Mother of the Believers: A Novel of the Birth of Islam

by Kamran Pasha

  Along with the ritual encircling of the temple, the Muslims retained the practice of running seven times between the hills of Safa and Marwa. This rite, whose meaning had long been forgotten by the Arabs, commemorated our mother Hagar and her desperate search for water. She had sought to save her dying son Ishmael, and at her moment of despair in the arid valley, God had caused the well of Zamzam to miraculously appear at Ishmael’s foot. As my husband explained the meaning of the ritual to the masses of pilgrims, many of whom were recent converts, I remembered how I had told Abu Sufyan the same story when I was a little girl almost fifteen years before. Abu Sufyan, who had then been the proud king of the idol worshipers, the same man who now stood humbly dressed in a pilgrim’s loincloth near the Prophet, a follower instead of an enemy.

  The next day, the Prophet had led his followers through another ancient rite, the stoning of three old pillars in the desert that had stood since time immemorial. The ritual was meant to commemorate the three times that Abraham was tempted by Satan and how he had driven away the devil by stoning him in the desert.

  And then, finally, the Messenger led the throngs out into the vast desert plain of Arafat toward the mountain from which he would deliver what would prove to be his final sermon to mankind. I gazed down at the thousands who had come to hear him speak, the crowd stretching from horizon to horizon, and I had a persistent thought that what I was seeing was a small precursor of the awe of the Day of Judgment, when mankind will rise from their graves and stand side by side before the Throne of God.

  As I looked upon the sea of white-garbed pilgrims, all dressed in equal humility regardless of wealth or status, with fair-skinned and dark-skinned believers praying side by side to the same God, I was struck by my husband’s remarkable triumph. He had taken a group of fiercely divided tribes, at war with one another for centuries, and had forged them into a single nation. A community that valued moral character over material success, an Ummah in which the rich eagerly sought to alleviate the suffering of the poor. Such a feat could not have been accomplished by a thousand great leaders over a thousand generations. And yet my love had done it single-handedly over the course of one lifetime.

  As the Messenger stood atop the ancient mountain of Arafat, I heard his voice echo to the thousands who eagerly stood under the punishing sun to hear his words.

  “O people, hear me well as I speak to you, for we may not meet again in this place after this year. O people! Your lives and your property are as sanctified to each other as the sanctity of this day, and this sacred month. Have I given the message? O God, be my witness.”

  At his words, the Pilgrims cried out in unison, “Yes!”

  The Prophet raised his hand and continued.

  “So let whoever has been given something for safekeeping give it back to him who gave him it. Truly, the usury of the Era of Ignorance has been laid aside forever. And truly, the blood vengeance of the Era of Ignorance has been laid aside forever. Truly, the hereditary distinctions that were the pretense of the Era of Ignorance have been laid aside forever.”

  He paused and then laid out his final commandments for the people, even as Moses had done at Sinai.

  “O people: truly you owe your women their rights, and they owe you yours. They may not lie with other men in your beds, let anyone into your houses you do not want without your permission, or commit indecency. You in turn must provide for them and clothe them fittingly. So fear God in respect to women, and concern yourselves with their welfare. Have I given the message? O God, be my witness.”

  The crowds cried in assent again, their voices thundering through the valley with such power that I could feel the earth beneath me tremble.

  “O people, believers are but brothers. Your Lord is One, and your father is one. All of you are from Adam, and Adam was from the mud of the earth. The noblest of you in God’s sight is the best in conduct. An Arab has no merit over a non-Arab, nor a white man over a black man, other than in his moral conduct. Have I given the message? O God, be my witness!”

  As the crowd shouted again its agreement, I saw a strange light surrounding the Messenger, like a circle of fire. I told myself it was just the punishing desert sun playing tricks on me. And yet the light persisted and grew gradually brighter.

  “Today I received these words from God, which the angel Gabriel has told me will be the final Revelation from the Lord of the Worlds.”

  There was stunned silence and everyone listened carefully as the Prophet recited in his beautiful flowing voice the Word of God.

  Today the disbelievers have lost all hope that you will give up your faith.

  Do not fear them, but fear Me.

  Today I have perfected your religion for you

  Completed my blessing upon you

  And chosen for your religion Islam—the Surrender.

  We all stood there in awe as God’s final words to mankind sank into our hearts. And then the Prophet raised his voice and asked the question one last time.

  “Have I given the message? O God, be my witness!”

  And as the cries of affirmation echoed all around us, I saw tears flowing down my husband’s face. For in that moment, I realized that he had finally completed his life’s work. There was nothing more left to be done.

  “Then let whoever is present tell whoever is absent. And peace be upon all of you, and the mercy of Allah.”

  Even as he spoke these words, the strange light around him appeared to intensify and for a moment it seemed as if my husband were made of light itself, shining brighter than the sun. I looked down, unable to bear the blinding rays emanating from about his noble figure.

  And then I gasped, for my eyes fell on the earth around where he stood. And I could see no sign of a shadow. My father and Umar were right beside him, and their shadowy outlines fell away from them as the sun slid toward the horizon. And yet Muhammad alone among all those who stood at the peak cast no shade.

  And then the mysterious light around my husband vanished, and his shadow reappeared against the craggy rocks as if it had always been there. And without another word, the Messenger of God climbed down from the mountain peak and immersed himself in the adoring masses.

  AS WE RETURNED TO Medina at the end of the Pilgrimage, two events occurred that would change the course of Muslim history. First was the birth of my half brother Muhammad. My father had taken a second wife in his old age, a war widow named Asma bint Umais, who had become pregnant with his last child. Even though she was late in her term when the season of Pilgrimage had come, my stepmother had insisted upon accompanying my father to Mecca. She had performed all the rituals admirably and without complaint, but soon after we left the precincts of the holy city, her water broke and my baby brother was born.

  I fell in love with little Muhammad the moment I saw him, for he had my fiery red hair and adorable dimples on his cheeks whenever he smiled, which was often. In the years to come, Muhammad ibn Abu Bakr would become like a son to me, even as you have been, Abdallah, and it is my greatest regret that I was not able to restrain him or guide him away from the terrible destiny that awaited him.

  And though I did not know it then, the man who shared responsibility for my brother’s destiny was among us, and it was because of the events that occurred on that road home from Mecca that their souls would become intertwined.

  Our pilgrim caravan stopped for water at a pond located in a small valley called Ghadir Khumm, a barren place of no significance that would later be remembered as the home of the great schism that drove the Muslims apart forever, shattering a unified Ummah into sects that were perennially at war.

  As the camels and horses drank at the pond and the believers refilled their water caskets, a man approached the Prophet and loudly complained about Ali, who had been his leader in a recent military command and had been seen by the men as too strict in enforcing discipline.

  I saw the patient smile on my husband’s face vanish and a dark look cross his features. I knew that he was very sensitive about
Ali, and I had learned through experience to keep my own rather dismal opinions of the Prophet’s son-in-law to myself. Of course the Messenger was aware that Ali was unpopular with some of the Muslims, but hearing that the soldiers under Ali’s command were now openly agitating against a man whom Muhammad loved like a son inspired in him a rare fury. He suddenly summoned all the believers to gather about him and then called forth Ali, who had been sharpening his sword against the jagged rocks of the valley.

  The Messenger of God held Ali’s right hand aloft and called out loudly, his black eyes shining with a frightening intensity.

  “Hear, O Muslims and do not forget. Whosoever holds me as his Mawla, know that Ali is also his Mawla. O Allah, befriend those who befriend Ali, and be the enemy of whosoever is hostile to him!”

  It was a powerful pronouncement and one unlike any I had ever heard my husband say. He had clearly exalted Ali in a way that he had never done for any other man among his followers. And yet the words themselves were unclear and open to interpretation, for the word Mawla means many things in Arabic, including master, friend, lover, and even slave. But whatever my husband meant, it was clear that he was tired of the grumbling about the young man who had fathered his grandchildren and wanted to put an end to the cheap gossip about his closest relative.

  Whether Muhammad intended anything more in that moment than to remind us to respect and honor his cousin would become a matter of passionate debate in the years to come. And one day the argument would devolve into open warfare.

  44

  Several months after we returned from the Pilgrimage, the Messenger entered my house one day when I was sewing. I looked up from the patch that I was applying to my old cloak to see him gazing at me serenely, a soft smile on his lips.

  “Is it not Maymuna’s day?” I asked, referring to the most recent of my husband’s wives, Maymuna bint al-Harith, an impoverished divorcée whom he had married shortly after the truce with Mecca. She was a kindly woman in her thirties who was always seeking ways to raise money to free slaves, as she believed that no man should be a slave to anyone except God. Maymuna was an aunt of Khalid ibn al-Waleed, the Sword of Allah, and many believed that she had influenced her nephew to abandon Mecca and defect to the Prophet’s side.

  The Prophet had continued his policy of spending one day with each of his wives to ensure that they were all treated equally. Today was dedicated to Maymuna, and my husband was normally meticulous about spending all of his allotted time with the wife whose turn had come, so I was surprised to see him in my room.

  “I just wanted to look at you,” he said simply, but there was something in his voice that worried me. It was the tone of a man who was about to leave on a long journey and was unsure when he would see his loved ones again.

  The Messenger walked toward me slowly. He looked weak and tired, and I sat him beside me on a small cushion. He smiled warmly as I ran my hand through his black curls, which were now peppered with strands of silver.

  As I looked into his eyes, I sensed he wanted to say something, and yet he was holding himself back.

  “What is it?” I asked, despite my growing apprehension about whatever it was that he was hiding from me.

  “You will live long, insha-Allah,” he said rather elliptically. “But there are times that I wish you would have passed away before me.”

  I was shocked at these words. My husband wanted me to die before he did?

  “Why would you say that?” I asked rather sharply, not bothering to hide my hurt.

  The Prophet ran his hand across my face, like a blind man trying to recognize someone’s features. Or a traveler who was leaving and wanted to imprint a memory onto the tips of his finger.

  “So that I could pray over your body and ask forgiveness for you.”

  I gave him a surprised and perhaps ungracious look, as my pride managed to twist his words into some kind of insult. But in the years to come, there would be many times that I wished that I had indeed died that day, and that his blessing could have protected me from the Day of Judgment, when the true burden of my guilt will be weighed by God.

  But alas, that was not my destiny, nor his. The Messenger of God took no offense at the rather sharp glance I had given him. He smiled again and rose to his feet to leave…and then collapsed to the floor!

  “My love!” I cried out in shock, forgetting to be angry at his enigmatic words. The Messenger had fallen as if his knees had been cut from beneath him, and he lay curled at my feet like a baby in a crib.

  I quickly bent over and touched his forehead. He was burning up.

  And then I felt his body shake with tremors, but they were not the unearthly convulsions of the Revelation; they were the very human shivers of a man consumed by fever.

  FOR THE NEXT THREE nights, we gathered around the Messenger as he lay in Maymuna’s bed. The Mothers had been at his side nonstop since the moment I had cried out for help and Ali and Abbas had arrived to aid their kinsman. We had kept a vigil into the late hours, applying cold rags to his forehead to lower the fever and feeding him bowls of soup and broth to give him strength. But the days passed and my husband’s state only worsened.

  “It will pass…” I would reassure the other Mothers. “It always does…He is the Messenger of God…the angels will heal him…”

  But even I had difficulty believing my own words.

  ON THE FOURTH NIGHT of the Messenger’s illness, a council of his inner circle gathered at his bedside to debate the future of Islam. With the Prophet incapacitated and steadily deteriorating, the future of the entire Ummah was at stake. The fragile unity that the Messenger had forged among the Arabs by the sheer strength of his personality was now on the verge of collapsing. Rumors were coming that some of the Bedouin tribes were considering renouncing their pacts of alliance with Medina. And the Byzantine empire was allegedly massing its forces for an invasion.

  While these were the kinds of political and military threats the Muslims were accustomed to facing, there was a more troubling development. A group of pretenders to the mantle of prophecy was rising, each trying to steal some of Muhammad’s success to enhance his own glory. A rogue named Musaylima had proclaimed himself a new prophet of Allah. He had written to my husband in the months past calling on his “brother” to recognize Musaylima as his fellow Messenger of God and suggesting that the two should divide the world between them. Before he had fallen ill, Muhammad sent a response to Musaylima branding him a liar and proclaiming that all the world belonged to God alone. But the false prophet was undeterred and had begun to raise a following from among the superstitious clan of Bani Hanifa on the eastern edge of the Najd desert. And a woman of the Bani Tamim named Sajah, a kahina who was rumored to be versed in dark magic, had similarly proclaimed herself a prophetess and was busy gathering a small but fanatically loyal group of disciples. Had the Messenger not been confined to his sickbed, the defeat of these new threats to Islam would have been his priority.

  The council of believers had arrived, hoping to find the Messenger in a rare moment of lucidity in which he could guide them as to how to run the affairs of state. The small band consisted of my father, Umar, Uthman, Ali, Talha and Zubayr, along with Muawiya, a new member of the Messenger’s inner circle. The son of Abu Sufyan had emigrated to the oasis after the surrender of Mecca and had been chosen by the Messenger as his personal scribe, an honor that had formerly belonged to Ali. Muawiya’s sudden rise to prominence in the community had startled some Muslims, but my husband had wisely realized that an overture to this scion of the Quraysh would accelerate the process of reconciliation. And the honey-tongued young man had quickly proven his skills as a politician, winning over skeptics with gifts and sweet words. Umar in particular had taken a liking to the former prince of Mecca and had taken him under his wing. Muawiya’s star was rising rapidly in the heavens of Islam, and it appeared that the only one who remained suspicious of his intentions was Ali, which was perhaps understandable.

  The Companions waited qu
ietly by the Prophet’s side for over an hour until his eyes opened briefly. My poor husband looked at them all for a second as if he did not recognize them, and then his black eyes finally kindled with their mysterious inner light and he sat up slowly in bed.

  My husband must have guessed why these men were here, as he spoke before any of them could greet him. His eyes focused on Muawiya as he gestured with his hand.

  “Bring a parchment and pen…” the Messenger said, his voice hoarse and trembling. “I have something to dictate…As long as the Muslims follow my command, they will prosper…”

  Muawiya rose and removed a sheaf of parchment from inside his rich emerald robes. But before he could move to the Prophet’s side, Umar put a restraining hand on his arm. I saw the troubled look on the towering Companion’s face when he glanced at the Messenger, whose eyes were struggling to stay open as the delirium came back with a vengeance.

  “The holy Qur’an is enough for us,” Umar said, clearly nervous that the Messenger was in no state of mind to give commandments.

  But Ali stepped forward, his green eyes flashing.

  “Obey the Messenger of God,” he said to Muawiya sharply. The hawk-faced young man met Ali’s gaze without flinching and then turned his attention back to Umar, who shook his head gravely.

  “He is sick and his words may be confused. Do you want to bring fitna on the people?” Umar said sharply, using the Arabic word for chaos and political strife.

  Ali did not back down.