Free The Great Arab Conquests by Hugh Kennedy Page B

would be judged, the virtuous going to heaven, a green and delightful garden, the wicked going to a burning, scorching hell. Muhammad began to attract followers, but he also made enemies. Men did not like to believe that their revered ancestors would burn in hell and, more practically, they saw this new preaching as an attack on the shrine at Mecca and the prosperity it brought. Muhammad found himself increasingly unpopular.
     
    By 622 matters had come to a head but Muhammad was saved by an invitation from the people to Medina, about 320 kilometres to the north. Medina was a town but a very different sort of town from Mecca. It had no shrine and the people lived in scattered settlements in a fertile oasis, farming wheat and dates. Medina was a city in crisis: tribal feuds and rivalries were making life unpleasant and dangerous but no one seemed able to put an end to the feuding. It was at this point that they invited Muhammad, an outsider from the prestigious tribe of Quraysh, to come and mediate between them. Muhammad and a small group of followers travelled from Mecca to Medina. Their journey was described as a hijra , or emigration, and the participants as muhājirūn , while the supporters of the Prophet in Medina were called ansār or helpers. The year of the emigration, 622, marks the beginning of the Islamic era. Among the small group of muhājirūn were Abū Bakr, Umar and Uthmān, who were eventually to be the first three successors of the Prophet, and his cousin and son-in-law Alī. The hijra marks the moment when Muhammad passed from being a lonely prophet, ‘a voice crying in the wilderness’, to being the ruler of a small but expanding state.
     
    From the very beginning, Muhammad was a warrior as well as a prophet and judge, and the Islamic community expanded through conflict as well as preaching. The Quraysh of Mecca were determined to crush him and Muhammad gave as good as he got by attacking the trading caravans, the lifeblood of the rulers of Mecca. In 624, by the well of Badr, the Muslims inflicted a first defeat on the Meccans, taking a number of prisoners but not capturing the caravan, which safely made it to the city. Two years later the Meccans defeated Muhammad’s forces at Uhud, and the next year they made an attempt to take Medina itself. The Muslims were able to defeat this at the battle of the Khandaq (Trench) and a sort of stalemate ensued. A truce was made with the Meccans at Hudaybiya in 628 and in 630 Muhammad was able to occupy the city and most of the Meccan aristocracy accepted his authority. In the two years between his occupation of Mecca and his death in 632, Muhammad’s influence spread far and wide in Arabia. Delegations arrived from tribes all over the peninsula, accepting his lordship and agreeing to pay some form of tribute.
     
    We can see something of how the Muslims at the time of the great conquests regarded the legacy of the Prophet in the speeches said to have been made by Arab leaders to the Sasanian shah Yazdgard at the time of the conquest of Iraq. For one of these men, 7
     
     
    There was nobody more destitute than we were. As for our hunger, it was not hunger in the usual sense. We used to eat beetles of various sorts, scorpions and snakes and we considered this our food. Nothing but the bare earth was our dwelling. We wore only what we spun from the hair of camels and sheep. Our religion was to kill one another and raid one another. There were those among us who would bury their daughters alive, not wanting them to eat our food . . . but then God sent us a well-known man. We knew his lineage, his face and his birthplace. His land [the Hijaz] is the best part of our land. His glory and the glory of our ancestors are famous among us. His family is the best of our families and his tribe [Quraysh] the best of our tribes. He himself was the best among us and at the same time, the most truthful and the most forbearing. He invited us to embrace his religion . . . He spoke