Академия Корана:Encyclopaedia of the Qurʾān/Abyssinia

Firestone, Reuven, "Abyssinia" in: Encyclopaedia of the Qurʾān, General Editor: J. D. McAuliffe, Georgetown University, Washington DC.

Abyssinia (al-Ḥabash or al-Ḥabasha) does not appear in the Qurʾān, although the Christian Abyssinian state of Axum exerted a powerful influence on Arabia in the sixth century. Separated from the Yemen by only the narrow Bab al-Mandab Strait, Abyssinia controlled southern Arabia for some time and Christianity spread in the region. One sūra is ordinarily interpreted to allude to an Abyssinian military incursion that reached Mecca and it is said that some of the early Meccan converts to Islam took refuge in Abyssinia. Ethiopic languages influenced the dialects of southern Arabia and words of Ethiopian-derivation are found in the Qurʾān (see foreign vocabulary). According to the exegete and historian al-Ṭabarī (d. 310/923), the Meccan tribe of Quraysh (q.v.) traded in Abyssinia.

Sūra 105 (Sūrat al-Fīl) mentions God’s destruction of the People of the Elephant (q.v.). According to the classical commentators, this is a reference to an Abyssinian incursion from the Yemen to Mecca in 570 c.e., which, some reports claim, was the year Muḥammad was born. Islamic references to this military campaign are largely folkloristic and find no corroboration from south Arabian inscriptions or other sources. The expedition made an impression on the local population because of the use of one or more elephants in the campaign. Abraha (q.v.), who was said to have been the leader of the expedition, was known to the Byzantine historian Procopius as a former slave who had seized control of the Abyssinian forces in the Yemen.

According to some Islamic sources, a group of Muḥammad’s followers left Mecca for Abyssinia around the year 615. The authority on the life of the Prophet, Ibn Isḥāq (ca. 85/704-150/767), names eighty-three adult male participants and claims that this first emigration (hijra, see emigration) in Islam occurred as a result of pagan Meccan persecution, although other possible reasons have also been sug- gested (Watt, Muhammad at Mecca, 113-6). The ruler of Abyssinia, the Negus (al-Najāshī), is said to have granted them refuge, despite the fact that the pagan Meccans sent representatives who tried to convince him to deny them protection. In recognition of this, Muḥammad mourned the Negus at his death and led public prayers in his honor.

In the Arabic genealogical tradition, the Abyssinians — along with the Egyptians, Sudanese and most other black African peoples — descended from Ham, the son of Noah (q.v.). The scholar Ibn Hishām (d. 218/834) in his Kitāb al-Tījān (p. 55), an early work on south Arabian history, claims that the south Arabian descendant of Shem, Ḥaḍramawt b. Qaḥṭān, inherited Abyssinia, creating by this claim a connection which draws attention to the close geographical and cultural ties between southern Arabia and Abyssinia. According to one tradition, the biblical Esau married the daughter of an Abyssinian king and eventually came to rule his kingdom (Kisāʾī, Qiṣaṣ, 154). In light of the Jewish association of Esau with Christianity, this explained the Christian presence in Abyssinia. See also pre-islamic arabia and the qurʾān.

Bibliography

Primary

• Bukhārī, Ṣaḥīḥ, K. Manāqib al-anṣār
• Ibn Hishām, ʿAbd al-Malik, Kitāb al-Tījān fī mulūk Ḥimyar, Sanʿa n.d., 55
• Ibn Isḥāq, Sīra, ed. M. al-Saqqā et al., i, 41-56, 322-38
• Ibn Isḥāq-Guillaume, 20-7, 146-53
• Ibn Saʿd, Ṭabaqāt, ed. H. Sachau, i, 136-7

Secondary

• A.F.L. Beeston, Abraha, in ei2, i, 102-3
• id., al-Fīl, in ei2, ii, 895
• Jeffery, For. vocab., 305-7
• W.M. Watt, Muhammad at Mecca, Oxford 1953