Muhammad, born in Mecca to a low clan, marries into wealth and claims to receive visions that would form the foundation for Islam. Forced to emigrate from Mecca, he finds a strong following in Medina, and after unifying warring tribes in the cause of Islam, the united Arab front storms into the Byzantine territories of the ancient Near East, which they would dominate to the present day.
Show Transcript
Shalom, and welcome to our history podcast. This is a production of Kingdom Preppers.org. I’m your host, Kingdom Prepper, and you’re listening to: Churchianity: Two Thousand Years of Leaven. We continue with our history.
Part 15: Arab Invasion
Intermittent wars had raged between Persia and Byzantium for decades, spanning the reigns of several emperors, with both sides gaining and losing ground. In south Arabia, a different struggle was waged on a daily basis: that of basic survival in the hostile desert. The people of the kingdom of Himyar—tucked in the southwest corner of the Arabian Peninsula—were indifferent to the wars between the great rivals. They were concerned with fighting one another, as well as the harsh elements of their surroundings.
“In 590, a disaster far to the south shifted and broke the existing patterns of alliance and hostility.”
Writes Susan Wise Bauer, in The History of the Medieval World.
“In the center of Himyar, near the city of Marib, a man-made dam had been built back in the days of the Sabean kingdom. The dam closed off the Wadi Dhana, the valley that collected rainwater and runoff from nearby mountains during wet seasons (usually only April and a thirty-day period in July and August).”
For the residents of Marib, the dam was a vital source of life. They were able to both save and channel its water to cultivated fields through a system of irrigation. The dam was also the reason the population swelled to around fifty thousand, which was rare in Arabia at that time due to the lack of abundant food and water needed to support large populations. Susan Wise Bauer adds that:
“Unpredictable shifts in weather patterns during the 530s and 540s had twice caused such severe and sudden rainstorms that the dam, unable to hold the runoff, had broken.”
We discussed these decades-long “shifts in weather pattern” in episode 13.
“Both times, the flood caused enormous damage.”
A chronicler named Simeon of Beth Arsham, writing on the history of Himyar during the Persian reign says that:
“The mass of water gushed out and came down, and there was great terror. Many villages, people and cattle were flooded as well as everything which was standing in the way of the sudden mass of water. It destroyed many communities.”
Twice in its history, the dam had been repaired, though its structure was permanently weakened. And in 590, when it broke a third and final time, the flood swept toward villages downstream, completely wiping them out. Marib, which was already a fraction of its original population due to the prior floods was now a near-deserted town. Elsewhere in the south, tribes who had depended on water from the dam headed northeast, to more accommodating regions of the Arabian Peninsula. The dam had been such a vital part of life for many Arabs that it figured prominently in their collective lore, being recorded in a passage of the Qur’an.
“There was for Sabea, aforetime, a sign in their homeland—two Gardens to the right and the left.… But they turned away from Allah, and We sent against them the Flood released from the Dams, and We converted their two garden rows into gardens producing bitter fruit.… We made them as a tale that is told, and We dispersed them all in scattered fragments.”
While the people did scatter, this was by no means a prophecy. At the time of the dam’s final collapse, Muhammad had not received his supposed visions, nor was the Qur’an written, so the passage looks to the past. Now, with no reliable source of water in the south, the Arabs went northwards, peopling cities that were once sparse. Mecca, the birthplace of Islam’s founder—and home to the cherished Ka’aba—was no longer the only major populated city. Many who migrated from the south also flocked to one settlement in particular: Medina, a less prosperous town that would eventually rise in prominence. Medina was already bursting with Israelites who had migrated there as a result of the diaspora, and their culture and Scriptural beliefs in fact influenced what became Islam.
With all these migrants flooding into northern cities and towns, disputes were inevitable. Arabs lived in clans that were part of larger tribes. All these clans were linked by blood or marriage, but some clans were more powerful than others. It was into one of the poorer, less influential clans of the Quraysh tribe, the Banu Hashim, that Muhammad was born, six months after his father had died. He was a full orphan by age six. His uncle, Abu Talib, a merchant, raised him, and thus he earned his living among merchants. It was while managing the caravan of a wealthy widow merchant—whose investment he doubled via his expert abilities—that Muhammad’s life was dramatically altered. The widow, Khadija, asked him to marry her, and after he did, they eventually had three children. His increased wealth caused him to see clearly the sharp divide between rich and poor.
Susan Wise Bauer adds that:
“Muhammad, devout by nature, took it upon himself to spend one sacred month of each year providing for the poor: his biographer Ishaq tells us that he would pray, give food to all the poverty-stricken residents of Mecca who came to him, and then walk around the Ka’aba seven times.”
This is drawn from the ancient tradition that is still practiced in part to this day by Muslims on pilgrimage. In the year 610, during his month of service, Muhammad claims to have had a vision from a heavenly messenger known to Israelite Scriptures: Gabriel. At first, he only related these things to his close friends and family, but in 613, he began preaching his new message to others in Mecca. Encompassed in that message was the idea that people were to worship the one Creator, care for the poor, and share wealth. Others soon followed him besides his immediate family, but mostly those from the lower classes. Those of the more prosperous clans were actually insulted by his message and warned Muhammad’s uncle to put a stop to it, or allow them to do so. When Abu Talib refused, the clan leaders, fearing a revolt by the lower classes, began a campaign of terror against those who followed Muhammad. Susan Wise Bauer writes:
“His followers were attacked in the alleyways of Mecca, imprisoned on false charges, refused food and drink, pushed outside the city walls. Some of the new converts, afraid for their lives, fled across the Red Sea into the Christian kingdom of Axum, where they were welcomed by the Axumite king Armah.… Others went farther north to Medina. The members of Muhammad’s clan (the Banu Hashim) who remained in Mecca were forced into a ghetto, and a ban was declared on them: no one could trade with them, which cut off their food and water.”
Under these dreadful circumstances, Muhammad’s uncle Abu Talib and his wife Khadija died. It was during this dark time that Muhammad claims to have received a new mandate from the Creator: those who were mistreated and driven from their homes were now permitted to fight their oppressors. But there were fewer and fewer in Mecca who followed Muhammad’s teachings. Most had fled. Muhammad, on the other hand, felt an obligation to remain in his city of birth, and he became somewhat vulnerable because of this, seeing he had little support in Mecca. Seizing on this opportunity, the prominent clan leaders plotted to have him assassinated. Ishaq writes that it was then that [the Creator] gave him permission to migrate.
Just as he faced increased opposition in Mecca, Muhammad was presented with a rare opportunity to carry his message beyond his immediate surroundings. In 621, the nearest caravan city, Medina, which suffered from internal warfare, sent a delegation to convince him to come and spread his message there. But it would take another visit to cement the idea. In her book, The First Muslim: The Story of Muhammad, author Lesley Hazelton writes:
“By the time of the next hajj, in early June 622, the Medinan deputation to Muhammad had swelled to seventy-two clan leaders; the number alone testified to how serious they were. But, both sides needed assurances. If the Medinans were to pledge full alliance and protection, they would have to be willing to back up their pledge with force if necessary. And as the leader of the Meccan believers, Muhammad would have to do the same…. And so it was done. Muhammad was no longer bound to the Quraysh or to Mecca. He had formally bound himself to Medina, and Medina to him. They had sworn themselves to full protection and help, nasr in Arabic. The Medinan believers would thus be known as the ansar, the ‘helpers,’ while the Meccans who came with Muhammad would become the muhajirun, the ‘emigrants.’ ”
In his book, A History of the Middle Ages: 300 to 1500, John M. Riddle writes:
“[Muhammad] began his ‘emigration’ to Medina from Mecca on July 16, 622, the day that begins the new Muslim year and the year 1 AH, for ‘after Hijra,’ literally meaning after the ‘severed relationship,’ or, more loosely, after the ‘emigration.’ ”
To this, Lesley Hazelton adds:
“That summer of 622, the Hijra—sometimes written in English as ‘hegira’—began. The word is usually translated as ‘emigration,’ but its Arabic root hajar carries great psychological weight. It means, ‘to cut oneself off from something,’ with all the wrenching pain that the term implies. Indeed, the Qur’an would eventually see the emigrants as having been expelled from Mecca. The Quraysh disbelievers ‘have driven out the messenger and yourselves from your homes,’ it would say. This would feel more like exile than emigration.”
Upon arrival in Medina, Muhammad suddenly became not only a religious leader in the eyes of his followers, but a civil authority to unbelieving Medinans as well. Those who followed him, however, were known as the umma, and they were the most powerful community in Medina, though all were promised equal rights by Muhammad, whether they were male or female, believer or unbeliever. That said, unlike Hebraic Messianism or Christianity, which had no kingdom or cities to call their own upon their inception, Islam had Medina. It was practically Muhammad’s city. But with so many having followed him by emigrating from Mecca, that being some two hundred families, there was not enough food to go around. To acquire needed food and supplies some Muslims resorted to raiding caravans that wound their way through Medina.
Of this, John M. Riddle writes:
“The raid was a longstanding rite of passage among Arabic youths, whereby neighboring herdsmen and traders were attacked clandestinely, usually resulting in an animal or two stolen with some risk to life and limb. In January 624, Muhammad led a raid and achieved a great victory, much booty, and many prisoners…. In 626, Muhammad successfully defended against a larger army attack, but by now able generals, among them Abû Bakr, his father-in-law, assisted him. Thus, the tradition was established of using arms to extend his message, and the youthful raid was transformed into a jihâd, or a struggle to extend Islam.”
Before long, the numerous tribes throughout Arabia would be unified under Muhammad and his successors. Islam would be the glue that would bind them, and jihâd would be the means of Muslim domination throughout the ancient Near East, replacing Byzantium as the master of that vast region. Just as the west had suffered the Germanic invasions as a form of judgment, the east would suffer an invasion of the Arab variety.
We’ll be back with more exciting scriptural history . . . in a moment.
[MUSICAL INTERLUDE]
We now continue with our podcast.
Peace came to Arabia under Muhammad, as tribe after tribe joined his umma, setting aside their personal disputes in favor of their surrender to what they believed was a higher calling: Islam. Even his former home, and the city of his birth, Mecca, opened its gates to him in 630, allowing his army to enter without violence. He came to be seen as a prophet and religious leader there also. The Muslims of Arabia now had a common identity, and it was the Israelites of the settlement of Yathrib, which came to be called Medina, meaning city, who informed Muhammad that he and his people were thought to be the descendants of Abraham through his son Ishmael.
Muhammad thought highly of the Israelites at first, and held that theirs was an older revelation, on which his new revelation had built. Even Jerusalem, which ranked third among the three most sacred sites to Muslims was held in high regard. In the beginning, Muhammad taught his followers to prostrate themselves in prayer and turn toward Jerusalem, for the Ka’aba in Mecca was contaminated by idols, so they were to focus their attention on the spiritual center of the Israelites instead, that being Jerusalem.
Mecca had been considered the most sacred place even before Muhammad or Islam came into being. Worship in the city centered on the Ka’aba, a cube-shaped granite shrine that, in Muhammad’s time, was dedicated to the Nabatean deity Hubal, which was surrounded by a pantheon of lesser deities. Allah was but one of the many deities Arabs served at the time. Within the wall of the Ka’aba was the famed Black Stone, thought to be a meteorite that had dropped from the sky, and therefore linked heaven with earth in the mind of the Arabs. Worshippers trotted in a circle in the direction of the sun, seven times, long before Muhammad, and when Islam was formulated, it simply absorbed these pagan religious symbols and practices. It was for these very reasons that Muhammad taught his followers to pray toward Jerusalem. In January of 624, all of that changed. The Israelites of Medina were resolute in their position: they would never accept Muhammad as a prophet, nor his new religion. Muhammad and his umma severed ties with the ancient Israelites, and from then on, Muslims were commanded to face Mecca instead.
Professor Thomas F. X. Noble, who teaches history at the University of Notre Dame, says:
“It’s very interesting the way Muhammad always tried to leave a certain amount of room for the great old city of Mecca. In some ways he had rejected that city, in some ways that city had rejected him; in other ways he always tried to embrace that city, as indeed it would finally come to embrace him. At the very beginning, by the way, it appears that Muhammad had set the direction of prayer as Jerusalem, and then it was Mecca.”
In his later quest to build his authority in Medina, Muhammad displayed his disdain for the obstinate Israelites by exiling or slaughtering a great number of them. Regardless of their refusal to accept Islam, the new religion, like Christianity itself, was in fact built on the beliefs and practices of Israelites. With regard to Islam, Professor Noble goes on to say:
“The powerful sense of a day of judgment—of a day of judgment at the end of time; the notion of fasting; the emphasis on self-renunciation, and on the needs of the community; the notion of prayer in the direction of a ‘holy’ city; these are all clear borrowings.”
Borrowings of the very Israelites Muhammad chose to exile and slaughter, though they were clearly “the people of the book” even to Muslim understanding. By the time of Muhammad’s death on June 6, 632, nearly the whole of Arabia was united under his leadership. But with his passing, the spirit of tribal warfare resurfaced within the umma, threatening to split it apart. Muhammad had no male heirs and named no successors, and since he declared himself the final prophet, none could rightfully claim his prophetic office. But that didn’t stop the rise of a few self-proclaimed “prophets” bent on challenging Muhammad’s previous authority. These Arabs splintered from the umma.
Abu Bakr, Muhammad’s old friend, and the father of his wife, Aishah, was elected by the Meccan elites to be his successor.
“But the election was not uncontested …”
Writes Susan Wise Bauer.
“… other Muslims, primarily in Mecca, wanted to appoint Ali ibn Abu Talib, Muhammad’s son-in-law, who was busy washing Muhammad’s body and mourning his death while the gathering was electing Abu Bakr. It is not entirely clear what Ali himself thought of the situation…. Either way, a number of Arabs resisted Abu Bakr’s leadership, with or without Ali’s support. Abu Bakr reacted not as a prophet, but as a general. He divided his own followers into eleven armed groups under eleven competent commanders, and assigned each one the task of subduing, by force, the areas where resistance to his leadership was making itself known.”
Several tribes in Medina who followed Muhammad saw more in him than his religion, and with Muhammad gone, they were not inclined to yield to or acknowledge the new successor (or khalifah) Abu Bakr and his regime; nor were they inclined to start paying a new religious tax (or zakat) being imposed. But in the end, force won out, and Abu Bakr was successful in subjugating all those now considered to be apostates, or ridda. Of this, Professor Noble says:
“Now what came to be known, in Islamic tradition, as the Ridda War—from 632 – 634—Abu Bakr suppressed the revolt throughout Arabia. Basically, all of Arabia was returned to allegiance to the Medinan leadership of the umma. Henceforth, interestingly enough, Muslims could not raid one another. Now, they had been doing this for centuries, now they were not to raid one another. And here, in some quite interesting ways, were laid—during the Ridda Wars; so just in a year or two of Muhammad’s death—the preconditions for the great expansion. A Meccan-Medinan elite would lead the Bedouin—the umma Muslima—in wars of conquest.”
Collectively, the Muslims focused their energies and attention outward, and the armies began to strike into settled territory bordering the eastern Mediterranean. They captured Damascus and Jerusalem within a few years, and within another decade, Arab domination would be imposed on Egypt and Syria—provinces of the eastern Roman Empire. And the Persian Empire, which then consisted roughly of what is Iraq and Iran today, would come under domination as well and effectively be destroyed. By the 690s, the Muslims were striking into North Africa, which they captured. Indeed, Arab expansion seemed altogether unstoppable, and it is no question that this was ordained by Yah, mostly as a judgment on the known Christian world, particularly in the east. By the year 720, their rule stretched from the Pyrenees along the border between France and Spain to the Punjab of modern northwestern India and Pakistan, and from Morocco on the Atlantic coast to the Hindu Kush mountains in today’s northern Pakistan and Afghanistan.
Once a collection of nomadic tribes who opposed one another as they eked out their survival on the harsh steppes of the Arabian Peninsula, the Arabs now sought more fertile and well-watered lands. The Byzantine and Persian powers had long held them in check, however, together with their bitter personal conflicts. But Muhammad, his successors, and Islam had unified the Arabs, and the two great powers, Byzantium and Persia, had exhausted each other in lengthy wars. There was never a more perfect moment to strike than the decade in which they chose to do so.
“The Byzantine Empire and the Persian Empire were exhausted after their wars with one another in the sixth and early seventh centuries.”
Says Professor Philip Daileader.
“The Byzantine Empire, which was still suffering from bubonic plague, was not really in a shape for another major war, neither was the Persian Empire, yet that is what they both faced as a result of the eruption of the Arabs. Had the Byzantine Empire and the Persian Empire faced the Arabs a hundred years earlier or a hundred years later, things might have turned out rather differently.”
While the Muslims were successful in capturing Byzantine provinces within their eastern empire, Philip Daileader adds that:
“They did not succeed, however in capturing Constantinople. Like so many groups before and then afterward, Constantinople was simply too tough a nut for them to crack. The Arabs certainly tried besieging Constantinople in 674, and launching a massive attack against Constantinople in 717 and 718, but, once again, thanks to its magnificent defensive position, Constantinople was able to hold out against these attacks.”
That said, their overall conquest is still quite impressive. In fact, so successful was their collective Arab invasion, that the many nations and territories they managed to seize within the first century of expansion remained in their power indefinitely. Well, all but one. Professor Noble explains:
“It’s very interesting to keep in mind, that with the exception of Spain, and in Spain, the Reconquista—that is to say the reconquest of the Iberian Peninsula by Christians from Muslims—the reconquest in Spain took eight hundred years. But every other territory conquered by the Muslims in this explosive first century, remained Islamic, and remains Islamic, today.”
Over time, these conquests comprised a vast empire which we call the Islamic Caliphate. But during the Arab expansion, various caliphs came and went, while the caliphate faced internal problems. Several prominent families with ties to Muhammad vied for control over the centuries. Author Chris Wickham, in his book Medieval Europe, writes:
“The actual politics of the caliphate were not as stable as the structure of the state. The immediate successors of Muhammad maintained a central control over army strategy and resources, which was effective, but was resented by the armies flush with success and wealth. When the caliph Uthman was murdered by dissident troops in 656, civil war followed, and an interruption in Arab expansion. In 661, Muawiya, Uthman’s cousin, from the Umayyad family, distant relatives of Muhammad, won that war and became caliph (661–80); the Umayyads, based in Damascus in Syria, continued to rule for nearly a century….
“[T]he Umayyads were defeated in 750 and almost wiped out as a family, and a new family took over the caliphal office, the Abbasids, who were descendants of Muhammad’s uncle and thought to be much closer to Muslim religious legitimacy. (The Alids, descendants of Muhammad himself via his daughter Fatima, expected to be the beneficiaries of the revolt, but were not, and remained after that, for the most part, a permanently disappointed family, although with considerable religious and social prestige.) The Abbasid family would hold the caliphal title for centuries to come, until it was seized from them by the Ottomans in 1517….”
Seeing Arab control of conquered lands has held throughout time, reaching down to the modern day, we can see that they are among the clay toes of Nebuchadnezzar’s statue in Daniel 2, alongside the iron toes of the vestiges of the Roman Empire, which itself still exists as well. These and other powers that comprise the other clay toes, will be ruling until the very day that the stone kingdom of true Israel, prophesied in Daniel 2:34 and 44 – 45, will destroy them all.
That wraps it up for this episode of Churchianity: Two Thousand Years of Leaven. A production of Kingdom Preppers.org, this episode was written, produced, and hosted by yours truly, Kingdom Prepper. All praise, honor, and glory are due to my boss, Yah Elohim, and to his right hand, Yahushua HaMashiach. You can access the transcript for this episode on our website. Yah willing, our history will continue in the next podcast. Shalom.
Keywords: Muhammad, Mohammad, Ka’aba, Islam, Mecca, Medina, Muslim, Arab, Qur’an, Marib, Himyar, Quraysh, Banu Harim, Hijra, jihâd, Yathrib, Nabatean deity Hubal, umma, ridda war, khalifah, zakat, churchianity, two thousand years of leaven, history of Christianity, church history, Hebrew history, kp, kingdom preppers
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