The Year of Sadness (1/2)

In the year AD  6I 9, not long after the annulment of the ban, the Prophet (Peace be upon him) suffered a great loss in the death of his wife Khadijah, She was  about sixty-five years old and he was nearing fifty. They had lived together in profound harmony for twenty-five years, and she had been not only his wife but also his intimate friend, his wise counsellor, and mother to his whole household including ‘Ali and Zayd. His four daughters were overcome with grief, but he was able to comfort them by telling them that Gabriel had once come to him and told him to give Khadijah greetings of Peace from her Lord and to tell her that He had prepared for her an abode in Paradise.

Another loss followed closely upon the death of Khadijah, a loss less great and less penetrating in itself, but at the same time less consolable and more serious in its outward consequences. Abu Talib fell ill, and it soon became clear that he was dying. On his deathbed he was visited by a group of the leaders of Quraysh - 'Urbah and Shaybah and Abu Sufyan of 'Abdu Shams, Umayyah of Jumah, Abu Jahl of Makhzum and others - and they said to him:  "Abu Talib, thou knowest the esteem we have for thee; and now this that thou seest hath come upon thee, and we fear for thee. Thou knowest what is between us and thy brother's son. So call him to thee, and take for him a gift from us, and take for us a gift from him, that he should let us be, and we will let him be. Let him leave us and our religion in peace."

So Abu Talib sent to him, and when he came he said to him:  "Son of my brother, these nobles of thy people have come together on account of thee, to give and to take." "So be it," said the Prophet (Peace be upon him). "Give me one word - a word by which ye shall rule over the Arabs, and the Persians shall be your subjects." "Yea, by thy father," said Abu Jahl, "for that we will give thee one word, and ten words more." "Ye must say," said the Prophet (Peace be upon him), "there is no god but God, and ye must renounce what ye worship apart from Him."

They clapped their hands and said: "Wouldst thou, O Muhammad (Peace be upon him), make the gods one god? Thy bidding is strange indeed!" Then they said to each other: "This man will give you nothing of what ye ask, so go your ways and keep to the religion of your fathers until God judge between you and him."

When they had gone, Abu Talib said to the Prophet (Peace be upon him): "Son of my brother, thou didst not, as I saw it, ask of them anything out of the way." These words filled the Prophet (Peace be upon him) with longing that he should enter Islam. "Uncle," he said, "say thou the words, that through them I may intercede for thee on the day of the Resurrection." "Son of my brother,"   he said, "if I did not fear that Quraysh would think I had but said the words in dread of death, then would I say them. Yet would my saying them be but to please thee." Then, when death drew near to Abu Talib, 'Abbas saw him moving his lips and he put his ear close to him and listened and then he said: "My brother hath spoken the words thou didst bid him speak."  But the Prophet (Peace be upon him) said: "I heard him not."

It was now becoming difficult in Mecca for almost all those who had no official protection.  Before he joined the Prophet (Peace be upon him) Abu Bakr had been a man of considerable  influence, but  unlike 'Umar  and Hamzah, he was not  a dangerous  man in himself and therefore did not inspire fear except in those who had learned  to esteem him for spiritual  reasons;  and when his Islam set a barrier between himself and the leaders of Quraysh his influence with them decreased almost to nothing,  just as it increased within the community  of  the  new  religion.  For  Abu  Bakr  the  situation   was,  moreover, aggravated  by his being known  to be responsible  for many conversions; and it may have been partly  in revenge for the Islam of Aswad the son Nawfal  that  one day Nawfal  himself, Khadijah's  half-brother,  organized an  attack  on  Abu  Bakr  and  Talhah,  who  were  left lying in the public highway, bound hand and foot and roped together. Nor did any of the men of Taym intervene against the men of Asad, which suggests that they had disowned their two leading Muslim clansmen.

There may have been other incidents also. Abu Bakr was on increasingly bad terms with Bilal's former master Umayyah,   the chief of jumah, amongst  whom   he  lived;  and  the  time  came  when  he  felt  he  had  no alternative  but to emigrate. Having obtained permission of the Prophet (Peace be upon him), he set out to join those who had remained in Abyssinia. But before he had reached the Red Sea, he was met by Ibn ad-Dughunnah, at that time the head of a small group of confederate tribes not far from Mecca, allies of Quraysh.  This Bedouin chief had known Abu Bakr well in his days of affluence and influence, yet now he had the appearance of a wandering hermit.  Amazed at the change, he questioned him.  "My people have ill-treated me," said Abu Bakr, "and driven me out, and all I seek is to travel over the face of the earth, worshipping God."  "Why have they done this?" said Ibn ad-Dughunnah.  "Thou art as an ornament to thy clan, a help in misfortune,   a doer of right, ever fulfilling the needs of others. Return, for thou art beneath my protection." So he took him back to Mecca and spoke to the people, saying: "Men of Quraysh, I have given my protection to the son of Abu Quhafah, so let no one treat him other than well."  Quraysh   confirmed  the  protection   and  promised  that  Abu  Bakr should  be safe, but  at the instigation  of the Bani Jumah they said to his protector: "Tell  him to worship  his Lord within  doors,  and to pray  and recite what he will there, but tell him not to cause us trouble by letting it be seen and heard,  for his appearance  is striking and he hath with him a way, so  that  we  fear  lest  he  seduce  our  sons  and  our  women."   Ibn ad­ Dughunnah   told this to Abu Bakr, and for a while he prayed only in his house and made there his recitations of the Qur’an; and for a while the tension was relaxed between him and the leaders of the Bani Jumah, Abu Talib was succeeded by Abu Lahab as chief of Hashim; but the protection that Abu Lahab gave his nephew was merely nominal, and the Prophet (Peace be upon him) was ill-treated as never before.  On one occasion  a passer-by  leaned over his gate and tossed a piece of putrefying  offal into his cooking pot;  and once when he was praying in the courtyard  of his house, a man threw over him a sheep's uterus filthy with blood and excrement.  Before disposing of it, the Prophet (Peace be upon him) picked up the object on the end of a stick and said, standing at his gate: "O sons of 'Abdu Manaf, what protection is this?" He had seen that the offender was the Shamsite 'Uqbah,[1] stepfather of 'Uthman,   Ruqayyah's husband.  On another occasion, when the Prophet (Peace be upon him) was coming from the Ka'bah, a man took a handful of dirt and threw it in his face and over his head. When he returned home one of his daughters washed him clean of it, weeping the while. "Weep not, little daughter," he said, "God will protect thy father!”

It was then that he decided to seek help from Thaqif, the people of Ta'if - a decision which eloquently reflected the apparent gravity of his situation in Mecca. For except that truth can conquer all things, what indeed could be hoped  for  from  Thaqif,  the  guardians  of the temple  of the  goddess al-Lat, whose shrine they liked to think of as comparable  to the House of God? There must however be exceptions  in Ta'if as there were in Mecca, and  the  Prophet (Peace be upon him)  was  not  without   hope  as he rode  up  from  the  desert towards  the welcoming  orchards  and gardens and cornfields which were the outskirts  of the walled city. On his arrival he went straight to the house of three brothers who were the leaders of Thaqif at that time, the sons of 'Amr ibn Umayyah, the man whom Walid looked on as his own counterpart in Ta'if, the second of "the two great men of the two townships".  But when  the Prophet (Peace be upon him)  asked  them to accept Islam and  help him against  his opponents, one of them  immediately  said: "If God sent thee, I will tear down  the hangings  of the Ka'bah!",   and another  said: "Could  God find none but thee to send?" As for the third, he said: "Let me never speak to thee! For if thou art a Messenger from God as thou sayest, then art thou too great a personage for me to address; and if thou liest, it is not fitting that I should speak to thee."  So the Prophet (Peace be upon him)  rose to leave them, perhaps intending  to try elsewhere in Ta'if;  but when he had left them, they stirred up their slaves and retainers  to insult him and shout at him, until a crowd of people  were gathered  together  against  him and he was forced to take refuge in a private  orchard. Once he had entered it the crowd began to disperse, and, tethering his camel to a palm tree, he made for the shelter of a vine and sat in its shade.

When he felt himself to be in safety and at peace, he prayed:  "O God, unto Thee do I complain of my weakness, of my helplessness, and of my lowliness before men. O Most Merciful of the merciful, Thou art Lord of the weak. And Thou art my Lord. Into whose hands wilt Thou entrust me? Unto some far off stranger who will ill-treat me? Or unto a foe whom Thou hast empowered against me? I care not, so Thou be not wroth with me. But Thy favouring help - that were for me the broader way and the wider scope! I take refuge in the Light of Thy Countenance whereby all darknesses are illuminated and the things of this world and the next are rightly ordered, lest Thou make descend Thine anger upon me, or lest Thy wrath beset me. Yet is it Thine to reproach until Thou art well pleased. There is no power and no might except through Thee.”

(Continued)