ELEPHANTS, HISTORICAL 143 



one of its suras, or chapters, the 105 th, is entitled Surat ul- 

 Fil, "The Chapter of the Elephant." It opens with the 

 following verse: "Hast thou not seen how thy Lord dealt 

 with The masters of the Elephant?" This alludes to an 

 event that happened in the year of Mohammed's birth, 571 

 A. D. Shortly before that time a Christian Ethiopian 

 sovereign, Abraha Ebn, caused a church to be built at 

 Sanaa, designing that this should become a centre of pil- 

 grimage for the Arabs, diverting the stream of pilgrims from 

 the Kaaba at Mecca. This proved to be the case, and the 

 Koreish tribe, which had charge of what had so long been 

 regarded by the Arabs as a kind of national sanctuary, 

 sought to stem the tide of desertion by sending a man to 

 defile the Christian church, and thus rob it of its sacred 

 character in the eyes of the pilgrims. The vile attempt 

 succeeded, but the anger of Abraha was so enkindled thereby 

 that he raised an army and set forth to destroy the Kaaba. 

 To strike terror into the hearts of the Arabs by what to them 

 would be a new and unaccustomed enemy he took with him 

 thirteen war elephants. 



However, Allah did not fail to protect the sacred shrine, 

 for when the invaders neared the city of Mecca the elephant 

 on which Abraha was riding refused to advance farther, 

 kneeling down when an attempt was made to force him to 

 enter the city. This checked the attack, and soon an im- 

 mense flock of birds appeared in the heavens, hovered above 

 the hostile army and dropped death-dealing stones upon it, 

 and a torrential rain caused a flood that swept away most of 

 the soldiers who were not struck by the stones. Thus the 

 attack failed and the Kaaba was preserved. As the same 

 word is used in Arabic to signify "small stones" and "small- 

 pox," a rationalistic explanation of this recital has been that 

 an epidemic of smallpox, then appearing for the first time 

 in Arabia, was the real cause of Abraha's defeat. The leg- 



