SO YOU AFFLICTED THE PEOPLE OF YOUR HOMETOWN WITH A FAMINE BECAUSE THEY ARE DISBELIEVERS
We’ve talked a lot about the Medina days in history lessons, but the Mecca days have been left fairly blank beyond that one history lesson in surah 6 and some tidbits along the way. There is a simple reason for this: far more was written about the Medina days in reputable sources. Mohammed lived as a Muslim in Mecca from 610 to 622 AD, and there was animosity between Mohammed’s camp in Medina and the Quraysh of Mecca all the way through 630 AD. That’s a long time! But the reliable information that we have on what exactly was occurring in Mecca during those 20 years is really skimpy.
Of course, we know the general outline, with the Quran itself as the most important source--how the majority of people in Mecca not only didn’t take to Mohammed’s “message” but thought he was a bit nutty and irritating, and all the drama that unfolded as a result of that. We know a bit about what happened towards the end of this time period, with the Treaty of Hudaibiyya and the conquest of Mecca. But we just don’t have a serious record of everything that happened in between, and most of what Muslims are taught about Mecca in this era relies mostly or entirely on weak traditions.
None of this is really surprising when you think about the numbers involved here. The vast majority of Meccans were not Muslim when Mohammed and his followers left for Medina. Those who stayed and later “embraced Islam” only after the conquest of Mecca (and subsequent hunting of polytheists) years later would naturally have been reluctant to talk about the years they spent in opposition to “Allah’s apostle”. Those who were Muslims at the time and migrated from Mecca to Medina with Mohammed numbered fewer than 200 even by the most optimistic accounts, and not all of them survived long enough to tell the tale. Compare that to the thousands of men that Mohammed led to conquer the city within a decade. Islam was born in Mecca, but it didn’t go from Local Man Becomes Cult Leader to Local Man Becomes Warlord until Medina.
So in addition to a dearth of material to work with, we ultimately have a dearth of potential original sources. Of those who narrated a thousand or more ahadith, in fact, the only two who were present in Mecca at any point during that era (Aisha and Mohammed’s cousin Abdallah ibn al-Abbas) were both very small children at the time of the migration to Medina. As such, trying to piece together exactly what went on in Mecca takes some work and some willing suspension of disbelief. This applies to not only Mohammed’s days in Mecca, but also to what happened in Mecca before Mohammed conquered it. Today we will look at a very good example of this problem.
In the last section, we were talking about this hadith from Bukhari, which is repeated in several sahih ahadith:
We were with `Abdullah and he said, "When the Prophet (ﷺ) saw the refusal of the people to accept Islam he said, "O Allah! Send (famine) years on them for (seven years) like the seven years (of famine during the time) of (Prophet) Joseph." So famine overtook them for one year and destroyed every kind of life to such an extent that the people started eating hides, carcasses and rotten dead animals. Whenever one of them looked towards the sky, he would (imagine himself to) see smoke because of hunger. So Abu Sufyan went to the Prophet (ﷺ) and said, "O Muhammad! You order people to obey Allah and to keep good relations with kith and kin. No doubt the people of your tribe are dying, so please pray to Allah for them." So [Mohammed recites part of surah 44 about how Allah will take them in a “mighty grasp”]. Ibn Mas`ud added, [that] happened in the battle of Badr
After that, Mohammed recites an ayah from surah 44, in which he says that the Meccans would just return to disbelief and would be destroyed by Allah, which is interpreted as a reference to the Battle of Badr. Other ahadith on this subject have some alternate dialogue--in this one Mohammed curses “Mudar”, which was an enormous tribal confederation including the Quraysh--but the general idea is the same.
That famine is assumed to be what Mohammed is talking about in 23:76, where he tells the Meccans that Allah has already punished them for their disbelief, as a warning. Well, fair enough, right? Here’s the issue: this is supposed to be a Meccan surah. And there is no record of such a catastrophic famine befalling Mecca before Mohammed left the city in 622 AD. It could have happened, I guess, but there’s nothing said of it in any reputable source, and one would assume that A) if such a famine had happened, a hell of a lot more people would’ve converted to Islam and followed Mohammed, and B) it would have been mentioned in the ahadith by people who suffered through it. But there isn’t any mention of this event anywhere. In fact, it’s really hard to tell when this apparent famine happened at all!
Let’s look at some sketchy stories that pinpoint the supposed famine in Mohammed’s Mecca days. Here is one from the guy mentioned in the Bukhari hadith. Abdullah ibn Masud is mentioned in another sahih hadith which says:
One day I went to Ibn Mas`ud who said, "When Quraish delayed in embracing Islam, the Prophet (ﷺ) [said:] I invoked Allah to curse them, so they were afflicted with a (famine) year because of which many of them died and they ate the carcasses ... Asbath added on the authority of Mansur, "Allah's Messenger (ﷺ) prayed for them and it rained heavily for seven days. So the people complained of the excessive rain. The Prophet (ﷺ) said, 'O Allah! (Let it rain) around us and not on us.' So the clouds dispersed over his head and it rained over the surroundings."
This and all of the other sahih ahadith concerning this topic stem from the same three narrators: Mansour, Masruq, and Abu al-Duha; they mention Ibn Masud as the ultimate source of this knowledge.
Reader, it is my opinion that one of these people is lying.
There is no record of any such famine in Mecca before the migration to Medina, nor is there any trace of this supposed famine from any chain of narration not involving the people named above. If Mohammed created and ended a drought on demand, I’d guess that he’d have won more than a couple hundred converts in 12+ years in Mecca. After all, one of the Meccans’ persistent criticisms of Mohammed, as the Quran itself states, was that he could not perform miracles. In fact, the account of Mohammed sending rain to relieve a drought, the people getting soaked and complaining, then the rainclouds being pushed out in a circle above is extremely similar to another mythical account... about this happening in Medina, which does not involve the Quraysh at all. It seems like that myth got transformed a bit and then backdated to the Mecca days, and that’s how the first hadith came to be.
This does not mean that the famine itself is purely mythical. It is mentioned by plenty of other narrators--just not the part about Mohammed performing a miracle to both invoke it and stop it, then placing it pre-Badr. I am now going to show, in obnoxious detail, why this detail was almost certainly false and early Islamic myth-making, and why the real famine, if it happened, instead occurred while Mohammed was in Medina.
There are plenty of other famines mentioned in Islamic histories and the sira we’ve been reading, but none that properly fit the timeline here. Ibn Ishaq, for example, references a famine that led to the young Ali coming to live with his older cousin Mohammed and his wife Khadijah:
God showed His favor and goodwill towards him (Ali) when a grievous famine overtook Quraysh. Abu Talib (Ali's father, Mohammed's uncle) had a large family, and the prophet approached his (other) uncle al-Abbas, who was one of the richest of Banu Hashim (their clan) ... the apostle took [in] Ali and kept him with him and al-Abbas took (Ali's brother) Jaafar.
But this was before Mohammed’s prophet days. So that one doesn’t work as a punishment for disbelievers. And anyway it’s unclear whether the people in Mecca were dying of hunger here--the implication is more like Abu Talib in particular was suffering because he didn’t have enough money to feed his large family. That was possibly because fewer people were coming to Mecca for the hajj, and Abu Talib made money catering to pilgrims. And Ibn Ishaq mentions no other “grievous famine”.
Some modern-day scholars instead try to connect the mysterious famine with a “boycott” of Mohammed’s clan, the Banu Hashim, mentioned in some history books, though it is not referenced in any strong ahadith. At some point, these books say, the Quraysh got so pissed off at Mohammed that they agreed to stop trading and marrying with his clan, even though most of his clan wasn’t Muslim at the time. The boycott was not very effective because people went around it and quietly traded with them anyway, then two or three years later the boycotters gave up. Even the sketchy sources describing this event have been drastically dramatized in modern times, implying it was a boycott of all Muslims (it wasn’t) and that it resulted in people dying (it didn’t). The actual sources that mention this never say this “boycott” starved anyone, let alone that it killed people. And at any rate, even if you do connect the Meccan famine to the supposed failed “boycott”, there’s still no mention of the supposed retaliatory famine in this era in any history books!
There is no other famine mentioned anywhere between 610 and 622 AD that we can even semi-plausibly connect with the famine. So we’re gonna have to ignore the belief that this was from the Mecca days if we want to make this work. The first hadith has to contain mythical details--a hadith being sahih does not necessarily mean that it is a true recollection of events, but simply that the statement probably does ultimately trace back to the alleged source (see examples of mythical sahih ahadith here or here). So let’s expand the timeline a bit. Al-Wahidi records a version of the story that does imply it was from the Medina days:
When Thumamah ibn Athal al-Hanafi (a powerful tribal chief) was brought to the Messenger of Allah, Allah bless him and give him peace, as a prisoner and the latter embraced Islam, he set him free. Thumamah returned to al-Yamamah (Najd region) and prevented the people of Mecca from getting any provisions from al-Yamamah. Allah, exalted is He, sent upon Quraysh years of scarcity until they were forced to eat animal hair mixed with blood. Abu Sufyan went to see the Messenger of Allah, Allah bless him and give him peace, and said: ‘I beseech you by Allah and our ties of kinship; do you not claim that you have been sent a mercy unto the worlds’. He said: ‘Indeed!’ Abu Sufyan said: ‘But you have killed fathers with the sword and children with hunger’
So, okay, here we have a clearer story: the “famine” is caused less by natural causes and more by a blockade of goods that results in starvation, courtesy of this powerful tribal leader from the Najd region east of Mecca and Medina. Allah’s “divine punishment” comes in because the guy doing the blockading is a Muslim. Ibn Ishaq relates the incident in which Thumamah here was captured:
The apostle's cavalry went out and captured a man of the Banu Hanifa not knowing who he was ... The apostle went to him and urged him to accept Islam .. When they let him go he went as far as al-Baqi, where he purified himself and then returned and paid homage to the prophet
If you remember from way back in surah 9, the early Muslims did engage in some raiding and attacks before Badr, most of which involved them trying to attack a caravan; they succeeded in the Nakhla raid, which resulted in a Meccan trader being killed during a supposedly “sacred month”, prompting the Quraysh to put together a defense force for the next caravan. The Muslims at the time did not have the numbers to raid all the way into the Najd region, though, and there’s no record of them having done so in 623-early 624 AD. So... if we want this story to work within the timeline, we have to assume that Thumamah was captured in some small, otherwise unmentioned raid when he was just hanging out in the Hijaz region for some reason. Again, it’s possible. But it seems very unlikely. And based on where this incident is listed in Ibn Ishaq’s work, this happened long after Badr, anyway, closer to 630 AD. Another dead end...
If we assume that the famine really did happen and is not just some early Islamic myth-making, going by the sources available to us, we’re gonna have to ignore 1) the belief that this ayah is from Mecca, and 2) Ibn Masud’s alleged interpretation of the ayah, mentioned in the hadith, as referring to Badr. We gotta put the famine post-Badr. No other timeline makes sense. In this case, the famine would be a warning whereas the outright conquest of Mecca and subsequent elimination of polytheism would be the true punishment, I guess. Basically a variant of the standard Allah Will Destroy You Like Past Disbelievers thing.
This paper records some other opinions of scholars and tafsir authors, which do gel with the al-Wahidi account as long as we assume this is happening after Badr:
al-Thalabi in his Tafsir: the [Quraysh] suffered hunger for seven years and the Arab tribes cut off their food supplies according to the order to the prophet. ... [Abu Sufyan] asked the Prophet to invoke God for them, which the Prophet indeed did. Then the prophet permitted to carry food to them while they were still unbelievers
This 11th century account expands the famine so it lasts the full seven years, whereas the Bukhari hadith says Mohammed asked for a seven year famine but only got one year. It also says that Mohammed graciously stopped the famine upon Abu Sufyan’s request and relieved the starving Meccans. This last part, where Mohammed saves the Meccans from hunger, seems to have sprung up in the works of the Arabic grammarian al-Farra but is not found in any reputable ahadith. But still, keep it in mind for later. The tidbit about the famine lasting seven years is not found in earlier stories and seems fabricated, but the core idea--that the famine was caused by some Arab tribe blockading Mecca--at least does fit with the Thumamah story.
So the best vague approximation for what the famine really was and when it really occurred (if ever) is that it was a blockade of Mecca carried out on Mohammed’s orders at some point between 625 and 630, which is when Mecca was conquered. That at least gives us a better starting point than “idk it happened at some point somehow”.
There is more evidence for putting the famine in the later end of that period (~628) than the earlier end, simply due to Abu Sufyan’s presence in the hadith--his visit to Medina just before Mohammed conquered Mecca, in which he tried to resolve the situation peacefully, is the only time he’s mentioned as actually visiting the city in reputable sources. But for the sake of argument, let’s assume that there was some otherwise unmentioned visit. This will let us look at some alleged incidents that put the famine closer to 625.
Al-Wahidi mentions one other incident involving Abu Sufyan visiting Medina, this time at some point after the Battle of Uhud.
After the fighting at Uhud, [Abu Sufyan etc] travelled to Medina and stayed as guests at ‘Abd Allah ibn Ubayy’s (Medinan leader called one of the “munafiqun”). The Prophet ... had allowed them to come to speak with him with his assurance of protection. ... They said to the Prophet ... “Reject the mention of our idols al-Lat, al-‘Uzza and Manat and say that they have benefit and the power of intercession for those who worship them, and we will leave you alone with your Lord!” Their words hurt the Prophet
This incident isn’t mentioned by any of the sahih ahadith, but it apparently stems from around the 8th century (allegedly from Muqatil), so at least it’s a pretty early tradition. According to this, at some point after Uhud, Abu Sufyan stopped by Medina and asked Mohammed to just keep the names of their goddesses out of his mouth and say that they could respond to prayers. Mohammed and Umar rejected this and the delegation went back to Mecca. The story seems to imply that it wasn’t right after Uhud, because it implies that the Muslims weren’t in a very subservient position here, so maybe it was after the later non-battle at Badr or else the siege of Medina. That would be 626 or 627. If you remember from surah 9′s history lessons, one of the reasons why Abu Sufyan refused to fight at Badr that year is because it was a drought year. A drought coupled with a blockade would have produced some seriously awful results. Maybe we’re on to something here? Could this be the visit in which Abu Sufyan pleaded for relief?
Some traditions, again not found in any sahih ahadith but still worth mentioning, imply that in the period between the failed siege of Medina and the conquest of Mecca, Abu Sufyan began to reconsider his strategy and tried to appease Mohammed by accepting gifts from him and sending Medina gifts in return. The paper quotes the scholar Ibn Asakir (1100s AD), citing a tradition supposedly going back to Mohammed’s follower Ikrimah:
[Abu Sufyan] sent to the prophet weapons and other things which the prophet accepted. Then the prophet sent him [dates] and Abu Sufyan sent him in return hides.
Similar traditions suggest that Mohammed sent food to the people of Mecca in general, which is like that account from al-Farra mentioned above.
So, hey, we maybe got something going on here. The general idea would be that at some point between 626 and 627 AD, Mohammed told one of his followers to blockade the eastern routes to Mecca, depriving them of crucial food supplies in a drought year. In addition, Mohammed ordered his followers to raid their allies and some related clans (the other “Mudar” clans), depriving the Quraysh of outside help. After the collapse of the siege of Medina and the defeat of the Jews and various Ghatafan clans, the Quraysh were isolated and, apparently, starving.
Within a year of that happening, Abu Sufyan recognized the inevitable and interceded with Mohammed to ask for relief, at which point Mohammed sent supplies to Mecca, establishing his control over the city in advance of the Treaty of Hudaibiyya and subsequent conquest of Mecca. Despite the fall of the city, Abu Sufyan would ultimately be rewarded for his subservience, as his family was taken into Mohammed’s inner circle and his son and grandson would both go on to be caliphs. Yaaaay mystery solved!!
As this other paper points out, this all relies upon sticking different traditions together. The one where Abu Sufyan visits Medina to ask Mohammed to stop talking shit about their goddesses doesn’t mention any famine. Even if the Thumamah story is true, it seems like the effects of the famine weren’t disastrous by the time of the supposed “after Uhud” visit. I mean, that seems like a pretty damn crucial piece of information to leave out. So while, yeah, it’s possible, again, it relies on highly tenuous readings of already shaky traditions. Let’s take one more swing at this riddle and try to place the famine in the latest years possible--closer to the time of the conquest of Mecca itself. After the Treaty of Hudaibiyya, in the years 628-630 AD. Maybe “Allah” only gave Mohammed one year of famine instead of seven because Mohammed would be in control of the city not long after that year. A sahih hadith mentions the following incident of a guy from Mecca leaving for Medina in this period.
Abu Basir a man from the Quraish (who was a Muslim), came to [Medina]. And [the Quraysh] sent (two men) to look for him; so [Mohammed] handed him over to the two men. They took him away ... and alighted to eat some dates which they had, Abu Basir said to one of the men: ... I think this sword of yours is a fine one; the other drew the sword and said: Yes I have tried it. Abu Basir said: Let me look at it. He let [Abu Basir] have it and [Abu Basir] struck him till he died, whereupon the other fled and came to Medina, and running entered the mosque. ... He said (to Mohammed): I swear by Allah that my Companion has been killed, and I’m as good as dead. Abu Basir then arrived and said: Allah has fulfilled your covenant. You returned me to them, but Allah saved me from them. The Prophet (ﷺ) said: Woe to his mother, stirrer up of war! ... When [Abu Basir] heard that he knew that [Mohammed] would send him back to them, so he went out and came to the seashore. Abu Jandal escaped and joined Abu Basir till a band of them collected.
So this guy, Abu Basir, is sent back to Mecca as per the conditions of the treaty (Mohammed sent the men back at first but kept the women, even though the treaty itself made no such distinction). But on the way back Abu Basir stabs one of the guys escorting him and chases after the other one, who runs back to Medina and tells Mohammed what happened. Mohammed is irritated and says that Abu Basir now really has to go back, because he’s just killed a guy for no reason. Instead of returning to Mecca, Abu Basir instead joins up with this Abu Jandal fellow--a runaway from Mecca who had secretly converted before the Battle of Badr and had switched sides during the battle along with his brother, much to the chagrin of the Quraysh. After the battle, he was dragged home and imprisoned for his betrayal, but he later made his way to Medina. Mohammed said had to go back, mentioned in another sahih hadith.
Abu Basir and Abu Jandal, along with various other Muslims, set up a “band”, as the hadith says. Hey...... haven’t we heard of these guys before somewhere?
Oh yeah! They were in this hadith from surah 9!
Abu Jandal bin Suhail got himself released from them (i.e. infidels) and joined Abu Basir. So, whenever a man from Quraish embraced Islam he would follow Abu Basir till they formed a strong group. By Allah, whenever they heard about a caravan of Quraish heading towards Sham, they stopped it and attacked and killed them (i.e. infidels) and took their properties. The people of Quraish sent a message to the Prophet (ﷺ) requesting him for the Sake of Allah and Kith and kin to send for (i.e. Abu Basir and his companions) promising that whoever (amongst them) came to the Prophet (ﷺ) would be secure. So the Prophet (ﷺ) sent for them (i.e. Abu Basir's companions) and [Allah] revealed the following Divine Verses: "... After He made you the victorious over them. ... the unbelievers had pride and haughtiness, in their hearts ... the pride and haughtiness of the time of ignorance." (48.24-26) And their pride and haughtiness was that they did not confess (write in the treaty) that he (i.e. Muhammad) was the Prophet of Allah and refused to write: "In the Name of Allah, the most Beneficent, the Most Merciful,"
So the “band” in question was a band of murdererous converts from among the Quraysh who attacked every Qurayshi caravan along the Syria route they could get their hands on, killed the traders, and stole all their goods. During the “truce”. The Meccans--presumably including Abu Sufyan--asked Mohammed “for the sake of Kith and kin” (his family/clan) if uhhh hey could you maybe stop your people from attacking us please we kind of have a treaty with you bro lol?? But in response Mohammed blamed them for refusing to recognize him as a prophet in the treaty (remember that debacle?).
Now hold the fuck up. Here we really do seem to have something. There was a drought going on--starting around 626 and continuing at least until the time of the Tabouk expedition, as we’ve already talked about--and here we have a sahih hadith telling us that the Meccans were also being deprived of their trade, not just from the east as in the other story, but also from the north--from their absolute most vital route. And, as the paper I linked above mentions, the scholar Ibn Hajar connects this incident to a time in which:
(Quraysh) sent Abu Sufyan b. Harb to the apostle of Allah to ask him and to plead with him to summon Abu Jandal and the people who were with him.
...Abu Sufyan went to Mohammed in person during the “treaty” era, which would be 628 or 629! And this ties into the earlier explanations about the stories supposedly set a couple years earlier in 626/627--because Abu Sufyan’s visit here still led to Mohammed relieving the Meccans of the blockade, as long as the Quraysh agreed to ignore the one part of the treaty that was actually beneficial to them, which they did:
They (i.e., Quraysh) said: 'anyone who sets out from us to you may stay with you lawfully, and there is nothing objectionable in it'
So it all ultimately fits together!
TO SUM UP A VERY LONG READ: If we assume the famine did happen, the most logical way to put together the story is this. Mohammed first started blockading Mecca from the lands of the Najd in the east, courtesy of Thumamah. Gradually the allies of the Quraysh were defeated or made to submit to Mohammed, from Bedouin clans to the Jews of Medina. There was a drought going on, and times were tough but not unbearable, because the Meccans still had their other trading routes to rely upon. But years later, after the Quraysh’s strength had collapsed and the treaty had been signed, the people of Mecca still “persisted in their unbelief”. And so a band of Muslims began to blockade them from the north with Mohammed’s support. Mecca was cut off from vital trade routes in two directions, and a famine began. After a year or so of misery, Abu Sufyan realized that defeat was inevitable, and began taking steps to effectively surrender to Mohammed, including begging him to stop the blockade in exchange for getting rid of a pro-Quraysh stipulation in the Treaty of Hudaibiyya. Mohammed agreed to this and the condition of the people in Mecca improved once he sent them supplies, but by now they knew that they lived and died on Mohammed’s whim, and it was only a short time before he took over the city itself.
To me this timeline is really the only one possible, given the evidence. The Bukhari hadith is almost certainly mythical, and based on a myth that puts this incident in a totally different era at that. When it comes to the surah we’ve been reading, some parts of it, perhaps including 23:76, appear to be from the Medina era instead of the Mecca days. And the punishment-famine referenced in the various ahadith we’ve read is likelier to be this famine, caused by a combination of drought and blockades prior to the conquest of Mecca, than any other supposed famine.
So there you have it. I think that is the single clearest explanation for that ayah, and several related others that we will later come across. In addition to raids, ambushes, forced conversions, massacres, sieges, mass enslavements, rapes, feudalism schemes, and ethnic cleansing, evidently Mohammed was not adverse to using hunger as a weapon. Nobody ever said that establishing a theocratic empire was a cute process fam!!
⇚ previous day | next day ⇛
