAbd al-Muṭṭalib went on: if He keeps him from it, it is His House and His sanctuary. And if He leaves the way open, by Allah, we have no means to defend it.

ʿAbd al-Muṭṭalib went with the messenger to the camp. His friend Dhū Nafr, a prisoner there, sent word to the keeper of the elephant. The keeper told the king: this is the master of Quraysh, who feeds people on the plain and wild animals on the mountain tops. Abraha came down from his throne to honor him, sat beside him on the carpet, and asked through an interpreter what he needed.

ʿAbd al-Muṭṭalib said: my need is that the king return to me two hundred camels he took from me. Abraha said: you pleased me when I saw you, then I lost interest in you when you spoke. You speak to me of two hundred camels, and leave a House that is your religion and the religion of your fathers, which I have come to destroy? Why would he ask for camels, when the House was about to be destroyed?

ʿAbd al-Muṭṭalib said: I am the lord of the camels, and the House has a Lord who will protect it. In Arabic one word, rabb, means both owner and Lord. It will not be protected from me, said Abraha. That is between you and Him, said ʿAbd al-Muṭṭalib. Did he really say it in those words?

Ibn Isḥāq gives this exchange without a chain. Ibn Saʿd, through al-Wāqidī, has another wording: return my camels to me; the House is yours to try, for it has a Lord who will protect it. Two witnesses: the request in different words, and the same last words. Ibn Saʿd, through al-Wāqidī, adds that ʿAbd al-Muṭṭalib marked the returned camels as offerings, and set them loose in the sanctuary, so that if any were harmed,

its Lord would be angry. ʿAbd al-Muṭṭalib went back to Mecca. He took hold of the ring on the door of the Kaaba, and men of Quraysh stood with him, calling on Allah for help against Abraha and his army. He said: O Allah, a man defends his dwelling, so defend Your people. Let not their cross and their might overcome Your might tomorrow.

Those are the words of a man who lived before Islam. The sūrah itself never names the army’s religion: it calls them only the companions of the elephant. How do we know what he prayed? Ibn Hishām tested the poems in the book of Ibn Isḥāq. Of this prayer he kept three lines, and wrote after them: this is what is sound of it. One old copy marks the third line as added by al-Wāqidī.

ʿAbd al-Muṭṭalib let go of the ring, and went up into the mountains with his people, where this story began. Pause and think. Abraha thought less of ʿAbd al-Muṭṭalib for asking about his camels. Did he miss something? Yes. He was rabb of the camels, their owner; the House, he said, had its own Rabb, its Lord.

Remember. A short sūrah told the story to a city of witnesses. A trench of fire at Najrān, Ibn Isḥāq says, brought Abyssinia across the sea, and Abraha with it. He swore to destroy the House. ʿAbd al-Muṭṭalib asked only for his camels: the House has a Lord who will protect it. So did anyone protect it?

That is the morning of Part 3. Check yourself. Which of these places the trench at Najrān? Ibn Isḥāq, a historian, without a chain. The verses do not name a place. Reflection. Before the morning came, ʿAbd al-Muṭṭalib did three things. He asked for his camels. He prayed at the door of the House. And he led his people up into the mountains.

Which would have been hardest for you, and why? On the plain, Abraha made ready to enter Mecca. In the morning, the elephant was turned toward the city. In Part 3: what happened next, and the baby born that year. The Foundations Press, FISLI Standard.

Morning, outside Mecca, in western Arabia. The townspeople are still on the mountains. In Part 2 an army from Abyssinia marched from Yemen to destroy the Kaaba, the House of Abraham. ʿAbd al-Muṭṭalib asked its commander, Abraha, only for his camels: the House, he said, has a Lord who will protect it. So what happened when the army moved?

This part tells that morning, what it meant, and how we know a baby was born that year: Muḥammad ﷺ, whom Muslims follow as the Prophet of God. What was that you said after his name? A short prayer: peace and blessings be upon him. Muslims say it every time they name him, because the Qurʾān, the word of God as Muslims believe, asks it of believers.

When other prophets are first named, you will hear: peace be upon him; for his Companions, those who knew him: may Allah be pleased with him, or with her. Allah is the Arabic word for God. This is the Year of the Elephant. Part 3. How will we know which reports to trust? By their tags. Gold is the Qurʾān; teal, the Prophet ﷺ in a tested report; green, a

Companion; olive, a Successor. Orange, a historian with no chain; gray, a report through al-Wāqidī; dashed, a narrator graded weak. The morning. Ibn Isḥāq, an early historian, tells what happened next. When Abraha made ready to enter Mecca, his elephant, Maḥmūd, was turned toward the

city. Nufayl ibn Ḥabīb, the captured guide, came up beside it, took hold of its ear, and said: Kneel, Maḥmūd, or go back rightly guided to where you came from, for you are in the sacred land of Allah. He let go of its ear, and the elephant knelt.

Could they not make it get up? They beat it to make it rise. It would not. They turned it back toward Yemen, and it rose and trotted. Toward Syria, it did the same. Toward the east, the same. Toward Mecca, it knelt. Al-Suhaylī notes that elephants do not kneel; it dropped to the ground. Some, he

adds, are said to kneel like camels, and Allah knows best. The army stood before Mecca, and its elephant would not move. Then, Ibn Isḥāq says, Allah sent upon them birds from the sea, like swallows. Each bird carried three stones, one in its beak and two in its feet, like chickpeas and lentils. The army broke and fled, calling for Nufayl to show them the road home.

The Qurʾān, the firmest witness, tells that morning in a short chapter, a sūrah of five verses, recited by Sheikh ʿAbd al-Bāsiṭ ʿAbd al-Ṣamad. Listen. [Recitation · Shaykh ʿAbd al-Bāsiṭ ʿAbd al-Ṣamad] [Recitation · Shaykh ʿAbd al-Bāsiṭ ʿAbd al-Ṣamad] [Recitation · Shaykh ʿAbd al-Bāsiṭ ʿAbd al-Ṣamad] [Recitation · Shaykh ʿAbd al-Bāsiṭ ʿAbd al-Ṣamad]

[Recitation · Shaykh ʿAbd al-Bāsiṭ ʿAbd al-Ṣamad] [Recitation · Shaykh ʿAbd al-Bāsiṭ ʿAbd al-Ṣamad] Have you not considered how your Lord dealt with the companions of the elephant? Did He not make their plan into misguidance? And He sent against them birds in flocks, striking them with stones of hard clay, and He made them like eaten straw.

What did the birds look like? First, the word for the birds: abābīl. Mujāhid, a Successor, a pupil of the Companions, explains it in al-Bukhārī: following one another, gathered together. The birds are described in different ways. Two Companions: Ibn ʿAbbās ؓ said, beaks like the beaks of birds and paws like the paws of dogs. ʿĀʾisha ؓ said, most like swallows.

Two Successors: ʿIkrima, green birds from the sea; Qatāda, white. And the words of ʿĀʾisha come here with no chain: no list of those who passed them on. And what were the stones made of? The sūrah says: stones of sijjīl. In plain words, stones of hard clay. The Qurʾān helps explain its own word. It uses sijjīl again for the stones sent on the people of Lot ؑ, a prophet the Bible also names. In another sūrah it calls

those same stones: stones of clay. Listen. [Recitation · Shaykh ʿAbd al-Bāsiṭ ʿAbd al-Ṣamad] To send down upon them stones of clay. Qatāda and ʿIkrima, two Successors, drew the meaning from that verse: sijjīl is clay. Others explained the word itself: hard and severe, said Abū ʿUbayda; what was written

for them, said the grammarian al-Zajjāj. Where does the word come from? Ibn ʿAbbās heard in it a Persian word: its first part means stone, its last part clay. Is there Persian in the Qurʾān, then? The Qurʾān calls itself Arabic, so al-Ṭabarī held that languages can share a word. Al-Qāsim ibn Sallām said both are right: Persian at the root, made Arabic

before the Qurʾān came down. The sūrah ends: like eaten straw. Ibn Hishām says the word means the leaves of crops. And it was quick. Al-Suyūṭī notes that Arabic has two verbs for doing. One is for work that takes time. The other is for what is done at once, and it is the verb in the first verse: how

your Lord dealt with them. Pause and think. Two Companions and two Successors describe the birds four ways, and none of them saw them. What can we be sure of? What the sūrah says: birds in flocks, and stones of sijjīl, a word the Qurʾān explains as clay. The details are reports passed on. Abraha was struck too. Ibn Isḥāq says they carried him back toward Yemen, his

fingertips falling one by one. In Sanaa, his chest split open, and he died. To that last detail Ibn Isḥāq adds: as they claim. Why does he say as they claim? He names no witness for it: he is telling us how sure he is. Ibn Isḥāq marks another report too: his teacher was told that measles and smallpox were first seen in Arabia that year.

If the army was destroyed, how do we know what happened? Ask who could see. Quraysh watched from the mountains, Ibn Isḥāq says; Nufayl, the guide, ran up there too. Not all were struck. Some, Ibn Kathīr explains, reached Yemen and told their people. In Mecca, Ibn Isḥāq gives a connected chain to ʿĀʾisha, the wife of the Prophet

ﷺ. She said: I saw the driver of the elephant and its keeper in Mecca, both blind and crippled, begging food of the people. Ibn Isḥāq says that when Allah turned the Abyssinians back, the Arabs held Quraysh, the tribe of Mecca, in awe. They said: they are the people of Allah; Allah fought for them.

As their old leader Quṣayy said: neighbors of Allah? The same idea, now in the mouths of the Arabs. And they remembered it in poetry. Abū Qays ibn al-Aslat told Quraysh: rise, and pray to your Lord, and touch the corners of this House between the mountains. And the baby born that year? How do we know when? Start with the weakest witnesses. They tell of wonders, not dates, and Ibn Isḥāq

marks them: they claim, and Allah knows best. The baby’s mother, Āmina bint Wahb, used to say that when she conceived him, she saw a light come out of her. By it she saw the palaces of Bosra, in Syria. Ibn Saʿd gives a like report in the words of the Prophet ﷺ, through Abū Umāma ؓ. But Ibn Ḥajar grades one of its narrators weak. When he was born, Ibn Isḥāq says, again with: they claim, ʿAbd al-Muṭṭalib took

him into the Kaaba. He stood calling on Allah and thanking Him, then brought him out to his mother. Into the same House? The House of Abraham ؑ, saved that very year. If even Ibn Isḥāq says they claim, what do we know? First, two Companions speak of their own birth. Qays ibn Makhrama ؓ said: I and the

Messenger of Allah ﷺ were born in the Year of the Elephant. And ʿUthmān ؓ asked Qubāth ibn Ashyam ؓ: which of you is the elder? Qubāth answered: the Messenger of Allah ﷺ is greater than I, and I came before him in birth. And I saw the dung of the elephant, green and changed. Ibn Saʿd lists seven chains of narrators that say the same thing. Look where they meet: all seven reach Ibn Saʿd through one man, al-Wāqidī. So they

are not seven witnesses. One more chain, without al-Wāqidī, goes back to Ibn ʿAbbās. That route stands on its own. Did everyone agree on the year? Nearly everyone. Al-Māwardī reports that al-Kalbī and ʿUbayd ibn ʿUmayr, a Successor, put the birth twenty-three years after the Elephant, and Muqātil,

forty. Al-Qurṭubī calls the Year of the Elephant the sound view. Pause and think. If a hundred chains all passed through one man, how many witnesses would that be? One. A report is only as strong as the narrowest point it passes through. Which day was he born? Ibn Kathīr gathers several views of the day of the month; here are four.

Ibn Isḥāq gives the twelfth, and Ibn Kathīr calls it the well-known view of the majority. But on the day of the week, he writes, there is no disagreement: a Monday. And for the Monday there is a stronger witness: the Prophet ﷺ himself. The scholar Muslim reports his words in his Ṣaḥīḥ, a collection of tested reports, from the Companion Abū Qatāda ؓ.

The Prophet ﷺ was asked about fasting on Monday. He said: that is a day on which I was born, and a day on which I was sent, or on which revelation came down to me. And what year was that in our calendar? Ibn ʿAbbās says, in al-Bukhārī, that the Prophet ﷺ was sent at forty and stayed in Mecca thirteen years.

Anas ؓ and ʿĀʾisha say ten, and so does Ibn ʿAbbās in another report. Which fits? In his first report, Ibn ʿAbbās adds ten years in Medina and a death at sixty-three. Forty, thirteen and ten make sixty-three. And sixty-three is the age at his death that Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim reports, from ʿĀʾisha and Anas; Ibn al-Ṣalāḥ calls it the sound view. So we count thirteen. The Hijra, his move from Mecca to Medina, came

fifty-three years after the Elephant, in 622. Years of the moon are shorter: fifty-three of them are about fifty-one of ours. Count back from 622, and you reach 570 or 571. Al-Suhaylī dates it by an older calendar, the era of Alexander: the year 882, which falls in 570 or 571 too. The sons of Ishmael ؑ, Ibn Isḥāq reports, counted their years once from the building

of the House, later from the Elephant. Ibn al-Ṣalāḥ dates the Companion Ḥakīm ibn Ḥizām ؓ by it: born inside the Kaaba thirteen years before. Even the life of the Prophet ﷺ is told from it, year by year. What did that morning mean for Quraysh? Ibn Isḥāq answers: Allah counted it among His favors to Quraysh, turning the Abyssinians back.

Why was it done? On the sūrah after al-Fīl, Ibn Isḥāq says: for the good Allah wanted for them, had they accepted it. Had they accepted what? The message brought, years later, by the Prophet ﷺ. The favor came first; the call came after.

That sūrah is Quraysh. Listen. [Recitation · Shaykh ʿAbd al-Bāsiṭ ʿAbd al-Ṣamad] [Recitation · Shaykh ʿAbd al-Bāsiṭ ʿAbd al-Ṣamad] [Recitation · Shaykh ʿAbd al-Bāsiṭ ʿAbd al-Ṣamad] [Recitation · Shaykh ʿAbd al-Bāsiṭ ʿAbd al-Ṣamad] [Recitation · Shaykh ʿAbd al-Bāsiṭ ʿAbd al-Ṣamad]

For the accustomed security of the Quraysh, their accustomed security in the caravan of winter and summer. Let them worship the Lord of this House, who has fed them, saving them from hunger, and made them safe, saving them from fear. What was the caravan of winter and summer? Ibn Hishām explains: their trading journeys to Syria, one in winter and one in summer. Al-Qurṭubī differs: Yemen in winter, Syria in summer.

Al-Zarkashī asks the reader to see how the two sūrahs are bound. Al-Fīl ends with the army destroyed; Quraysh begins: for the security of Quraysh. Why would food and safety come from the Lord of this House? Ibn ʿAbbās, in al-Qurṭubī, points back to the prayer of Abraham: my Lord, make this a secure city, and provide its people with fruits. And Ibn Zayd: the Arabs raided one another, but Quraysh were safe, for the

sake of the Sanctuary. Pause and think. Quraysh then worshipped idols, and the army was Christian. Why would the House be saved from that army? Ibn Kathīr answers. Ibn Kathīr writes that the victory was not a help to Quraysh against the Christians of Abyssinia, who were then nearer to it than the idol-worshippers of Quraysh. It

was for the Sacred House: he calls it an irhāṣ. What is an irhāṣ? Al-Bājūrī, a teacher of belief, defines it: something that comes before a prophet is sent, as a foundation for his mission. Al-Māwardī reports two views of what it meant. One: a miracle for a prophet of that time. The other: a preparation for the Prophet ﷺ, born in its year.

Years later, the Prophet ﷺ set out from Medina with his Companions for the lesser pilgrimage to the Kaaba. Quraysh, worn down by war with him, held Mecca. At the pass above al-Ḥudaybiya, on the road to Mecca, his camel, al-Qaṣwāʾ, knelt and would not rise. The people said: she has balked. He said: al-Qaṣwāʾ has not balked, and that is not her nature; but the One who held back the elephant has held her back.

Then he said: by the One in whose hand is my soul, if they ask me for any plan that honors the sacred things of Allah, I will give it to them. Then he urged her on, and she sprang up. Why would he think of the elephant there? The report does not say. Then he made peace with Quraysh, and turned back that year without entering Mecca.

Then came the day he and his followers entered Mecca, the city of his birth. He stood among the people, praised Allah, and said: Allah held back the elephant from Mecca, and gave His Messenger ﷺ and the believers power over it. It was never lawful for anyone before me. It was made lawful for me for an hour of a day, and it will never be lawful for anyone after me.

After the sermon, a man from Yemen stood, Abū Shāh ؓ. He said: write it for me, O Messenger of Allah ﷺ. And the Prophet ﷺ said: write it for Abū Shāh. What did he want written down? Al-Awzāʿī, one of the men who passed this report on, was asked. He said: this sermon. Why does the elephant keep coming back in what he said?

One Arabic word joins both his sayings: ḥabasa. It means to hold back. The Prophet ﷺ used it at al-Ḥudaybiya, and again in Mecca. An army with an elephant had all the power anyone could see. The Prophet ﷺ named the One who held it back: Allah. So who protected the House? Remember. The sūrah answers in its own words: your Lord, with birds in flocks. As

ʿAbd al-Muṭṭalib had said, the House has a Lord. The elephant knelt facing Mecca, and the army of Abraha became like eaten straw. The Prophet ﷺ was born that year: Companions of his age say so. His own words, in Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim, give the day: a Monday. Ibn Isḥāq counts it a favor; the message came after. And the Prophet ﷺ said: Allah held back the elephant.

Check yourself. How does the Qurʾān itself help explain the word sijjīl? The stones of Lot, called sijjīl in one sūrah, are called stones of clay in another. Reflection. An army came out of Yemen with an elephant to take the Kaaba by force, and was held back. Years later, a man from Yemen stood in Mecca and asked only for a sermon to be

written down. Why do you think he wanted it in writing? Next: why Muslims study the life of the Prophet ﷺ at all. The Foundations Press, FISLI Standard.