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146 Muhammad: His Life and Religious Teaching Introduction—The Year of the Elephant The year 570 a.d. was equally ominous for the two rulers who, in irreconcilable enmity amongst themselves, had partitioned the historical world of that time. The “autocrat of the Greek-Romans,” Justin II in Byzantium, and the [Persian] “king of kings,” Khosrow [I] Anushirvan in Ctesiphon, both received a harsh rebuke but in different forms. In their renewal of war with the Persians, Justin the Elder and Justinian decided to make use of the remote Christian kingdom of Ethiopia, or Abyssinia, opening diplomatic relations with it for the purpose of diverting the enemy’s forces. This opening was achieved in part by means of ecclesiastical contacts, and these relations led to the negus [king] of Aksum [in Ethiopia]—whose ancestors had long endeavored to extend their power to the opposite shore of the Red Sea—occupying the southwestern corner of the Arabian Peninsula with his forces and furnishing a governor for the region; he also had in mind subsequently to move further on, to northeastern Arabia, where the vanguard of the Persian king was located and his supremacy acknowledged. In that same year the Abyssinian governor, Abraha, gathered what was for that place and that time a large armed force; the many war elephants brought from Africa constituted an unprecedented marvel for the Arabs. The governor proceeded to the realization of the large-scale plan—to move this army from Yemen through Hijaz to the city Yathrib, and from there to the Persian frontier. They knew about this undertaking in Byzantium and expected a great deal from it. However, on the road from Yemen to Persia it was simply not possible to pass by the renowned city of Mecca, which had been a kind of federative center for the greater part of Arabia’s tribes. To open the gates of Mecca to the Abyssinian army would mean that all Arabia would fall subject to the same foreign tribal authority that its southwestern regions had. It was not possible for the Arabs to risk this without a Wght, but attempts at resistance in the open Weld had had no success: the preponderance of organized military force was on the side of the Abyssinians, but, more importantly, the African elephants spread terror, the 146 Muhammad 147 likes of which the Arabs and their horses were unaccustomed to. The impression was so profound that 570 passed into history with the epithet “Year of the Elephant.” The tribe that controlled Mecca, the Quraysh, and their allies shut themselves up in the city and prepared for a desperate defense. The Abyssinians surrounded the sacred city, but on the Wrst night in their camp a frightening and unknown illness appeared, from which the greater part of the people perished; the rest Xed in disarray toward Yemen, with almost all being killed on the road by Bedouins. This not only put an end to any further undertakings by the Abyssinians but also to their very power in southern Arabia, as well as to their alliance with Byzantium. This was a great anguish for the Greek emperor. However, although the Persian king made use of the failure of Byzantium’s African allies and established his sovereignty for a while after forcing them out of Yemen, the year 570 was marked by an evil omen for him as well. On the very night that a superhuman force exterminated the allies of his enemy, he himself, according to legend, was also struck by an ominous miracle: the sacred implements in his palace temple were broken and scattered, and the inextinguishable Xame—the symbol of divinity for the Iranians—suddenly went out. Whereas the Greek emperor was distressed and troubled by the miraculous destruction of his allies, and the Persian king was struck and terriWed by the miraculous fall of his gods, neither the one nor the other ruler comprehended all the ominous signiWcance of this night for them, for they could not know that on this very night in the house of the poorest of the inhabitants of Mecca, of Abdullah’s son, Abdul Muttalib, was born a child to whom it was foreordained to create a new religious-political force, predestined to unite the nations of the East and to end the thousand-year strife of the Greek and Persian kingdoms—with the destruction of them both.*1 The Historical Framework Along the caravan trade routes from Yemen and Ethiopia to Palestine and Mesopotamia through...

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