TO HIS EXALTED HIGHNESS THE NIZAM the translator expresses his gratitude for the most generous grant of leave which enabled him to complete this work while in His Exalted Highness’s 'service.
LONDON GEORGE ALLEN & UNWIN LTD MUSEUM STREET PRINTED Ili ENGLAND POR ALFRED A. KNOPF LIMITED BY RICHARD CLAY SONS LTD, BUNGAY SUFFOLK TRANSLATOR'S FOREWORD The aim of this work is to present to English readers what Muslims the world over hold to be the meaning of the words of the Koran, and the nature of that Book, in not unworthy language and concisely, with a view to the requirements of English Muslims. It may be reasonably claimed that no Holy Scripture can be fairly presented by one who disbelieves its inspiration and its message; and this is the first English translation of the Koran by an Englishman who is a Muslim. Some of the translations include commentation offensive to Muslims, and almost all employ a style of language which Muslims at once recognise as unworthy. The Koran cannot be translated. That is the belief of old-fashionedSheylchs and theview of the present writer. The Book is here rendered almost literally and every effort has been made to choose befitting language. But the result is not the Glorious Koran, that inimitable symphony, the very sounds of which move men to tears and ecstasy. It is only an attempt to present the meaning of the Koran—and peradventure something of the charm—in English. It can never take the place of the Koran in Arabic, nor is it meant to do so.
Before publication the work has been scrutinised word by word and thoroughly revised in Egypt with the help of one whose mother- tongue is Arabic, who has studied the Koran and who knows English; and when difficulties were encountered the translator had recourse to perhaps the greatest living authority on the subject. Every care has thus been taken to avoid unwarrantable renderings. On the one or two occasions where there is departure from the traditional interpretation, the traditional rendering will be found in a footnote.
The translator’s thanks are due to Lord Lloyd for an introduction of great use in Egypt; to Dr. F. Krenkow for supplying him with old meanings of Arabic words not to be found in dictionaries; to Muhammad Ahmad Al-Ghamrawi Bey of the Cairo College of Medicine for his invaluable and patient help with the revision of the manuscript, aworkwhich occupied threemonths; to the SheykhMustafa vii via TRANSLATOR'S FOREWORD Al-Mar^ghi, former Rector of Al-Azhar University, for his advi\ and guidance in the revision; and to His Excellency Fuad Bey SalJni Al'Higizi, by whose efforts such revision was made possible. The tnushaf (copy of the Koran) which has been used throughout is a lithograph copy of that written by Al-Hajj Muhammad Shakar- zadeh at the command of Sultan Mahmud of Turkey in 1246 A.H. In the Introduction and the notes to individual surahs, Ibn Hishim (Bul^ ed. 1295 A.H.) has been followed, with occasional reference to the much later, much abbreviated, but more critical Life of the Prophet by Ibn Khaldun (published as an appendix to his Tartkh, Buliq ed.). Other Strahs, like that of Abd’l-FidS, late in date and uncritical, have been read but not followed. Of commentators Al- Beydawi and Zamakhshari must be mentioned, while for reference during the work of revision, the brief commentary of Al-Jalaleyn was kept at hand. Wflhidi’s AsMJm ‘n-Nuzul has been largely consulted, and for the authenticity of Traditions the translator has relied upon Bukhari.
INTRODUCTION PART I At Mecca Muhammad, son of Abdullah, son of Abdul Mutallib, of the tribe of Qureysh, was born at Mecca fifty-three years before the Hijrah. His father died before he was born, and he was protected first by his grandfather, Abdul Mutallib, and, after his grandfather’s death, by his uncle, Abu TIlib. As a young boy he travelled with his uncle in the merchants’ caravan to Syria, and some years afterwards made the same journey in the service of a wealthy widow named Khadijah. So faithfully did he transact the widow’s business, and so excellent was the report of his behaviour which she received from her old servant who had accompanied him, that she soon afterwards married her young agent; and the marriage proved a very happy one, though she was fifteen years older than he was. Throughout the twenty-six years of their life together he remained devoted to her; and after her death, when he took other wives he always mentioned her with the greatest love and reverence. This marriage gave him rank among the notables of Mecca, while his conduct earned for him the surname Al-Amin, the "trustworthy.”
The Meccans claimed descent from Abraham through Ishmael, and tradition stated that their temple, the Ka'bah, had been built by Abraham for the worship of the One God. It was still called the House of Allah, but the chief objects of worship there were a number of idols which were called daughters of Allah and intercessors. The few who felt disgust at this idolatry, which had prevailed for centuries, longed for the religion of Abraham and tried to find out what had been its teaching. Such seekers of the truth were known as Hunafa (sing. Hamf), a word originally meaning “those who turn away” (from the existing idol-worship), but coming in the end to The Prophet’s birth His marriage The Hunafa 2 THE GLORIOUS KORAN have the sense of "upright” or "by nature upright,” because such persons held the way of truth to be right conduct. These Hmafa did not form a community. They were the agnostics of their day, each seeking truth by the light of his own inner consciousness. Muhammad son of Abdullah became one of these. It was his practice to retire with |iis family for a month of every year to a cave in the desert for meditation. His place of retreat was Him, a desert hill not far from Mecca, and his chosen month was Ramadan, the month of heat. It was there one night toward the end of his quiet month that the first revelation came to him when he was forty years old. He was asleep or in a trance when he heard a voice say; "Readi” He said: "I cannot read.” The voice again said: "Read!” He said: "I cannot read.” A third time the voice, more terrible, commanded: "Read!” He said; "What can I read?” The voice said: "Read; In the name of thy Lord Who createth.
"Createth man from a clot.
"Read; And it is thy Lord the Most Bountiful “Who teacheth by the pen, "Teacheth man that which he knew not.”' When he awoke the words remained "as if inscribed upon his heart.” He went out of the cave on to the hillside and heard the same aweinspiring voice say: “O Muhammad! Thou art Allah's messenger. The and I am Gabriel.” Then he raised his eyes and saw the angel, in the vision of likeness of a man, standing in the sky above the horizon. And again Mt. Hiri dreadful voice said: "O Muhammad! Thou art Allah’s messenger, and I am Gabriel.” Muhammad (God bless and keep him!) stood quite still, turning away his face from the brightness of the vision, but whithersoever he might turn his fiice, there always stood the angel cpnfronting him. He remained thus a long while till at length the angel vanished, when he returned in great distress of mind to his wife Khadtjah. She did her best to reassure him, saying that his conduct had been such that Allah would not let a harmful spirit come to him and that it was her hope that he was to become the Prophet of his people. On their return to Mecca she cook him to her cousin Waraqa ibn Naufal, a very old man, "who knew the Scriptures of the Jews and Christians,” who declared his belief that The first revelation INTRODUCTION 3 the heavenly messenger who came to Moses of old had come to Muhammad, and that he was chosen as the Prophet of his people. To understand the reason of the Prophet’s diffidence and his ex- His dis- treme distress of mind after the vision of Mt. HirS, it must be re- membered that the Hmafa, of whom he had been one, sought true religion in the natural and regarded with distrust the intercourse with spirits of which men "avid of the Unseen,sorcerers and soothsayers and even poets, boasted in those days. Moreover, he was a man of humble and devout intelligence, a lover of quiet and solitude, and the very thought of being chosen out of all mankind to face mankind, alone, with such a Message, appalled him at the first. Recognition of the Divine nature of the call he had received involved a change in his whole mental outlook sufficiently disturbing to a sensitive and honest mind, and also the forsaking of his quiet, honoured way of life. The early biographers tell how his wife Khadijah "tried the spirit" which came to him and proved it to be good, and how, with the continuance of the revelations and the conviction that they brought, he at length accepted the tremendous task imposed on him, becoming filled witli an enthusiasm of obedience which justifies his proudest title of "The Slave of Allah.”
The words which came to him when in a state of trance are held sacred by the Muslims and are never confounded with those which he uttered when no physical change was apparent in him. The former xhe are the Sacred Book; the latter the Hadtth or Snnnah of the Prophet. Koran And because the angel on Mt. HirS bade him "Read!"—insisted on “ his "Reading” though he was illiterate—the Sacred Book is known as Al-Qurdn, "The Reading,the Reading of the man who knew not how to read.
For the first three years, or rather less, of his Mission, the Prophet preached only to his family and his intimate friends, while the people of Mecca as a whole regarded him as one who had become a little mad. The first of all his converts was his wife Khadijah, the second First con- his first cousin Ali, whom he had adopted, the third his servant Zeyd, a former slave. His old friend Abd Bakr also was among those early converts with some of his slaves and dependents.
' LXXXI, 24.
* Or “The Lecture," as it is here translated in passages where the term will bear translation, on the analogy of “Scripture,” used for sacred "writing."
THE GLORIOUS KORAN Beginning of persecution The flight to Abys¬ sinia Conversion of Omar 4 At the end of the third year the Prophet received the command to “arise and warn,”^ whereupon he began to preach in public, pointing out the wretched folly of idolatry in face of the tremendous laws of day and night, of life and death, of growth and decay, which manifest the power of Allah and attest His sovereignty. It was then, when he began to speak against their gods, that Qureysh became actively hostile, persecuting his poorer disciples, mocking and insulting him. The one consideration which prevented them from killing him was fear of the blood-vengeance of the clan to which his family belonged. Strong in his inspiration, the Prophet went on warning, pleading, threatening, while Qureysh did all they could to ridicule his teaching, and deject his followers.
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 emigrate to a Christian country, Abyssinia.® And still in spite of persecution and emigration the little company of Muslims grew in number. Qureysh 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 Abfi Tdlib, 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. Abfi Tilib refused. The exasperation of the idolaters was increased by the conversion of Omar,3 one of their stalwarts. They grew more and more embittered, till things came to such a pass that they decided to ostracise 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 • LXXTV, z. “ See XIX, introductory note. s See XX, introductory note.
INTRODUCTION 5 from them. This they all signed, and it was deposited in the Ka'bah. The 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 Mecca. Only at the time of pilgrimage could he go out ^ism and preach, or did any of his kinsfolk dare to go into the city.
At length some kinder hearts among Qureysh grew weary of the Destruc- boycott of old friends and neighbours. 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 Bismika AlUhumma (‘Tn 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 Meccans, and an attempt which he made to preach in the city of Ti’if was a failure. His Mission was a failure, judged by worldly standards, when, at the season of the yearly pil- The men grimage, he came upon a little group of men who heard him gladly.
They 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 A‘ 3 d and Thamud had been destroyed of old for their idolatry. When the men from Yathrib saw Muhammad they recognised 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 at the next season of pilgrimage a deputation came from Yathrib purposely to meet the Prophet. These swore allegiance to him in the first pact of Al-‘Aqabah, the oath they took being that which was afterwards First exacted from women converts, with no mention of fighting. They pact cjf 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.”
In the following year, at the time of pilgrimage, seventy-three Second Muslims from Yathrib came to Mecca to vow allegiance to the pact of 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 “ B Plot to murder the Prophet THE HIJRAH (June 20th, 6 THE GLORIOUS KORAN children. It was then that the Hijrah, the Flight to Yathrib, was decided.
Soon the Muslims who were in a position to do so began to sell their property and to leave Mecca unobtrusively. Qureysh 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 lots and chose a slayer out of every clan. All these were to attack the Prophet simultaneously and strike together, as one man. Thus his blood would be on all Qureysh. 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 last of the able Muslims to remain in Mecca were Abfi 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 God’s command. It came at length. It was tfie 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, a blindness fell upon the would-be murderers so that he put dust on their heads as he passed by—without their knowing it. He went to Abu Bakr’s house and called to him, and they two went together to a cavern in the desert hills 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 travelling for many days by unfrequented paths, the fugitives INTRODUCTION 7 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 travellers 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 Mecca 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. The ten years of success, the fullest that has ever crowned one man’s endeavour, had begun. The Hijrah makes a clear division in the story of the Prophet’s Mission, which is evident in the Koran. Till then he had been a preacher only. Thenceforth he was the ruler of a State, at first a very small one, which grew in ten years to the empire of Arabia. The kind of guidance which he and his people needed after the Hijrah was not the same as that which they had before needed. TheMadinah surahs differ, therefore, from the Meccan surahs. The latter give guidance to the individual soul and to the Prophet as warner; the former give guidance to a growing social and political community and to the Prophet as example, lawgiver and reformer.
For classification the Meccan surahs are here subdivided into four groups; Very Early, Early, Middle and Late. Though the historical data and traditions are insufficient for a strict chronological grouping, the very early surahs are, roughly speaking, those revealed before the beginning of the persecution; the early surahs those revealed between the beginning of the persecution and the conversion of Omar; the middle surahs those revealed between the conversion of Omar and the destruction of the deed of ostracism; and the late sdrahs those revealed between the raising of the ban of ostracism and the Hijrah.
Classification of Meccan surahs 8 THE GLORIOUS KORAN The Jews and Hypocrites The Qiblah The first expeditions PART II At Al-Madtnah In the first year of his reign at Yathrib the Prophet made a solemn treaty with the Jewish tribes, which secured to them equal rights of citizenship and full religious liberty in return for their support of the new State. But their idea of a Prophet was one who would give them dominion, not one who made the Jews who followed him brothers of every Arab who might happen to believe as they did. When they found that they could not use the Prophet for their own ends, they tried to shake his faith in his Mission and to’ seduce his followers: behaviour in which they were encouraged secretly by some professing Muslims who considered they had reason to resent the Prophet’s coming, since it robbed them of their local influence. In the Madtnah surahs there is frequent mention of these Jews and Hypocrites.
Till then the Qiblah (the place toward which the Muslims turn their face in prayer) had been Jerusalem. The Jews imagined that the choice implied a leaning toward Judaism and that the Prophet stood in need of their instruction. He received command to change the Qiblah' from Jerusalem to the Ka'bah at Mecca. The whole first part of surah II relates to this Jewish controversy.
The Prophet’s first concern as ruler was to establish public worship and lay down the constitution of the State; but he did not forget that Qureysh had sworn to make an end of his religion, nor that he had received command to fight against them till they ceased from persecution. After he had been twelve months in Yathrib several small expeditions went out, led either by the Prophet himself or some other of the fugitives from Mecca, for the purpose of reconnoitring and of dissuading other tribes from siding with Qureysh. These are generally represented as warlike but, considering their weakness and the fact that they did not result in fighting, they can hardly have been that, though it is certain that they INTRODUCTION 9 went out ready to resist attack. It is noteworthy that in those expeditions only fugitives from Mecca were employed, never natives of Yathrib; the reason being (if we accept Ibn Khaldun’s theory, and there is no other explanation) that the command to wage war had been revealed to the Prophet at Mecca after the Yathrib men had sworn their oath of allegiance at Al-‘Aqabah, and in their absence.
Their oath foresaw fighting in mere defence, not fighting in the field. Blood was shed and booty taken in only one of those early expeditions, and then it was against the Prophet’s orders. One purpose of those expeditions may have been to accustom the Meccan Muslims to going out ill warlike trim. For thirteen years they had been strict pacifists, and it is clear, from several passages of the Koran,' that many of them, including, it may be, the Prophet himself, hated the idea of fighting even in self-defence and had to be inured to it.
In the second year of the Hijrah the Meccan merchants’ caravan was returning from Syria as usual by a road which passed not far from Yathrib. As its leader Abu SufySn approached the territory of Yathrib he heard of the Prophet’s design to capture the caravan. At The cam- once he sent a camel-rider on to Mecca, who arrived in a worn-out of state and shouted frantically from the valley to Qureysh to hasten to ^ the rescue unless they wished to lose both wealth and honour. A force a thousand strong was soon on its way to Yathrib; less, it would seem, with the hope of saving the caravan than with the idea of punishing the raiders, since the Prophet might have taken the caravan before the relief force started from Mecca. Did the Prophet ever intend to raid the caravan? In Ibn Hishim, in the account of the Tabuk expedition, it is stated that the Prophet on that one occasion did not hide his real objective as had been his custom in other campaigns. The caravan was the pretext in the campaign of Badr, the real objective was the Meccan army. He had received command to fight his persecutors, and promise of victory; he was prepared to venture against any odds, as was well seen at Badr. But the Muslims, disinclined and ill-equipped for war, would have despaired if they had known from the first that they were to face a well-armed force three times their number.
The army of Qureysh had advanced more than half-way to Yathrib before the Prophet set out. All three parties—the army of Qureysh, I e.g. II, Z16.
lo THE GLORIOUS KORAN the Muslim army and the caravan—were heading for the water of Badr. Abu Sufytn, the leader of the caravan, heard from one of his scouts that the Muslims were near the water, and turned back to the coast-plain. And the Muslims met the army of Qureysh by the water of Badr. Before the battle the Prophet was prepared still further to increase the odds against him. He gave leave to all the Ans^r (natives of Yathrib) to return to their homes unreproached, since their oath did not include the duty of fighting in the field; but the Ansir were only hurt by the suggestion that they could possibly desert him at a time of danger. The battle went at first against the Muslims, but ended in a signal victory for them,^ The victory of Badr gave the Prophet new prestige among the Arab tribes; but thenceforth there was the feud of blood between Qureysh and the Islamic State hi addition to the old religious hatred. Those passages of the Koran which refer to the battle of Badr give warning of much greater struggles yet to come.
In fact in the following year, an army of three thousand came from Mecca to destroy Yathrib. The Prophet’s first idea was merely to defend the city, a plan of which Abdullah ibn Ubeyy, the leader of “the Hypocrites’’ (or lukewarm Muslims), strongly approved. But the men who had fought at Badr and believed that God would help them against any odds thought it a shame that they should linger -yhe behind walls. The Prophet, approving of their faith and zeal, gave battle on way to them, and set out with an army of one thousand men toward Mt. Uhud, where the enemy were encamped. Abdullah ibn Ubeyy was much offended by the change of plan. He thought it unlikely that the Prophet really meant to give battle in conditions so adverse to the Muslims, and was unwilling to take part in a mere demonstration designed to flatter the fanatical extremists. So he withdrew with his men, a fourth of the army.
Despite the heavy odds, the battle on Mt. Uhud would have been an even greater victory than that at Badr for the Muslims but for the disobedience of a band of fifty archers whom the Prophet set to guard a pass against the enemy cavalry. Seeing their comrades victorious, these men left their post, fearing to lose their share of the spoils. The cavalry of Qureysh rode through the gap and fell on the exultant Muslims. The Prophet himself was wounded and the cry arose that ' See also Stir. VIII, introductory note.
INTRODUCTION II INTRODUCTION II he was slain, till someone recognised him and shouted that he was still living, a shout to which the Muslims rallied. Gathering round the Prophet, they retreated, leaving many dead on the hillside.* On the following day the Prophet again sallied forth with what remained of the army, that Qureysh might hear that he was in the field and so might perhaps be deterred from attacking the city. The stratagem succeeded, thanks to the behaviour of a friendly Bedawi, who met the Muslims and conversed with them and afterwards met the army of Qureysh. Questioned by Abu Sufyin, he said that Muhammad was in the field, stronger than ever, and thirsting for revenge for yesterday’s affair. On that information, Abu Sufyin decided to return to Mecca.
The reverse which they had suffered on Mt. Uhud lowered the prestige of the Muslims with the Arab tribes and also with the Jews of Yathrib. Tribes which had inclined toward the Muslims now inclined coward Qureysh. The Prophet’s followers were attacked and Massacre murdered when they went abroad in little companies. Khubeyb, one Mus- of his envoys, was captured by a desert tribe and sold to Qureysh, who tortured him to death in Mecca publicly. And the Jews, despite their treaty, now hardly concealed their hostility. They even went so far in flattery of Qureysh as to declare the religion of the pagan Arabs superior to Al-IslSm,“ The Prophet was obliged to take punitive action against some of them. The tribe of Bani Nadir were besieged Expul- in their strong towers, subdued and forced to emigrate. The Hypo- crites had sympathised with the Jews and secretly egged them on.^ Nadir In the fifth year of the Hijrah the idolaters made a great effort to destroy Al-Islam in the War of the Clans or War of the Trench, as The War it is variously called; when Qureysh with all their clans and the great ^ desert tribe of GhatafSn with all their clans, an army of ten thousand ^ men rode against Al-Madinah (Yathrib). The Prophet (by the advice of Salman the Persian, it is said) caused a deep trench to be dug before the city, and himself led the work of digging it. The army of the clans was stopped by the trench, a novelty in Arab warfare. It seemed impassable for cavalry, which formed their strength. They camped in sight of it and daily showered their arrows on its defenders.
While the Muslims were awaiting the assault, news came that Bam Qureyzah, a Jewish tribe of Yathrib which had till then been loyal, I See also III, introductory note. ® IV, 51. 3 LIX.
12 THE GLORIOUS KORAN Punishment of Bant Qurey^ah The slander against Ayeshah had gone over to the enemy. The case seemed desperate. But the delay caused by the trench had damped the ardour of the clans, and one who was secretly a Muslim managed to sow distrust between Qureysh and their Jewish allies, so that both hesitated to act. Then came a bitter wind from the sea, which blew for three days and nights so terribly that not a tent could be kept standing, not a fire lighted, not a pot boiled. The tribesmen were in utter misery. At length, one night the leader of Qureysh decided that the torment could be borne no longer and gave the order to retire.' When Ghatafin awoke next morning they found Qureysh had gone and they too took up their baggage and retreated.
On the day of the return from the trench the Prophet ordered war on the treacherous Bani Qureyzah, who, conscious of their guilt, had already taken to their towers of refuge. After a siege of nearly a month they had to surrender unconditionally. They only begged that they might be judged by a member of the Arab tribe of which they were adherents. The Prophet granted their request. But the judge, upon whose favour they had counted, condemned their men to death, their women and children to slavery.
Early in the sixth year of the Hijrah the Prophet led a campaign against the Bani’l-Mustaliq, a tribe who were preparing to attack the Muslims. It was during the return from that campaign that Ayeshah, his young wife, was left behind and brought back to camp by a young soldier, an incident which gave rise to the scandal denounced in surah XXIV.® It was on this campaign also that Abdullah ibn Ubeyy, the “Hypocrite” chief, said: “When we return to the city the mightier will soon expel the weaker”^ at sight of a quarrel between Muhtjirin (immigrants from Mecca) and AnsSr (natives of Yathrib).
In the same year the Prophet had a vision* in which he found himself entering the holy place at Mecca unopposed; therefore he determined to attempt the pilgrimage. Besides a number of Muslims from Yathrib (which we shall henceforth call Al-Madinah) he called upon the friendly Arabs, whose numbers had increased since the miraculous (as it was considered) discomfiture of the clans, to accompany him, but most of them did not respond.’ Attired as pilgrims, ' See also XXXII, introductory note, ' XXIV, ii IF.
INTRODUCTION 13