1856.] Alfred von Kremer's edition of Wahidy. 63 



which I quote, he will observe how useful Wakidy is for tracing the 

 history of that period. 



Most of the refugees had neither friends at Madynah nor any 

 means of subsistance. The number of men — exclusive of women 

 and children — who were destitute is calculated at four hundred.* 

 However great the charity of those of their brethren might be who 

 were in easier circumstances, it must have been altogether insuffi- 

 cient to relieve their sufferings. The mosque which the prophet 

 had built was filled with men who were houseless. Here they slept 

 at night and sought shelter during the day against the scorching 

 rays of the sun. This mosque, it appears, consisted of a low terrace, 

 walled in on three sides, open on the fourth towards the court-yard 

 and provided with a roof. Such a building is called #offahf and 



* " The persons alluded to are the poor people among the refugees who 

 amounted to about four hundred men. They had neither dwellings nor friends in 

 Madynah. They employed themselves in studying the Koran in the mosque and 

 in picking date-stones. They were ready to proceed on any expedition the prophet 

 might send them on. These are the men of the Soffah." (Baghawy Commr. Kor. 

 2, 274.) 



The mosque would not have afforded shelter to four hundred men and during 

 the first and second year after the flight, the total number of refugees did not much 

 exceed that number, and subsequently when they were successful in war the number 

 of destitute Moslims was much diminished by death in battle and by the acquisition 

 of booty. Ibn Sa'd folio 49 has two traditions, one of Abu Horayrah who was 

 himself one of the men of the Soffah and one of MoAammad b. Ka'b, according to both 

 the number of men who lived in the mosque amounted only to thirty. According 

 to a tradition of Abu Horayrah in Bokhary, they amounted to seventy. But these 

 traditions refer to a very late period, for Abu Horayrah states what he saw and 

 experienced himself, and he embraced the Islam very late. I therefore suppose 

 that four hundred or less was the number of all the destitute Moslims, and that 

 about one-fourth of them say seventy, who were more miserable than the rest 

 lived in the mosque. The latter alone can properly be called the men of the 

 Soffah, but at a later period it was apparently applied to all destitute refugees. Daily 

 changes must have taken place, some leaving the Soffah and others taking their place, 

 and therefore an attempt at too great precision would be a sure road to error. 



t This is the meaning which the word has in Ibn al-Banna and which it retains 

 up to this day in Masqat. Such a place is now called Lywan, at Damascus whilst the 

 word coffah has quite a different meaning in Syria and Egypt, on which see Kremer's 

 Mittelsyrien and Lane's Modern Egyptians. Yet I have been assured at Damas- 

 cus that a Lywan with a flat roof may be called a Soffah. 



