Introductory Remarks
This article is about the Yamama battle
and the preservation of the Qur’an. The early Muslims lost about 450 men who
had memorized parts of the Qur’an. In fact, that battle pressed Omar to request
a Qur’an collection orders from Abu Bakr, the first Muslim Khalifa. Abu Bakr
took over the leadership of the Muslims after the death of Muhammad.
Present day Muslims have grand claims
about preserving the Qur’an as it was revealed to Muhammad, letter by letter,
and word by word. There are many scholars of Islam who showed that such a claim
does not stand critical scrutiny. The current writer had a humble attempt in a
three-part article that dealt with the collection of the Qur’an processes from
the time of Muhammad until our present day Qur’an.
In the current article, and for the most
part, I confine myself to the circumstances surrounding the Yamama battle and
its influence on the collection of the Qur’an process.
Prelude to Muhammad’s death and its
influence on multiplicity of Arab tribes
The age of Muhammad was the age of
“Might is Right”. Muhammad’s peacefull prophecy and stay in Mecca did not give
him any grand results. He insulted other religions and Meccans ended up paying
him back with the same currency he dealt them with. He had to leave. He sent
“discovery” campaigns to Abyssinia (Ethiopia), and also he tried Ta’ef. The
people of Ta’ef did not like what they saw from him and kicked him out.
Finally, he moves to Medina. He wasted no time there in starting his gangsters
activities by attacking commercial caravans. First, he met failure, then his
first success came during a sacred month through the Nakhla raid. There is a
long list of attacks by the early Muslims when Muhammad started his stay in
Medina. Muhammad wasted no time in Medina, and started his hostilities against
other groups right away. The date estimates is that he moved to Medina in September
of 622. During the same month or in October, Muhammad started his hostilities
against the Jewish inhabitants of Medina. As for the gang activities of
attacking commercial caravan in greed of loots, Muhammad started such
activities during March of 623 AD (razzia) against a Meccan commercial caravan.
Muhammad continued such activities without much success. However, in January of
624 AD, Muhammad found success in the Nakhla raid.
Moving forward, Muhammad eliminates all
opposition through attacks, genocides, murders, assassinations, rapes, etc.
And, off course, all of his activities were rubber-stamped by Allah. Reason
being Muhammad was his last prophet!! Allah was desperate and could not find a
better man than Muhammad to be his final seal of prophets. Muslims complain
that I show Muhammad in bad light when I write about him. Well, all a Muslim
can do is read the Qur’an, and investigate some of the revelations and their
reasons. That, in itself, should suffice to convince any decent human being to
leave Islam.
Moving toward the end of Muhammad’s
life, we find that he took over Mecca and forced all Arab tribes to send to
Mecca part of their economic prosperity. In exchange for that, Muhammad stayed
away from attacking them!! Muslims like to call such money sent to Mecca
“Zakat”. I call it “protection money”. You can call it what you want, but the
fact is Muhammad forced other tribes to send from their wealth, to the Meccans.
Economics 101, with fringe benefits to Quraysh and the Meccans, are at the
heart of Islamic creed. Even today, Muhammad guaranteed an annual economic
“fringe benefits” to Mecca and the surrounding areas through the Islamic creed
of “Hajj”.
There is no spirituality in the Islam of
Muhammad. His form of Islam was “Loot, Loot, Loot” and “Pay me Zakat, or Else”.
Muhammad’s death(632 AD)
Other than the area of Mecca and its
surroundings, one can imagine how happy the Arab tribes were to hear that the
man who forced them at the pain of the sword to pay annual amounts of money and
goods to Mecca is finally dead. The tribes became happy for a good reason: The
tyrant is dead.
This event in the history of Islam
should convince any reader that the “elegance” or “greatness” of the Qur’an are
no more than lies. Arabs did not think the Qur’an’s language was of superior
quality. If they did, they would hesitate in leaving Islam. This was not the
case at all. Arab tribes became very happy and left Islam. They just did not
want to pay a protection tax levied against them from Mecca. So, they declared
they are Muslims no more.
Inside the Muslim camp, there were power
struggles as to who should lead. But a quick decision is made through a select
group of men. Abu Bakr becomes the Khalifa. As the news of Arab tribes leaving
Islam comes to him, he is not willing to give up the annual Zakat money without
a fight. He had the man power and the expertise of Khalid Bin Alwaleed; a
master battle leader, to get the job done. The major tribes that left Islam did
not unite to make a solid front against the Muslims. For this, Abu Bakr plans
his battles in an organized manner and sends his military campaigns to force
Islam back. Those battles against apostatized tribes are known in the history
of Islam as the Ridda wars (Ridda, in Arabic, means apostasy). During that
time, there were many individuals in the Arabian peninsula who claimed to be
prophets, just like Muhammad. Had any of them won all of their battles against
the Muslims, the form of the religious mix in the Arabian peninsula would look
much different today. Some of the names of such individuals who claimed
prophecy are Sajjah, Tulaihah, and Musaylima. It is the latter one who seems to
have had the largest following. The Muslim forces faced Musaylimah and his
followers at the place of Yamama. They engaged him in two battles. The Muslims
took heavy casualties. They had to wait until Khalid Bin al-Waleed and his
troops joined their ranks. The Muslims forces, under Khalid’s leadership
engaged Musaylimah and his troops. The result was a win for the Muslim camp.
Musaylimah was killed. However, the Muslim forces took heavy casualties that
included about 450 men who were trusted reliable memorizers of the Qur’an.
The sum of the Ridda wars is that Abu
Bakr restored the tribes into Islam by the sword. Anyone who denies that Islam’s
early history was forcing the religion at the pain of the sword, denies
history’s events.
At the end of the day, a huge majority
of the memorizers (Hafids) of the Qur’an were killed at Yamama. Abu Bakr did
not seem worried about the fate of the Qur’an. His logic was that Muhammad did
not worry about collecting the Qur’an as one unit book. So, why worry about it
if Muhammad himself did not. Omar, who was destined to become the second
Khalif, requested that Abu Bakr command a collection of the Suras and verses of
the Qur’an. At first, Abu Bakr resisted such a project. But, upon the
insistence of Omar, Abu Bakr appointed a committee for the task of collecting
the Qur’an.
The committee
Bukhari Hadith narrates the story of
Qur’an collection commission between Abu Bakr and Omar:
Narrated Zaid bin Thabit Al-Ansari: who
was one of those who used to write the Divine Revelation: Abu Bakr sent for me
after the (heavy) casualties among the warriors (of the battle) of yamama
(where a great number of Qurra' were killed). 'Umar was present with Abu Bakr
who said, 'Umar has come to me and said, The people have suffered heavy
casualties on the day of (the battle of) yamama, and I am afraid that there
will be more casualties among the Qurra' (those who know the Qur'an by heart)
at other battle-fields, whereby a large part of the Qur'an may be lost, unless
you collect it. And I am of the opinion that you should collect the
Qur'an." Abu Bakr added, "I said to 'Umar, 'How can I do something
which Allah's Apostle has not done?' 'Umar said (to me), 'By Allah, it is
(really) a good thing.' So 'Umar kept on pressing, trying to persuade me to
accept his proposal, till Allah opened my bosom for it and I had the same
opinion as 'Umar." (Zaid bin Thabit added:) Umar was sitting with him (Abu
Bakr) and was not speaking. me). "You are a wise young man and we do not
suspect you (of telling lies or of forgetfulness): and you used to write the
Divine Inspiration for Allah's Apostle. Therefore, look for the Qur'an and
collect it (in one manuscript)." By Allah, if he (Abu Bakr) had ordered me
to shift one of the mountains (from its place) it would not have been harder
for me than what he had ordered me concerning the collection of the Qur'an. I
said to both of them, "How dare you do a thing which the Prophet has not
done?" Abu Bakr said, "By Allah, it is (really) a good thing. So I
kept on arguing with him about it till Allah opened my bosom for that which He
had opened the bosoms of Abu Bakr and Umar. So I started locating Quranic material
and collecting it from parchments, scapula, leaf-stalks of date palms and from
the memories of men (who knew it by heart). I found with Khuzaima two Verses of
Surat-at-Tauba which I had not found with anybody else, (and they were):--
"Verily there has come to you an Apostle (Muhammad) from amongst
yourselves. It grieves him that you should receive any injury or difficulty He
(Muhammad) is ardently anxious over you (to be rightly guided)" (9.128)
The manuscript on which the Quran was collected, remained with Abu Bakr till
Allah took him unto Him, and then with 'Umar till Allah took him unto Him, and
finally it remained with Hafsa, Umar's daughter. (Book #60, Hadith #201)
Please note that this project relied
heavily on the judgement of one man; Zaid bin Thabit. Even with being a scribe,
it is unlikely that Zaid knew all of the Qur’an as revealed to Muhammad. After
all he was only one person among many scribes whose number was about forty two
persons. With such a large number, it is highly unlikely, if not impossible,
for any of them, to know all of the “supposedly” divine revelations to
Muhammad. So, in a sense, Zaid was given an impossible task. For instance, let
us say he was confronted with similar Qur’anic verses the rhymed and conveyed
the same meaning, How was Zaid to choose? What criterion does he need to
establish.
In any case, Zaid tries his best and
makes a copy of the Qur’an of what was available to him.
To add insult to injury, Zaid was only
one among many“Qur’anic” experts of the time. A short list will have to include
people like Ali bin Abi Talib, Abdullah ibn Mas’ud, Mu’adh bin Jabal, and Ubai
ibn ka’b.
A wiser decision would have been to
appoint all of them to collect a one “more” complete and reliable Qur’an. This
did not happen, making Zaid’s decisions final on the newly collected Qur’an.
The problem is that Zaid was only one of at least forty two scribes of
Muhammad. Hence, there exists great discrepancy of what Zaid knew about the
revelations, and the elite group knowledge of the Qur’an. By elite group I mean
the group of early Muslims who knew a lot of the Qur’an and memorized it, etc.
I gave the reader an example of other four men who were as competent as Zaid in
their knowledge of the Qur’an, if not better than him in this endeavor.
In any case, history tells us that Zaid
did as was ordered and produced his collected version of the Qur’an. His
collected work did not imply any authoritative pressure on Muslims. There were
other collected versions of the Qur’an circling around. None was claimed to
have the official seal of Muslim leaders of the time. Zaid’s effort was just
another attempt at collecting the Qur’an. His collection lacked official
adoption status. His collection remained with Umar, who passed it to his
daughter, Hafsa; the prophet’s widow.
Adopting an official version of the
Qur’an had to wait till the time Khalif Uthman took office after Umar. Uthman
told Zaid to make a“revised” version of the Qur’an. It was not the same as the
one Hafsa had, which is the one Zaid collected earlier as per Abu Bakr’s
request. This second time, Uthman canonized Zaid’s second attempt. The new
Qur’an version is known as the Medina codex. At the time, there were six other
versions of the Qur’an circling around. Those versions were collected by Muhammad’s
faithful and intimate companions (Sahaba). Uthman “officialized” the Medina
codex and ordered the other “Qur’ans” to be destroyed.
Reflections on the Yamama battle and the
collection of the Qur’an
There are some important observations
that we need to note regarding the Qur’an collection and its relation to the
Yamama battle:
a. Muhammad died without having his
Qur’an collected in one book. So, in a sense, he “let the dogs out.”. I mean
that any version of a collected Qur’an in the future will suffice. Abu Bakr had
the collection of the Qur’an as a low priority issue. It wasn’t but for Omar’s
insistence that the Qur’an got collected at the time.
b. In my judgment, the battle of Yamama
and the death of 450 Qurra’ (Hafiths or Memorisers) did not create any
additional problems to the collection of the Qur’an. In fact, it probably
minimized some. The author of the book, Muhammad, did not worry about
collecting Allah’s revelations. His closest companion, Abu Bakr, did not place
any urgent priority on the issue. In such an environment, anything goes. If
there are multiplicity of Qur’ans, then that will be a continuous problem as
Muhammad is not around anymore to solve the issue.
c. The death of about 450 Qur’an
memorizers probably simplified more complications in the existing Qur’ans. You
see, had they not perished, we would have had many more Suras and Qur’an
verses. The problem then will be which verses belonged to Muhammad’s original
revelations, and which did not. The simple fact is that human memory is not
always trustworthy. Who is to say that we have to trust the memory of those
Qur’an memorizers one hundred percent of the time. Human memory is fallible. We
experience that in our everyday lives. How many times did I think I put the
keys in my pocket, only to discover that I had left them in the car! Long term
memory issues are ever more troublesome.
d. Even with the death of most
memorizers, the Qur’an still faced multiplicity of difficulties that cannot be
overcome. There is no chance whatsoever that the Qur’an we have today is the
one Muhammad concocted. This is a grand statement not supported by this
article. The reader is advised to read my study on the problems that faced the
Qur’an collection. Here is a link: http://www.islam-watch.org/Kammuna/Collection-of-the-Quran-1.htm
