The Life of the Prophet Muhammad

The Elephant Refuses To Move

Abrahah, who came from Abyssinia-a country in Africa-conqueredYemen and was made vice-regent there. Later, he noticed that at a certaintime of the year large numbers of people would travel from all overYemen and the rest of Arabia to Mecca. He asked the reason for this andwas told that they were going on pilgrimage to the Ka'bah. Abrahah hatedthe idea of Mecca being more important than his own country, so hedecided to build a church of colored marble, with doors of gold andornaments of silver, and ordered the people to visit it instead of theKa'bah. But no one obeyed him. 

Abrahah became angry and decided to destroy the Ka1bah. Heprepared a large army led by an elephant and set off towards Mecca.When the Meccans heard that he was coming they became veryfrightened. Abrahah's army was huge and they could not fight it. But howcould they let him destroy the Holy Ka'bah? They went to ask the adviceof their leader, 'Abd al-Muttalib. When Abrahah arrived outside Mecca,'Abd al-Muttalib went to meet him. Abrahah said, 'What do you want?'Abrahah had taken Abd al-Muttalib's camels, which he had found grazingas he entered Mecca, so „Abd al-Muttalib replied, 'I want my camelsback.' Abrahah was very surprised and said, 'I have come to destroy yourHoly Ka'bah, the holy place of your fathers, and you ask me about somecamels?' 'Abd al-Muttalib replied calmly, „The camels belong to me; theKa‟bah belongs to Allah and He will protect it.' Then he left Abrahah andwent back to Quraysh and ordered them to leave Mecca and wait for theirenemies in the mountains. 

In the morning Abrahah prepared to enter the town. He put armor onhis elephant and drew up his troops for battle. He intended to destroy theKa'bah and then return to Yemen. At that moment, however, the elephantknelt down and refused to get up, no matter how much the soldiers triedto get it to move by beating it. 

But when they turned its face in the direction of Yemen itimmediately got up and started off. In fact, it did the same in any otherdirection, but as soon as they pointed it towards Mecca it knelt downagain. Suddenly, flocks of birds appeared from over the sea. Each birdcarried three stones as small as peas and they dropped them on Abrahah1sarmy. The soldiers suddenly fell ill. Even Abrahah was hit by the stonesand fled in fear with the rest of his army back to Yemen, where he laterdied. On seeing their enemy flee the Arabs came down from themountains to the Ka'bah and gave thanks to Allah. 

After this, Quraysh gained great respect and became known as 'thepeople of Allah', and the year in which these events took place, 570A.D was named the 'Year of the Elephant'. In that year Allah had saved theKa'bah and he would soon bring forth a Prophet from among Quraysh. Inthe Name of Allah, the Beneficent, the Merciful: "Hast thou not seen howthy Lord dealt with the owners of the Elephant? Did He not bring theirstratagem to naught, And send against them swarms of flying creatures,Which pelted them with stones of baked clay, And made them like greencrops devoured (by cattle)? (Qur'an 105.1-5)