The Hashimites...

The Hashimites, the Banu Zohra, and the Banu Taym took part in the league and swore that they would stand up as the champions of the injured and would see that injustices did not remain unpunished and that the claims of the oppressed were fully satisfied. This oath is known as “Hilf al-Fudul,’ League of the Virtuous. It proved its usefulness both in preventing violence and as a means to enforce restitution.

In his later years, Muhammad expressed his pleasure at having taken the initiative in that league which was formed at the house of ‘Abdullah ibn Jod’an. It continued to function for half a century following the inception of Islam. Year of The Elephant (570 A.D.) The above-mentioned episode had happened when ‘Abdul-Muttalib was young. Now we come to the most important event of his life. It took place just eight years before his death. By then, he was the patriarch of the tribe.

By the second millennium B.C., the Minaeans[^1] of South Arabia had already extended their trade far into the north of the Arabian Peninsula. After them, the Sabeans created a kingdom which prevented the emergence of any strong central power.

They were succeeded by the Himyarites (to whom Queen Balqees of Sheba [Saba'], wife of prophet Solomon, belonged) were lucky enough to escape the domination of the Roman empire after Aelius Gallus's attempt to subject them to the dominion of Augustus had misfired. These Himyarites had once extended their kingdom to Abyssinia (Ethiopia) to the west of the Red Sea, but the tide of politics shifted.

In 530 A.D., the Christian Abyssinian governor over Yemen and Southern Arabia, Abraha ibn al-Sabah al-Ashram, conquered South Arabia and pressed forward for an attack on Persia in the north but failed to advance beyond Mecca when his army was attacked, as we are told in the Holy Qur'an, by a heavenly host of tiny birds called Ababeel. It was on August 29th of that year, the Year of the Elephant, that the last Messenger of God, Muhammad, was born.

After his conquest of Yemen and Nejran, Abraha became the region's vicegerent on behalf of the Ethiopian Negus. He built a magnificent cathedral in San’a, Yemen, in the hope that it would supersede Mecca as the great place of pilgrimage for all Arabia. He had marble brought to it from one of the palaces of Balqees the Queen of Sheba and he set up crosses in it of gold and silver. Its pulpits were made of ivory and ebony.