Note [édition originale] : The Greeks have been overcome by the Persians, &c.] The accomplishment of the prophecy contained in this passage, which
is very famous among the
Mohammedans, being insisted on by their doctors as a
convincing proof that the
Korân really came down from heaven, it may be
excusable to be a little particular.
The passage is said to have been revealed on occasion of a great victory
obtained by the
Persians over the
Greeks, the news whereof coming to
Mecca,
the infidels became strangely elated, and began to abuse
Mohammed and his
followers, imagining that this success of the
Persians, who, like themselves,
were idolaters, and supposed to have no scriptures, against the
Christians,
who pretended as well as
Mohammed to worship one
God, and to have divine
scriptures, was an earnest of their own future successes against the prophet
and those of his religion: to check which vain hopes, it was foretold, in the
words of the text, that how improbable soever it might seem, yet the scale
should be turned in a few years, and the vanquished
Greeks prevail as
remarkably against the
Persians.
That this prophecy was exactly fulfilled the commentators fail not to
observe, tho’ they do not exactly agree in the accounts they give of its
accomplishment; the number of years between the two actions being not
precisely determined. Some place the victory gained by the
Persians in the
fifth year before the
Hejra, and their defeat by the
Greeks in the second year
after it, when the battle of
Bedr was fought
1:
others place the former in the
third or fourth year before the
Hejra, and the latter in the end of the sixth
or beginning of the seventh year after it, when the expedition of
al
Hodeibiyah was undertaken
2.
The date of the victory gained by the
Greeks, in the first of these
accounts, interferes with a story which the commentators tell, of a wager laid
by
Abu Becr with
Obba Ebn Khalf, who turned this prophecy into ridicule. Abu
Becr at first laid ten young camels that the
Persians should receive an
overthrow within three years; but on his acquainting
Mohammed with what he had
done, that prophet told him that the word bed’, made use of in this passage,
signified no determinate number of years, but any number from three to nine
(tho’ some suppose the tenth year is included), and therefore advised him to
prolong the time, and to raise the wager; which he accordingly proposed to
Obba, and they agreed that the time assigned should be nine years, and the
wager a hundred camels. Before the time was elapsed, Obba died of a wound he
had received at
Ohod, in the third year of the
Hejra
3;
but the event
afterwards showing that
Abu Becr had won, he received the camels of
Obba’s
heirs, and brought them in triumph to
Mohammed
4.
History informs us that the successes of
Khosru Parviz, king of
Persia,
who carried on a terrible war against the
Greek empire, to revenge the death
of
Maurice, his father-in-law, slain by
Phocas, were very great, and continued
in an uninterrupted course for two and twenty years. Particularly in the year
of
Christ 615, about the beginning of the sixth year before the
Hejra the
Persians, having the preceding year conquered
Syria, made themselves masters
of Palestine, and took
Jerusalem; which seems to be that signal advantage
gained over the
Greeks mentioned in this passage, as agreeing best with the
terms here used, and most likely to alarm the
Arabs by reason of their
vicinity to the scene of action: and there was so little probability, at that
time, of the
Greeks being able to retrieve their losses, much less to distress
the
Persians, that in the following years the arms of the latter made still
farther and more considerable progresses, and at length they laid siege to
Constantinople itself. But in the year 625, in which the fourth year of the
Hejra began, about ten years after the taking of
Jerusalem, the
Greeks, when
it was least expected, gained a remarkable victory over the
Persians, and not
only obliged them to quit the territories of the empire, by carrying the war
into their own country, but drove them to the last extremity, and spoiled the
capital city
al Madâyen;
Heraclius enjoying thenceforward a continued series
of good fortune, to the deposition and death of
Khosru. For more exact
information in these matters, and more nicely fixing the dates, either so as
to correspond with or to overturn this pretended prophecy (neither of which is
my business here), the reader may have recourse to the historians and
chronologers
1.
-
1
Jallalo’ddin, &c.
-
2
Al Zamakh, Al Beidawi.
-
3
See p. 298. not. c.
-
4
Al Beidawi, Jallalo’ddin, &c.
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1
V. etiam Asseman. Bibl. Orient. t. 3, part. i.
p. 411, &c. & Boulainy. Vie de Mahom. p. 333, &c.