'Personal Narrative of a pilgrimmage to Al-Madinah and Meccah. Vol. I' [‎355] (418/564)

call,
ibovedetaile^
• n ail ticipaiie!
a revealed, it
^marjallali,
1 andAH, ft
-cident to fl
lention heu;
le
idinah by
ie same tr
undredcamd
iuraydat,alt
:d into
lid he hear tk
the faith of 11
a standard l]
iouslyinqiitii
jenceofAllit 1
1 Mohaim
Attlielas
his circums
r they bestow ft
the other le
and declare tki
pprobriouslytt
est he shoi
f common sets
■ks, that Abu M
>decessor.
,s Al-Kaswif*
rsAl-Jada'a
rophet boai
tbuBakr.n
The camel
paying its F®
3d in "
XVII.— History of t
halting -place, he accidentally met some of his disciples
returning from a trading voyage to Syria ; they dressed
him and his companion Abu Bakr in white clothing
which, it is said, caused the people of Kuba to pay
a mistaken reverence to the latter. The Moslems of
Al -Madinah were in the habit of repairing every morning
to the heights near the city, looking out for the Apostle ;
and, when the sun waxed hot, they returned home. One
day, about noon, a Jew, who discovered the retinue from
afar, suddenly warned the nearest party of Ansar, or
Auxiliaries of Al-Madinah, that the fugitive was come.
They snatched up their arms and hurried from their houses
to meet him.
Mohammed's she-camel advanced to the centre of the
then flourishing town of Kuba. There she suddenly knelt
upon a place which is now consecrated ground ; at that
time it was an open space, belonging, they say, to Abu
Ayyub the Ansari, who had a house there near the abo4es
of the Benu Amr bin Auf. This event happened on the
first day of the week, the twelfth of the month Rabia al-
Awwal 1 (June 28, a.d. 622), in the firstyear of the Flight:
for which reason Monday, which also witnessed the birth,
the mission, and the death of the Prophet, is an auspicious
day to Al-Islam.
After halting two days in the house of Kulsum bin
Hadmah at Kuba, and there laying the foundation of the
God would receive no aid from man. According to M. C. de
Perceval, the Prophet preached from the back of Al-Kaswa the cele
brated pilgrimage sermon at Arafat on the 8th March, a.d. 632.
1 The Prophet is generally supposed to have started from Meccah
on the first of the same month, on a Friday or a Monday. This dis
crepancy is supposed to arise from the fact that Mohammed fled his
house in Meccah on a Friday, passed three days in the cave on Jabal
Saur, and finally left it for Al-Madinah on Monday, which therefore,
according to Moslem divines, was the first day of the Hijrah."
But the sera now commences on the 1st of the previous Muharram,
an arrangement made seventeen years after the date of the flight by
Omar the Caliph, with the concurrence of Ali.
—