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Scientific Errors in the Hadith: Difference between revisions
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→Failed eschatological predictions: I have added another historically erroneous hadith on the 'Year of the Elephant'/expedition aligning with Muhammad's birth year.
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(→Failed eschatological predictions: I have added another historically erroneous hadith on the 'Year of the Elephant'/expedition aligning with Muhammad's birth year.) |
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{{Quote|{{Muslim|41|7052}}|When would the Last Hour come? Thereupon Allah's Messenger (way peace be upon him) kept quiet for a while. Then looked at a young boy in his presence belonging to the tribe of Azd Shanu'a and he said: If this boy lives he would not grow very old till the Last Hour would come to you. Anas said that this young boy was of our age during those days.}}{{Quote|{{Bukhari|8|73|188}}|A bedouin came to the Prophet (ﷺ) and said, "O Allah's Messenger (ﷺ)! When will The Hour be established?" The Prophet (ﷺ) said, "Wailaka (Woe to you), What have you prepared for it?" The bedouin said, "I have not prepared anything for it, except that I love Allah and his Apostle." The Prophet (ﷺ) said, "You will be with those whom you love." We (the companions of the Prophet (ﷺ) ) said, "And will we too be so? The Prophet (ﷺ) said, "Yes." So we became very glad on that day. In the meantime, a slave of Al-Mughira passed by, and he was of the same age as I was. The Prophet (ﷺ) said. "If this (slave) should live long, he will not reach the geriatric old age, but the Hour will be established."}}The next hadith states it will not be established until Muslims fight the Jews, which appears to have happened since even during it's inception against the Jewish Tribe of Banu Qurayzah (''see: [[The Massacre of the Banu Qurayzah]]''), with more Islamic-Jewish violence throughout history, such as the [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1033_Fez_massacre 1033 Fez massacre], [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1066_Granada_massacre 1066 Granada massacre] and [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1834_looting_of_Safed 1834 looting of Safed.] As well as ongoing [https://www.britannica.com/event/Arab-Israeli-wars Israel-Palestine battles] - yet 'the hour' has not been established. | {{Quote|{{Muslim|41|7052}}|When would the Last Hour come? Thereupon Allah's Messenger (way peace be upon him) kept quiet for a while. Then looked at a young boy in his presence belonging to the tribe of Azd Shanu'a and he said: If this boy lives he would not grow very old till the Last Hour would come to you. Anas said that this young boy was of our age during those days.}}{{Quote|{{Bukhari|8|73|188}}|A bedouin came to the Prophet (ﷺ) and said, "O Allah's Messenger (ﷺ)! When will The Hour be established?" The Prophet (ﷺ) said, "Wailaka (Woe to you), What have you prepared for it?" The bedouin said, "I have not prepared anything for it, except that I love Allah and his Apostle." The Prophet (ﷺ) said, "You will be with those whom you love." We (the companions of the Prophet (ﷺ) ) said, "And will we too be so? The Prophet (ﷺ) said, "Yes." So we became very glad on that day. In the meantime, a slave of Al-Mughira passed by, and he was of the same age as I was. The Prophet (ﷺ) said. "If this (slave) should live long, he will not reach the geriatric old age, but the Hour will be established."}}The next hadith states it will not be established until Muslims fight the Jews, which appears to have happened since even during it's inception against the Jewish Tribe of Banu Qurayzah (''see: [[The Massacre of the Banu Qurayzah]]''), with more Islamic-Jewish violence throughout history, such as the [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1033_Fez_massacre 1033 Fez massacre], [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1066_Granada_massacre 1066 Granada massacre] and [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1834_looting_of_Safed 1834 looting of Safed.] As well as ongoing [https://www.britannica.com/event/Arab-Israeli-wars Israel-Palestine battles] - yet 'the hour' has not been established. | ||
{{Quote|{{Bukhari|4|52|177}}|Narrated Abu Huraira: Allah's Messenger (ﷺ) said, "The Hour will not be established until you fight with the Jews, and the stone behind which a Jew will be hiding will say. "O Muslim! There is a Jew hiding behind me, so kill him."}} | {{Quote|{{Bukhari|4|52|177}}|Narrated Abu Huraira: Allah's Messenger (ﷺ) said, "The Hour will not be established until you fight with the Jews, and the stone behind which a Jew will be hiding will say. "O Muslim! There is a Jew hiding behind me, so kill him."}} | ||
=== Year of the Elephant (and the battle's location) === | |||
The following hadith, rated sahih (authentic) by Darussalam, states that Muhammad's birth (in 570CE)<ref>[https://www.britannica.com/biography/Muhammad Muhammad] | Britannica </ref> was in 'The Year of the Elephant', a year when the Ka'ba in Mecca was allegedly nearly attacked by King Abraha of Yemen (and miraculously stopped by God), along with other traditions.<ref>See for example: ''[https://quranx.com/Tafsir/Jalal/105.1 Tafsir Jalalayn on verse 105:1]'' (Al Jalalayn / Jalal ad-din al-Maḥalli and Jalal ad-din as-Suyuti. Published in 1505.) | |||
Or a much more in-depth look at the traditions in ''[https://quran.com/105:1/tafsirs/en-tafsir-maarif-ul-quran Tafsir Ma'arif al-quran (on surah 105)]'' written by Pakistani Islamic scholar Mufti Muhammad Shafi (1897–1976).</ref> | |||
{{Quote|{{Al Tirmidhi||1|46|3619}}|Narrated Al-Muttalib bin 'Abdullah bin Qais bin Makhramah: | |||
from his father, from his grandfather, that he said: "I and the Messenger of Allah (ﷺ), were born in the Year of the Elephant" - he said: "And 'Uthman bin 'Affan asked Qubath bin Ashyam, the brother of Banu Ya'mar bin Laith - 'Are you greater (in age) or the Messenger of Allah (ﷺ)?'" He said: "The Messenger of Allah (ﷺ) is greater than me, but I have an earlier birthday." He said: "And I saw the defecation of the birds turning green."}} | |||
These traditions give context to the Qur'anic story found in surah 105, [https://quran.com/en/al-fil Surah of the Elephant,]which by itself lacks basic details to understand what is being referred to, in such a way we can assume the initial audience was already familiar with the full story.<ref>As noted by Angelika Neuwirth: ''On the basis of more recent studies, a concrete foreknowledge among the hearers can be assumed as certain: Uri Rubin (1984), on the basis of a critical assessment of the traditions, has pointed to the resonance in Q 105 of the defeat of Abraha, who was said to have been forced to withdraw from the area around Mecca achieving nothing, and leaving the sanctuary miraculously spared, a turning point in the position of the Meccans on the peninsula (on this, see also Sinai 2009: 59–74).'' | |||
Neuwirth, Angelika. The Qur'an: Text and Commentary, Volume 1: Early Meccan Suras: Poetic Prophecy (p. 61). Yale University Press.</ref> | |||
This appears to be an distorted version of a real event with the dates changed to fit the hagiographical biography of the Islamic prophet, to 'foreshadow' and highlight the year as being important, as more contemporary and sound evidence places Abraha's expedition of Central Arabia notably earlier, and not to Mecca itself; as historian of ancient Greece, Rome and the Near East, Glenn W. Bowersock notes: | |||
{{Quote|Bowersock, G.W.. <i>The Throne of Adulis: Red Sea Wars on the Eve of Islam (Emblems of Antiquity)</i> (p. 115 - 117). Oxford University Press.|They may possibly explain a dramatic, even desperate move that the king made only a few years after the Mārib conference. <i>In 552 he launched a great expedition into central Arabia, north of Najrān and south of Mecca.</i> | |||
An important but difficult inscription, which was discovered at Bir Murayghān and first published in 1951, gives the details of this expedition.10 <i>It shows that one of Abraha’s armies went northeastward into the territory of the Ma‘add tribal confederacy, while another went northwestward towards the coast (Map 2).</i> This two-pronged assault into the central peninsula is, in fact, the last campaign of Abraha known from epigraphy. It may well have represented an abortive attempt to move into areas of Persian influence, south of the Naṣrid capital at al Ḥīra. If Procopius published his history as late as 555, the campaign could possibly be the one to which the Greek historian refers when he says of Abraha, whom he calls Abramos in Greek, that once his rule was secure he promised Justinian many times to invade the land of Persia (es gēn tēn Persida), but “only once did he begin the journey and then immediately withdrew.”11 The land that Abraha invaded was hardly the land of Persia, but it was a land of Persian influence and of potentially threatening religious groups—Jewish and pagan. <i>Some historians have been sorely tempted to bring the expedition of 552, known from the inscription at Bir Murayghān, into conjunction with a celebrated and sensational legend in the Arabic tradition that is reflected in Sura 105 of the Qur’an (al fīl, the elephant). The Arabic tradition reports that Abraha undertook an attack on Mecca itself with the aim of taking possession of the Ka‘ba, the holy place of the pagan god Hubal. It was believed that Abraha’s forces were led by an elephant, and that, although vastly superior in number, they were miraculously repelled by a flock of birds that pelted them with stones. The tradition also maintained that Abraha’s assault on the ancient holy place occurred in the very year of Muḥammad’s birth (traditionally fixed about 570). Even today the path over which Abraha’s elephant and men are believed to have marched is known in local legend as the Road of the Elephant (ḍarb al fīl). | |||
Obviously, the expedition of 552 cannot be the same expedition as the legendary one, if we are to credit the coincidence of the year of the elephant (‘Ām al fīl) with the year of the Prophet’s birth.12 But increasingly scholars and historians have begun to suppose that the Quranic date for the elephant is unreliable, since a famous event such as the Prophet’s birth would tend naturally, by a familiar historical evolution, to attract other great events into its proximity. Hence the attack on Mecca should perhaps be seen as spun out of a fabulous retelling of Abraha’s final and markedly less sensational mission.</i> This is not to say that it might not also have been intended as a vexation for the Persians in response to pressure from Byzantium. But it certainly brought Abraha into close contact with major centers of paganism and Judaism in central and northwest Arabia.}} | |||
==Medicine== | ==Medicine== | ||