The First Muslim: The Story of Muhammad (24 page)

And in case anyone else had missed the message of the expulsion of the Qaynuqa, the Quranic voice now intervened with an order to institute a major change in religious practice. The qibla, the direction of prayer, was to be reversed. Where the believers had faced north to Jerusalem, as did the Jews, they were now to face south. “We are turning you in a prayer direction that pleases you,” declared the Quran, thus implying that the same direction as the Jews was displeasing. “Turn your face in the direction of the noble sanctuary”—the sanctuary of the Kaaba, in Mecca.

This change in qibla carried doubly symbolic weight. On the one hand it was a message directed at Mecca. Coming so soon after Badr, it acted as a kind of exclamation mark on the declaration of war against the Quraysh. Just as the Jews swore with their bodies never to forget Jerusalem—“If I forget thee, oh Jerusalem, let my right hand be cut off”—so now the Muslim believers were to use their bodies as a reminder to never forget Mecca. It was not a place of the past but ever- present, the focal point of the new faith. Their praying bodies would proclaim it theirs, and they would reclaim it.

But the new direction of prayer also acted as an expression of what some historians were to call “the break with the Jews,” especially since it followed so closely on the expulsion of a Jewish tribe. Despite the previous declarations of kinship, the process of Islamic individuation, of defining identity by difference, had begun. Just as Christianity had differentiated itself from its parent Jewish faith six centuries earlier, so the nascent faith of Islam would now begin to do the same. Islam and Judaism shared the same heritage, but the change in qibla seemed to indicate that they would no longer share the same future. Perhaps inevitably, as a family split, it was destined to become far more bitter.

t has often been said that you can judge a man by the quality of his enemies. If this holds true, then the “little shepherd” who killed abu-Jahl at Badr played a far larger historical role than he knew, because with “the father of ignorance” dead, the quality of Muhammad’s enemies improved sharply. The leadership of the Meccan council now moved to the man who had acted so adroitly to divert the caravan from Badr: abu-Sufyan, the head of the Umayyad clan.

Like all good military commanders, the astute abu-Sufyan believed in measured response rather than heated antagonism. If he had to risk men’s lives, it would not be out of personal animosity but out of necessity and duty. In fact it’s likely that if abu-Sufyan had been in control earlier, Muhammad and his followers would never have been forced out of Mecca. Where abu-Jahl’s fierce opposition had only strengthened Muhammad instead of weakening him, abu-Sufyan would have aimed for containment rather than repression. He might even have co-opted some of Muhammad’s social principles, whether out of political calculation or recognition of their value. Though he was sworn to uphold the traditions of his Quraysh fathers, he could see realistically that some measure of reform was necessary. Even his own daughter Umm Habiba had accepted islam; she’d been among those who went to Ethiopia during the boycott, but instead of

[Author: at least twice elsewhere abu-Jahl is “the father of darkness”; variation okay (darkness = ignorance)?]

emigrating to Medina on her return, she’d stayed in Mecca, where she seems to have had some influence on her father’s thinking. So while abu-Jahl would certainly have opted for immediate and large-scale escalation of the conflict after Badr, abu-Sufyan took a more considered course.

There was no question that some form of retaliation was required. The prestige of Mecca was at stake, and along with it the city’s long- term livelihood. But instead of a headlong rush to reprisal, abu-Sufyan took his time. He negotiated a strong coalition with several Beduin allies, waited out the winter months, and the following spring mustered an army ten thousand strong, including hundreds of horsemen, for the ten-day march north toward Medina.

His plan was not to invade Medina, but to force Muhammad out of it. Instead of charging right into the oasis, he stopped on the outskirts and ordered his army to set up camp in the barley fields beneath the hill of Mount Uhud, some three miles to the north. His intention was clear: he had not come to declare war on the whole of Medina, only to settle the score with Muhammad and his followers. And to put aside any doubt, he sent an aide to ride into the settlement with a message for the leaders of the Aws and the Khazraj: “Leave us to deal with our cousin Muhammad, and we will leave you be. We have no need to fight you.” This was a matter of Quraysh versus Quraysh, that is. There was no need for other tribes to get involved.

The approach was perfectly calculated. Abu-Sufyan was well informed of the divisions within Medina, and perfectly aware that Muhammad’s political authority was still a matter of dispute. Whether his message was a sincere plea for restraint or an attempt to divide and conquer, it was a powerful one: the gloved hand extended, with the iron fist visible. If the majority of Medinans wanted to risk all-out war, abu-Sufyan was more than ready, but if they stayed out of it, he was happy to respect that. He was not challenging them, only Muhammad and his followers, whom he shrewdly calculated would come out into the open where his army could deal with them quickly and efficiently.

But some of the believers saw through the strategy, chief among them ibn-Ubayy, the clan leader who had tussled with Muhammad over the fate of the Qaynuqa. Muhammad had decided to hold him close rather than alienate him further, and had kept him on his advisory council despite the objections of others. Now ibn-Ubayy argued cogently that the believers should stay put. “By God, we have never gone out of Medina to meet an enemy but that they have inflicted serious losses on us,” he said, “and no enemy has ever entered it but that we have inflicted serious losses on them. Leave them alone. If they remain where they are, they will be in the worst possible place. And if they enter Medina, the men will fight them face to face, the women and boys will hurl stones at them from the rooftops, and they will be forced to withdraw.”

Abu-Sufyan’s cavalry had already trampled the barley fields, he pointed out, so there was nothing left to be defended there. Let them now enter Medina if they dared; the believers would have the advantage of intimate knowledge of every alley and cul-de-sac, every vantage point and hiding place. Then as now, urban warfare was a military commander’s nightmare, and ibn-Ubayy calculated that it was not one abu-Sufyan wanted to risk. If the Meccan leader was depending on Muhammad coming out to fight him, why oblige him? Especially since his army could stay camped by Mount Uhud only as long as they could hold out without access to fresh water. Eventually, they’d be forced to break camp and leave. It was merely a matter of waiting them out.

But if discretion was the better part of valor, Muhammad’s younger and more ardent followers wanted none of it. Led by the emigrants, still rankling with the insult of exile, they argued that to ignore abu-Sufyan’s challenge was to cede the moral high ground. They hungered for something more glorious than hunkering down. They had defeated the Meccans against overwhelming odds at Badr, and now was their chance to prove themselves again against even greater numbers. “Lead us out to these dogs, oh messenger of God,” they shouted.

What does a leader do in such circumstances? He can follow what he suspects to be the wiser course, but then he risks disappointing his base—in Muhammad’s case, the emigrants. In time, his authority would be strong enough to outweigh popular demand, but he must have realized that he wasn’t there yet. And then there was another factor in play. He had acceded to ibn-Ubayy’s intervention on the fate of the Qaynuqa and appeared magnanimous because of it, but to accede to him again would only be to enhance the other’s prestige. Either way, whether out of a sense of obligation to the emigrants or wariness of giving ibn-Ubayy a greater say, Muhammad allowed his younger followers to override his better judgment. He dressed ceremoniously for battle, with sword, helmet, and chainmail (a double coat to accommodate the increasing girth that had come with age and a sweet tooth). And when ibn-Ubayy tried to argue once more that going out to meet the Meccan army was only to court defeat, he replied that it was too late. “It is not fitting for a prophet to put on his coat of mail only to take it off without fighting,” he said.

There was nothing left for ibn-Ubayy to do but to command the three hundred men of his clan to join Muhammad in a gesture of support. But even with the addition of his men, fewer than one thousand followed Muhammad out of Medina that afternoon. Where the odds at Badr had been two to one, they were now ten to one. And as night fell, they would become worse.

Ibn-Ubayy’s gesture of support was precisely that: a gesture, that is, and no more. The moment they’d reached the outskirts of Medina, he reined in his horse and declared that he would go no further. To engage the Meccans beyond this point would be to turn from defense to offense, he said, and the agreement in the charter of Medina was strictly for defense. “Muhammad refused to listen to me, and listened instead to striplings and men of no judgment,” he told his men bluntly. “I see no reason why we should get ourselves killed in this ill-chosen spot.” And with that, he ordered his men to turn back, leaving Muhammad to ride on to what ibn-Ubayy clearly thought was inevitable defeat—and himself to pick up the pieces and finally be acclaimed as the leader of Medina.

Left with only seven hundred men, Muhammad again relied on guile to outwit numbers. That night he moved his men through the harra—the jagged ancient lava flows on either side of the barley fields, so sharp and stony that they were impassable for the Meccan cavalry. By dawn his men were positioned with Mount Uhud at their back and harra to either side. The only way the Meccan horsemen could attack them now was from the front, so Muhammad posted fifty archers on a rise with strict orders to stay put. “Defend us against the cavalry with your arrows,” he said. “Whatever happens, whether you see us prevailing over them or them over us, hold your positions, so that we will not be attacked from the rear.” It was an excellent strategy—so long as the archers obeyed their orders.

The Battle of Uhud began at daybreak on Friday, March 25, 625, just over a year after the Battle of Badr, but with a very different outcome. By nightfall, it would be a disaster for Muhammad. He would be wounded, and sixty-five of his followers would lie dead. Yet it didn’t have to be that way.

here was nothing glorious about this battle. It took place to the sound track not of stirring martial music but of gasps and grunts, clashing steel, swearing men, horses whinnying and snorting in fear, and above it all, the ululations and chants of the women in the rear of the Meccan camp.

This was the traditional martial role of women. They urged on their men and mocked the virility of their enemies, their shrill cries designed to cut through the funk of battle and strike fear into the hearts of the other side, much like the eerie sound of bagpipes swirling through the mist in another part of the world. Abu-Sufyan had selected fifteen widows and daughters of men killed at Badr to accompany his army, and they were led by his own wife, the aristocratic Hind. “Advance, and we’ll embrace you on soft pillows,” the women chanted. “Falter, and you’ll get no tenderness from us.”

But what Hind wanted above all was a very personal vengeance. Both her father and her brother had been killed at Badr by Muhammad’s uncle Hamza, and she was determined to see him dead. To that end, she’d publicly offered a deal to an Ethiopian slave named Wahshi: his freedom along with a handsome payment in return for seeking out Hamza on the battlefield and killing him.

Perhaps only a slave with so much to gain would have taken on such a task. Hamza was a fearsome warrior, one of those rare men with an appetite for combat. It was easy enough to find him in battle: look for where the fighting was fiercest and there he would be, distinguishable by the ostrich plume he wore on his helmet. One believer would remember him taunting every enemy fighter he came across that day, and in particular a man whose mother was a female circumciser in Mecca, a practice Hamza clearly saw as belonging to the dark days of jahiliya, or pre-Islamic ignorance. When confronting others, he’d whirl his sword over his head and yell “Come get me, you son of a whore!” but he reserved a worse taunt for this man: “Come get me, you son of a clitoris-cutter!” One massive swipe of that sword, and the clitoris-cutter’s son was done for.

This was to be Hamza’s last kill. While he could defeat any man armed with a sword or a dagger, he was helpless against the Ethiopian weapon of choice. “I balanced my javelin until I was satisfied with it,” the slave Wahshi would report, “and then I hurled it at Hamza. It struck him in the lower belly with such force that it came out between his legs. He staggered toward me, and fell.” And then, with chilling sang-froid, “I waited until he was dead, and went and recovered my javelin.”

Even with the loss of a major figure like Hamza, however, Muhammad’s men were on the verge of victory. Every charge by the Meccan cavalry had been repulsed by that solid phalanx of archers on the rise at the foot of the hill, and arrows had maimed many of their horses. As the believers pressed forward, the Meccans broke ranks and turned to flee. And it was at this point that the archers’ discipline gave way.

“I saw the women tucking up their skirts in flight and exposing their anklets,” one of them would remember. “A cry went up of ‘Plunder! Plunder!’ Nobody listened to the captain shouting that the messenger’s orders were to hold fast. They left their posts and ran onto the battlefield, eager for booty.”

Abu-Sufyan’s cavalry commander saw his chance. He rallied his horsemen to wheel around and come at Muhammad’s men from their now unprotected rear. The infantry charged in after him, and the battle turned. As one believer after another was cut down, the survivors ran for the slopes of Mount Uhud, their flight turning to full-scale panic when Muhammad was knocked down by a blow to the head.