BATTLE OF OHOD (MARCH, 625 A.D.)

[1Sidenote: [625 A.D.]]

2The battle of Bedr was the first step of Islam to dominion. Whilst the inhabitants of Medina and the Bedouin tribes of the neighbourhood drew from the prophet’s success a belief in his divine mission and gathered round him with enthusiasm, in Mecca there was great despair. Abu Lahab, Mohammed’s uncle and enemy, died seven days later of a disease resembling smallpox, full of affliction and anger at the success of his nephew; and Okba’s daughter Hind, the passionate wife of Abu Sufyan, cried day and night in ungoverned fury for revenge for her fallen kinsmen. Her lord actually went against Medina with two hundred Koreish; but their belief in their own cause was shaken, and when Mohammed marched against them they fled home in such haste that they left their stock of meal behind.

3In the months after this “meal-campaign,” certain Jews in Medina, having made a mock of Mohammed in their verses, were put to death, and their co-religionists who had refused to go over to Islam, in particular the Beni Kainoka, the most skilful of the wealthy goldsmiths in the country, were driven into banishment in Syria. Abu Sufyan now marched a second time to the fight, on this occasion with a force of three thousand Koreish, at whose head stood three brave men, Akrama a son of Abu Jahl, Khalid, and Amru, afterwards the most distinguished heroes of the faithful. In the rearguard was the terrible Hind, with fifteen other women and certain poets who roused the spirit of vengeance in the army by laments over those slain at Bedr.

4Mohammed wished to await the enemy in the city, but the young men, in their eagerness for war, demanded a pitched battle. The prophet yielded to their demand with inward misgivings. On the mount Ohod, whose solitary granite mass, bare of tree or bush, rises about a league to the north of Medina, he ranged his warriors, who did not exceed seven hundred, as he had disdained the help of the Jews and thus so deeply offended their patron, the Khazrayite Abdallah ben Obayyah, who apart from this was a secret envier and opponent of Mohammed, that he too had withdrawn with his army. Mohammed himself fought in the front rank; wearing a red fillet round his head and waving “the sword of God and his envoy,” he encouraged his men with axioms of the new faith.

5Here, too, victory seemed first to incline to the Moslems; strenuously as Hind and her women, “the daughters of the stars, with cloudy hair and pearl-ornamented necks,” might encourage the combatants, promising loving embraces to the victors, and threatening the flying with shame and death, the ranks of the Meccans nevertheless gave way. Seven members of the family of Abd ad-Dar, who each in turn performed the hereditary office of standard-bearer, rolled in the dust. Then the bowmen, fearing to be too late for the spoil, left the secure position which Mohammed had assigned them behind the mountain, and thus gave Khalid an opportunity to fall with his cavalry on the Moslem rear.

6The battle now suddenly took a new turn; the superior numbers of the Koreish carried the day, Mohammed was wounded and fell, face downwards, into a trench. His standard-bearer Mussab, fell, and as he resembled Mohammed in appearance the rumour, “Mohammed is dead,” was quickly disseminated and proved as encouraging to the infidels as it was destructive to the Moslem. The defeated were already hurrying away towards Medina, when the poet Kaab, the son of Malik, recognised the prophet amongst the wounded, in his helmet and coat of mail.

7[Illustration: ARAB WARRIOR, TIME OF MOHAMMED]

8Encouraged by the joyful tidings that Mohammed was still alive, ten or twelve of his trusty followers, including Abu Bekr and Omar, collected round him and carved themselves a way with the sword towards a rocky height, where they defended themselves bravely until the enemy, who, supposing the prophet to be dead, had paid no special heed to this little band, had begun their homeward march after insulting and mutilating the dead. Hind and her companions took the severed noses and ears of the enemy, strung them together like pearls, and wore them as necklaces and bracelets. The former even carried her rage so far that she tried to tear the heart out of the corpse of Hamza whom the Abyssinian slave Washi had slain in the midst of the fight, and to rend it in pieces.[31] The fall of the faithful Hamza touched Mohammed nearly; he frequently bewailed him, and the women of Medina raised a general lament over the fallen hero, whose name was henceforth mentioned in every death-song.

9[Sidenote: [625-627 A.D.]]

10After the retreat of the Koreish, Mohammed returned with his men to Medina. Hard as the blow had been it could not shake his belief and confidence in a successful issue. Whilst he consoled the relatives of the slain with the thought of the happy life hereafter, he prohibited the customary mourning usages, the striking of the visage, the shaving of the hair, the rending of the garments, only permitting weeping because “tears give relief to the afflicted heart”; at the same time he took judicious measures for defence, in case the Koreish, hearing that the prophet was still alive, should come back.

11But they did not venture to expose their weakened army to fresh dangers; they contented themselves with the victory they had won, and hoped that in time they might get the better of religious innovations if they preserved the sacred city with the Kaaba from all pollution, slew all Moslems who fell into their hands, and all the readers of the _Koran_ who should proclaim Islam to the inhabitants of the hill country, and if they permitted no Mohammedan to enter the Kaaba. For years the followers of the prophet might not take part in the pilgrimage to Mecca, which in the sacred months the rest of the Arabs made for the sake of prayer and festival joys.

12But the time drew slowly near when in Mecca also the consideration of the old heathen gods was to sink in the dust, and even the Koreish would bow the knee before the name of him against whom they now nourished so deadly a hatred and whom they now persecuted in so bloody a fashion.