Muhammad Read online

  The Prayer of Fear showed how beleaguered and defensive the new religion had become. It is in this context that we must see the Qur’an’s apparent retreat from gender equality. In January 626, his new wife Zaynab had died, just eight months after their wedding. Not long afterwards, he approached Hind bint Abi Umayyah, the widow of his cousin Abu Salamah, who had died after Uhud, leaving her with four children. Hind—or Umm Salamah, as she was usually known—was twenty-nine years old; beautiful, sophisticated, and extremely intelligent, she would provide the Prophet with the kind of companionship he had enjoyed with Khadijah. She was also the sister of a leading member of Makhzum, one of the most powerful Meccan tribes. At first, she was reluctant to marry Muhammad. She had loved her husband very much, she explained; she was no longer young, had a jealous disposition, and was not sure that she could adapt to life in the harem. Muhammad smiled—he had a smile of great sweetness, which almost everybody found disarm-ing—and assured her that in his late fifties, he was even older than she, and that God would cure her jealousy.

  She was right to be wary, because life in the mosque was not easy.40 The apartments of Muhammad’s wives were so tiny that it was almost impossible to stand upright inside them. Muhammad did not have a house of his own. He passed the night with each of his wives in turn and her hut became his official residence for the day. There was practically no privacy, as Muhammad was constantly surrounded by crowds of people. He had frequent visits from his daughters and grandchildren. He was devoted to Hasan and Husayn, the sons of ‘Ali and Fatimah, and was especially fond of his little granddaughter Umamah, whom he would carry into the mosque on his shoulders. He was constantly closeted with his closest companions: Abu Bakr, Zayd, ‘Ali, ‘Uthman, and—increasingly—‘Umar. As he became more widely respected in Arabia, he also received delegations from the Bedouin tribes, who crowded into the courtyard with their camels.

  When he left the mosque after prayers, hordes of petitioners herded around their Prophet, pulling at his garments and yelling their questions and demands into his face.41 They would follow him into his wife’s hut, thronging round the table so tightly that it was sometimes impossible to pick up a morsel of food.42 This was stressful for Muhammad, who was shy, fastidious, and sensitive to unpleasant bodily odors and bad breath. He was also getting older. He still had only a few grey hairs and walked so energetically that his feet seemed scarcely to touch the ground, but he was nearly sixty—a not inconsiderable age in Arabia, he had been injured at Uhud, and the constant pressure was beginning to tell on him at a time when the whole of Medina was waiting in terror for the inevitable return of the Meccan army and the ummah was more divided than ever before.43

  This internal dissension became apparent as soon as Umm Salamah took up residence in the mosque. ‘A’isha fiercely resented the arrival of this distinguished, superior woman, and a rift developed in the harem that reflected tensions within the ummah itself. Umm Salamah represented the more aristocratic Emigrants, while ‘A’isha and Hafsah, the daughters of Abu Bakr and ‘Umar, came from the more plebeian party in power. Each of Muhammad’s wives sided with one of these two rival factions. Umm Salamah often relied upon the support of a third group, the ahl al-beit, the “people of the household,” who were members of Muhammad’s immediate family. At the time of her marriage to Muhammad, these divisions were only in their infancy, but it would soon become clear that the ummah was not a monolithic group, and that the people who entered Islam had done so with very different expectations.

  Umm Salamah quickly became the spokesperson for the women of Medina.44 Muhammad’s living arrangements, which had physically positioned his wives at the epicenter of the community, had given Muslim women a new vision of their role. ‘A’isha and Hafsah were still young girls, and were sometimes flighty and selfish, but Umm Salamah was a very different proposition. Shortly after her marriage, a deputation of women asked her why they were mentioned so rarely in the Qur’an. Umm Salamah brought their question to the Prophet, who, as usual, took time to reflect upon it seriously. A few days later, while she was combing her hair in her apartment, she heard Muhammad reciting a revolutionary new surah in the mosque:

  Men and women who have surrendered,

  Believing men and believing women

  Obedient men and obedient women

  Truthful men and truthful women

  Enduring men and enduring women

  Men and women who give in charity

  Men who fast and women who fast,

  Men and women who guard their private parts

  Men and women who remember God oft—

  For them God has prepared forgiveness

  And a mighty wage.45

  In other words, there was to be complete sexual equality in Islam; both men and women had the same duties and responsibilities. When the women heard these verses, they were determined to make this vision a concrete reality in their daily lives.

  God seemed to be on their side. Shortly afterwards, a whole surah was dedicated to women. Women were no longer to be bequeathed to male heirs as though they were camels or date palms. They could themselves inherit and compete with men for a share in an estate.46 No orphan girl should be married to her guardian against her will, as though she were simply moveable property.47 As had been customary during the pre-Islamic period, women retained the power to initiate divorce proceedings, though the husband could refuse to comply. In Arabia, the groom traditionally presented a dowry to his bride, but in practice this gift had belonged to her family. Now the dowry was to be given directly to the woman as her inalienable property, and in the event of divorce, a man could not reclaim it, so her security was assured.48 Qur’anic legislation insisted that the individual was free and sovereign—and that also applied to women.

  In seventh century Arabia, this was a shocking innovation, and the men of the ummah were furious. God was taking away their privileges! They were ready to fight for him to the death, but now he was demanding sacrifice in their personal lives! The Medinese were particularly incensed; were they expected to divide their farms to give women a share? “How,” they asked, “can one give the right of inheritance to women and children, who do not work and do not earn their living? Are they now going to inherit just like men who have worked to earn that money?” And was the Prophet seriously telling them that even an ugly girl could inherit a fortune? “Yes, absolutely,” replied Muhammad.49 Some tried to find a loophole in the legislation, but the women complained to Muhammad and the Qur’an supported them.50

  The women made another demand: since raiding was so crucial to the economy, why could they not bear arms, too? Once again, Umm Salamah brought their question to the Prophet.51 This went right to the heart of the ghazu economy. A woman who was taken prisoner during a raid was valuable booty; she could be sold, married, used for labor, or forced into prostitution. If women were allowed to fight instead of waiting passively to be taken prisoner, there would be a huge reduction of ghazu income. The controversy split the community and Muhammad was besieged by angry men who felt that Allah was emasculating them. ‘Umar especially could not understand the Prophet’s ridiculous leniency towards women. But Muhammad stood firm and insisted that God had made his will clear.

  But the women had chosen the wrong moment to make their move. There was no way that the men would accept this at a time when the ummah faced extinction. The laws of inheritance and divorce remained in place, but Muhammad found that his enemies in Medina were making political capital out of this radical legislation and that he was opposed at this crucial juncture by some of his closest companions. Matters came to a head over the question of wife-beating.52 The Qur’an forbade Muslims to inflict violence upon one another, and the women began to complain to the Prophet when their husbands hit them, demanding that they be punished as the Qur’an prescribed. Some even started to refuse sex to their abusive husbands. Muhammad was revolted by the very idea of violence towards women. “The Prophet never raised his hand against one of his wives, or against a slave
, nor against any person at all,” Ibn Sa‘d recalled. He “was always against the beating of women.”53 But he was ahead of his time. Men like ‘Umar, Ibn Ubayy, and even the gentle Abu Bakr beat their wives without giving the matter a second thought. Knowing that Abu Sufyan was mustering a massive army against Medina, Muhammad had to give way in order to retain the loyalty of his men. “Very well,” he told his indignant companions, “beat them, but only the worst of you will have recourse to such methods.”54 A revelation seemed to give husbands permission to beat their wives but Muhammad did not like it.55 “I cannot bear seeing a quick-tempered man beat his wife in a fit of anger,” he said.56 Yet again, the conflict with Mecca had compromised his vision and forced him to adopt a course of action that, in more normal circumstances, he would have preferred to avoid. The Qur’anic legislation about women is intertwined with verses about the war, which inevitably affected everything that happened in Medina at this time; Muhammad knew that he had no hope of surviving a Meccan onslaught with disaffected troops.

  *

  In March 627, a massive army of ten thousand men—the Quraysh and their confederates—were on the march toward Medina.57 Muhammad could raise only a paltry three thousand warriors from Medina and his Bedouin allies. This time there was no stupid bravado; the Muslims barricaded themselves into the “city” in the center of the oasis. Surrounded on three sides by cliffs and plains of volcanic rock, Medina was not difficult to defend. It was most vulnerable from the north, but Muhammad adopted a stratagem suggested to him by Salman al-Farsi, a Persian convert. The Quraysh were in no hurry, making their way grandly and confidently in easy stages, so the Muslims had plenty of time. They gathered in the crops from the outlying fields, so that this time the Meccans would find no fodder, and then the entire community set to work digging a huge trench around the northern part of the oasis. This was nothing short of astonishing—even shocking—to Arab sensibilities. No self-respecting jahili warrior would dream of putting a barrier between himself and the enemy. He would consider it degrading to shovel earth like a slave. But Muhammad worked alongside his companions, laughing, joking, and singing with his men. Morale was high.

  When the Quraysh arrived with their army, they stared blankly at the trench. The earth from the ditch had been used to build a high escarpment, which effectively shielded the Medinese in their camp and gave them a superior vantage point from which to hurl missiles. The Quraysh were bewildered. They had never seen anything so un-sporting in their lives!58 Their cavalry, which was their pride and joy, was useless. From time to time, one of their horsemen would try to lead a dashing charge towards the enemy lines, only to screech absurdly to a halt when he arrived at the dugout.

  The siege lasted only a month, but it seemed endless. Feeding and supplying the allies of Medina as well as their own people put a great strain on the city’s resources. Ibn Ubayy and his party accused Muhammad of bringing ruin upon them59 and the Jewish tribe of Qurayzah openly supported the Quraysh. The Jews of Khaybar had contributed a large squadron to the Meccan army, which included many of the exiled tribe of Nadir. Before the arrival of the Meccan army, Huyay ibn Akhtab, chief of Nadir, had tried to persuade Qurayzah either to attack the Muslims from the rear or to smuggle two thousand Nadiris into the oasis to slaughter the women and children in the fortresses. Initially Qurayzah were hesitant, but when they saw the vast Meccan army filling the plain in front of the city as far as the eye could see, their chief agreed to help the confederacy and provide the Quraysh with weapons and supplies. When Muhammad heard of this treachery, he was visibly distressed. He sent Sa‘d ibn Mu‘adh, who had been Qurayzah’s chief Arab ally before the hijrah, to negotiate, but to no avail. At one point, the Qurayzah actually started to attack the fortresses on the southeast of the settlement, but the effort petered out. For about three weeks, it was quite unclear which way they would go.

  Throughout the Battle of the Trench, as the siege became known, the Muslims were terrified. Faced with the prospect of extermination, some came close to despair. “Your eyes swerved and your hearts reached your throats,” the Qur’an recalled, “while you thought strange thoughts about God; here it was that the believers were tried and shaken most mightily.”60 But even as those inside the city trembled, on the other side of the ditch, the Quraysh were becoming exhausted. They had inadequate provisions and their inexperience in military affairs meant that they were easily demoralized by a sudden reversal. Their resolve finally snapped when a violent rainstorm devastated their camp. Abu Sufyan recognized defeat. Horses and camels were dying, the Qurayzah had failed to deliver, and his troops had no tents, fires, or cooking pots. “Be off,” he announced to his men, “for I am going.”61 When the Muslims peered over the escarpment the next morning, the plain was completely deserted.

  But what was Muhammad to do about Qurayzah? The departure of the Quraysh had not weakened the bitter opposition to his leadership within Medina: His opponents were convinced that the Meccans would return in the not too distant future and wreak terrible vengeance for their humiliation, so they intensified their campaign against him. The settlement was on the brink of civil war and in this explosive climate, the Qurayzah could not remain unpunished. The day after the departure of the Meccan army, Muhammad’s troops surrounded the fortress of Qurayzah, who asked that they be permitted to leave on the same terms as Qaynuqa‘ and Nadir. But this time Muhammad refused: Nadir had proved to be just as dangerous to the ummah in exile. The elders of Qurayzah agreed to accept the arbitration of their former ally Sa‘d ibn Mu‘adh, who had been severely wounded during the siege and was carried to the Qurayzah village on a litter. Even though some of the other tribes asked him to be merciful, Sa‘d believed that the Qurayzah were an unacceptable security risk and made the conventional judgment: all seven hundred men of the tribe should be executed, their wives and children sold into slavery, and their property divided among the Muslims. When he heard the verdict, Muhammad is reported to have cried: “You have judged according to the ruling of Allah above the seven skies!”62 The next day, the sentence was carried out.

  Revolting as it seems to us today, almost everybody in Arabia would have expected Sa‘d’s judgment. According to the texts, not even the Qurayzah were surprised by the decision. The executions sent a grim message to the Jews of Khaybar, and the Bedouin would have noted that Muhammad did not shrink from retaliation. He had staged a defiant show of strength, which, it was hoped, would bring the conflict to an end. Change was coming to this desperate, primitive society, but for the time being, violence and killing on this scale were the norm.63

  Nevertheless, the incident marks the nadir of Muhammad’s career. It is, however, important to note that the Qurayzah were not killed on religious or racial grounds. None of the other Jewish tribes in the oasis either objected or attempted to intervene, clearly regarding it as a purely political and tribal matter. A significant number of the Arab tribe of Kilab, the clients of Qurayzah, were also executed alongside the Jews. Muhammad had no ideological quarrel with the Jewish people. He once said, “He who wrongs or destroys a Jew or a Christian will have me to answer on the Day of Judgment.” The men of Qurayzah were executed for treason. The seventeen other Jewish tribes of Medina remained in the oasis, living on friendly terms with the Muslims for many years, and the Qur’an continued to insist that Muslims remember their spiritual kinship with the People of the Book:

  Do not argue with the followers of earlier revelation otherwise than in a most kindly manner—unless it be such of them as are bent upon evil-doing—and say: “We believe in that which has been bestowed from on high upon us, as well as that which has been bestowed upon you: for our God and your god is one and the same, and it is unto Him that We all surrender ourselves.”64

  Later in the Islamic empires, Jews would enjoy full religious liberty and anti-Semitism would not become a Muslim vice until the Arab/Israeli conflict became acute in the mid-twentieth century.

  The tragedy of Qurayzah may have seemed expedient to the Arabs o
f Muhammad’s time, but it is not acceptable to us today. Nor was it what Muhammad had set out to do. His original aim had been to end the violence of jahiliyyah, but he was now behaving like an ordinary Arab chieftain. He had felt impelled to go to war in order to achieve a final peace, but the fighting had unleashed a grim and vicious cycle of strike and counterstrike, atrocity, and retaliation, which violated essential principles of Islam. As he rode away from the village of Qurayzah towards a city that was still seething with resentment, Muhammad must have realized that he would have to find another way to end the conflict. Somehow he had to abandon this jahili behavior once and for all and find an entirely different solution.

  Chapter Five

  Salam

  MUHAMMAD’S VICTORY over the Quraysh greatly enhanced his prestige in the peninsula. During the next few months, he capitalized on this, dispatching raiding parties against tribes who belonged to the Meccan confederacy, hoping to tighten the economic blockade that was damaging Qurayshan trade and attract some of the Syrian caravans to Medina. His continuing success made many of the Arabs question the validity of their traditional faith. They were pragmatic people, less interested in abstract speculation than in the effectiveness of a religious system. When the Meccan army had left Medina after the siege, the commander Khalid ibn al-Walid had cried: “Every man of sense now knows that Muhammad has not lied!”1 Even the most committed adherents of the old faith were beginning to agree. During a raid against one of the Meccan caravans, Muhammad’s former son-in-law Abu l-‘As, who had been ready to give up his family rather than accept Islam, was taken prisoner; Muhammad ordered that he be released and his merchandise returned to him, and this second act of generosity so impressed Abu l-‘As that after he had taken the goods back to Mecca, he made the hijrah, converted to Islam, and was reunited with Zaynab and their little daughter.