An Atheist Explores the Qur'an Part 111: Mûmakil Attack! (The Elephant (al-Fiil))
The Elephant (al-Fiil)
Mûmakil Attack!
Welcome to the next instalment of An Atheist Explores Sacred Texts (Qur’an version).
In this series I work my way chapter-by-chapter through the Qur’an, commenting on it from the point of view of the text as literature and mythology.
For more detail, see the introductory post https://bit.ly/2ApLDy0
For the online Qur’an that I use, see here http://al-quran.info and http://quran.com
The Elephant (al-Fiil) 1-5
“Have you not regarded how your Lord dealt with the Men of the Elephant?
Did He not make their stratagems go awry,
and send against them flocks of birds
pelting them with stones of shale,
thus making them like chewed-up straw?”
This surah requires a bit of historical context. The “Men of the Elephant” were the army of a Christian ruler named Abraha, war leader of a Yemeni people called the Aksumites. The Aksumites were Christians that had been ousted by a man called Dhu Muwas, leader of the Jewish Himyarite people.
With backing from the Byzantines, Abraha led an army of 10,000 men including war elephants, and defeated Dhu Nuwas, becoming de facto viceroy of Yemen. He defeated the existing Christian viceroy and the general sent by the Byzantines to bring him to heel, Kaleb, came over to his cause. So Abrahas became Byzantine viceroy in Yemen through a mix of force of arms and cunning. This is all according to Procopius (Histories).
Abrahas is said to have built a Christian church in the city of Sana’a. In an attempt to fight against paganism in the Arabian peninsula, the Islamic tradition has him leading an expedition to destroy the Kaba’a at Mecca. This event, the Year of the Elephant, is traditionally assumed to have happened in the year of the Prophet’s birth. The outcome of this is accounted in this surah; according to tradition Abrahas’ army was attacked by a flock of birds (“ṭayran”, “طَيرًا”) that dropped either stones, or shale, or volcanic debris, and destroyed the army. Some versions describe the birds as a kind of martin or swift, but the word “tayran” seems to refer to a generic bird.
So, that’s what this is about, and firstly it obviously serves as one of those demonstrations of the powers of Allah. Try to attack Mecca and God will turn even nature against you. Despite, of course, the existence of recorded events in Abrahas’ life, oddly enough this miraculous event doesn’t make it into Procopius or anywhere else. And it’s also interesting to note that at the time, Mecca was a pagan polytheist shrine and yet God sees fit to defend it, and yet, later when the Prophet is trying to claim it back from the polytheists, God is suddenly on the other side. Funny that.
Regardless of what you might think about the veracity of a flock of stone-dropping birds as a weapon of war, it’s a pretty cool image that I might use somewhere. Or at least it could form a section of Islam: The Platform Game, the one that will never be made. Also, if Abrahas really did try to destroy the Kaba’a, presumably his army did fail somehow. Perhaps a sandstorm or similar would have roughly the same kinds of effects as birds dropping stones, and if my reading on the Punic Wars has taught me anything, it’s that war elephants are more showy than useful, and seem to have been as much a liability for the army using them as they were any real help in a fight. Probably even just running out of forage in the Arabian landscape could have been enough to defeat Abrahas. Another possibility that I came across was that the army was struck by a sickness (also more often the cause of defeat than actual combat in ancient armies). In that respect, “birds pelting with shale” still works as a kind of metaphor, with the same sense as the “arrows of Apollo”.
Mûmakil Attack!
Welcome to the next instalment of An Atheist Explores Sacred Texts (Qur’an version).
In this series I work my way chapter-by-chapter through the Qur’an, commenting on it from the point of view of the text as literature and mythology.
For more detail, see the introductory post https://bit.ly/2ApLDy0
For the online Qur’an that I use, see here http://al-quran.info and http://quran.com
The Elephant (al-Fiil) 1-5
“Have you not regarded how your Lord dealt with the Men of the Elephant?
Did He not make their stratagems go awry,
and send against them flocks of birds
pelting them with stones of shale,
thus making them like chewed-up straw?”
This surah requires a bit of historical context. The “Men of the Elephant” were the army of a Christian ruler named Abraha, war leader of a Yemeni people called the Aksumites. The Aksumites were Christians that had been ousted by a man called Dhu Muwas, leader of the Jewish Himyarite people.
With backing from the Byzantines, Abraha led an army of 10,000 men including war elephants, and defeated Dhu Nuwas, becoming de facto viceroy of Yemen. He defeated the existing Christian viceroy and the general sent by the Byzantines to bring him to heel, Kaleb, came over to his cause. So Abrahas became Byzantine viceroy in Yemen through a mix of force of arms and cunning. This is all according to Procopius (Histories).
Abrahas is said to have built a Christian church in the city of Sana’a. In an attempt to fight against paganism in the Arabian peninsula, the Islamic tradition has him leading an expedition to destroy the Kaba’a at Mecca. This event, the Year of the Elephant, is traditionally assumed to have happened in the year of the Prophet’s birth. The outcome of this is accounted in this surah; according to tradition Abrahas’ army was attacked by a flock of birds (“ṭayran”, “طَيرًا”) that dropped either stones, or shale, or volcanic debris, and destroyed the army. Some versions describe the birds as a kind of martin or swift, but the word “tayran” seems to refer to a generic bird.
So, that’s what this is about, and firstly it obviously serves as one of those demonstrations of the powers of Allah. Try to attack Mecca and God will turn even nature against you. Despite, of course, the existence of recorded events in Abrahas’ life, oddly enough this miraculous event doesn’t make it into Procopius or anywhere else. And it’s also interesting to note that at the time, Mecca was a pagan polytheist shrine and yet God sees fit to defend it, and yet, later when the Prophet is trying to claim it back from the polytheists, God is suddenly on the other side. Funny that.
Regardless of what you might think about the veracity of a flock of stone-dropping birds as a weapon of war, it’s a pretty cool image that I might use somewhere. Or at least it could form a section of Islam: The Platform Game, the one that will never be made. Also, if Abrahas really did try to destroy the Kaba’a, presumably his army did fail somehow. Perhaps a sandstorm or similar would have roughly the same kinds of effects as birds dropping stones, and if my reading on the Punic Wars has taught me anything, it’s that war elephants are more showy than useful, and seem to have been as much a liability for the army using them as they were any real help in a fight. Probably even just running out of forage in the Arabian landscape could have been enough to defeat Abrahas. Another possibility that I came across was that the army was struck by a sickness (also more often the cause of defeat than actual combat in ancient armies). In that respect, “birds pelting with shale” still works as a kind of metaphor, with the same sense as the “arrows of Apollo”.
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