Muhammad Warning: You are not logged in. Your IP address will be publicly visible if you make any edits. If you log in or create an account, your edits will be attributed to your username, along with other benefits.Anti-spam check. Do not fill this in! ==== Migration to Abyssinia and the incident of Satanic Verses ==== {{Main|Migration to Abyssinia|Satanic Verses}} In 615, fearful that his followers would be seduced from their religion,{{Sfn|Peters|1994|p=173}} Muhammad sent some of them to [[Migration to Abyssinia|emigrate]] to the Abyssinian [[Kingdom of Aksum]] and found a small colony under the protection of the Christian Ethiopian emperor [[Aṣḥama ibn Abjar]].{{sfn|Buhl|Welch|1993}} Among those who departed were [[Umm Habiba]], the daughter of one of the Quraysh chiefs, [[Abu Sufyan ibn Harb|Abu Sufyan]], and her husband.{{Sfn|Cheikh|2015|p=32}} The Quraysh then sent two men to retrieve them. Because leatherwork at the time was highly prized in Abyssinia, they gathered a lot of skins and transported them there so they could distribute some to each of the kingdom's generals. But the king firmly rejected their request.{{Sfn|Peters|1994|p=173–4}} While [[Al-Tabari|Tabari]] and [[Ibn Hisham]] mentioned only one migration to Abyssinia, there were two sets according to [[Ibn Sa'd]]. Of these two, the majority of the first group returned to [[Mecca]] before the event of [[Hijrah|Hijra]], while the majority of the second group remained in Abyssinia at the time and went directly to [[Medina]] after the event of Hijra. These accounts agree that persecution played a major role in Muhammad sending them there. According to historian [[W. Montgomery Watt|W. M. Watt]], the episodes were more complex than the traditional accounts suggest; he proposes that there were divisions within the embryonic Muslim community, and that they likely went there to trade in competition with the prominent merchant families of Mecca. In [[Urwa ibn al-Zubayr|Urwa]]'s letter preserved by Tabari, these emigrants returned after the conversion to Islam of a number of individuals in positions such as [[Hamza ibn Abd al-Muttalib|Hamza]] and [[Umar]].{{sfn|Buhl|Welch|1993|p=365}} Along with many others,<ref name="Ahmed" /> Tabari recorded that Muhammad was desperate, hoping for an accommodation with his tribe. So, while he was in the presence of a number of [[Quraysh]], after delivering verses mentioning three of their favorite deities (Quran 53:19–20), [[Satan]] put upon his tongue two short verses: "These are the high flying ones / whose intercession is to be hoped for." This led to a general reconciliation between Muhammad and the Meccans, and the Muslims in Abyssinia began to return home. However, the next day, Muhammad retracted these verses at the behest of [[Gabriel]], claiming that they had been cast by Satan to his tongue and God had abrogated them. Instead, verses that revile those goddesses were then revealed.<ref>The Cambridge Companion to Muhammad (2010), p. 35.</ref>{{efn|The aforementioned Islamic [[Satanic Verses#Tabarī's account|histories recount]] that as Muhammad was reciting Sūra Al-Najm (Q.53), as revealed to him by the Archangel [[Gabriel]], Satan tempted him to utter the following lines after verses 19 and 20: "Have you thought of Allāt and al-'Uzzā and Manāt the third, the other; These are the exalted Gharaniq, whose intercession is hoped for." (Allāt, al-'Uzzā and Manāt were three goddesses worshiped by the Meccans). cf Ibn Ishaq, A. Guillaume p. 166.}}{{efn|"Apart from this one-day lapse, which was excised from the text, the Quran is simply unrelenting, unaccommodating and outright despising of paganism." (The Cambridge Companion to Muhammad, Jonathan E. Brockopp, p. 35).}} The returning Muslims thus had to make arrangements for clan protection before they could re-enter Mecca.{{sfn|Buhl|Welch|1993}}{{Sfn|Al-Tabari|1987|p=107–112}} This [[Satanic Verses|Satanic verses]] incident was reported ''en masse'' and documented by nearly all of the major biographers of Muhammad in Islam's first two centuries,{{Sfn|Ahmed|2017|p=256–7}} which according to them corresponds to Quran 22:52. But since the rise of the [[hadith]] movement and systematic theology with its new doctrines, including the ''[[Ismah|isma]]'', which claimed that Muhammad was infallible and thus could not be fooled by Satan, the historical memory of the early community has been reevaluated. As of the 20th century CE, Muslim scholars unanimously rejected this incident.<ref name="Ahmed">{{cite journal |last1=Ahmed |first1=Shahab |date=1998 |title=Ibn Taymiyyah and the Satanic Verses |journal=Studia Islamica |publisher=Maisonneuve & Larose |volume=87 |issue=87 |pages=67–124 |doi=10.2307/1595926 |jstor=1595926}}</ref> On the other hand, most European biographers of Muhammad recognize the veracity of this incident of satanic verses on the basis of the [[criterion of embarrassment]]. Historian Alfred T. Welch proposes that the period of Muhammad's turning away from strict monotheism was likely far longer but was later encapsulated in a story that made it much shorter and implicated Satan as the culprit.{{sfn|Buhl|Welch|1993|p=365}} In 616, an agreement was established whereby all other Quraysh clans were to enforce a ban on the [[Banu Hashim]], prohibiting trade and marriage with them.{{sfn|Glubb|2001|p=125–6, 129}} Nevertheless, Banu Hashim members could still move around the town freely. Despite facing increasing verbal abuse, Muhammad continued to navigate the streets and engage in public debates without being physically harmed.{{sfn|Glubb|2001|p=126}} At a later point, a faction within Quraysh, sympathizing with Banu Hashim, initiated efforts to end the sanctions, resulting in a general consensus in 619 to lift the ban.{{sfn|Glubb|2001|p=129}}{{sfn|Buhl|Welch|1993|p=365}} Summary: Please note that all contributions to Christianpedia may be edited, altered, or removed by other contributors. If you do not want your writing to be edited mercilessly, then do not submit it here. You are also promising us that you wrote this yourself, or copied it from a public domain or similar free resource (see Christianpedia:Copyrights for details). Do not submit copyrighted work without permission! Cancel Editing help (opens in new window) Discuss this page