When Abdulmuttalib returned to Mecca he informed the people that Abraha was determined to attack Mecca and knock down the Kaaba no matter what. He instructed them to take their most valuable belongings and retreat to the mountains.
Then he held onto the hoop of the Kaaba and beseeched:
“O Divine One! Even a servant protects his people and children. Hear our cries and laments! O Divine One, protect your house lest the evil ones demolish it! We seek salvation for the Kaaba from You alone, do not cease your favor from us, not even for a moment! Damn Nebus with your wrath, don’t let the ancestors of Quraish suffer in their graves! If our qibla (Kaaba) is taken by Nebus, this too is from your divine wisdom, but do not let us witness this!”
After he completed his supplication Abdulmuttalib took his family and retreated to the mountains, where all of the people of Quraish spent the night. When the first lights of dawn appeared, the people of Quraish set their gaze on Abraha’s base in the distance…
An enormous army of 60,000 soldiers, a gigantic monstrous elephant followed by 12 more elephants were marching towards Mecca… Everyone was in awe and wonder… Were they really going to knock the Kaaba down?
When the army neared Mecca, suddenly the camel rider on top of Mahmood, the enormous hybrid elephant, slid down its trunk and whispered something into its ear. Then all of a sudden, the giant animal kneeled to the floor. How did this happen? Why did this happen? Nobody had a clue! Meanwhile the camel rider ran to the mountains and disappeared amidst the rock cliffs…
Everyone was bewildered! Other camel riders took over and tried to make the elephant stand… No matter what they did to the giant hybrid it didn’t move. Finally, someone made its head turn in the direction of Yemen. After this Mahmood stood up and started running in the direction of Yemen.
The soldiers and the commanders were furious. They mounted their camels and went after Mahmood. They beat its head with small choppers, pulled it with hooks, and jabbed it with spears, but to no avail! The giant was stubbornly resolute! It was not going to enter Mecca!
The army was dumbfounded and confused. They started losing their composition, desperately trying to make sense of this strange situation. Then suddenly black clouds started to appear in the sky moving closer and closer towards Abraha and his army… At first, they thought it must be rain, they took out their thick garments and water-resistant mats… But then they realized the black clouds were not actually clouds, they were flocks of birds. These were Ababil birds. Each one was carrying three stones; one in its beak and one on each foot.
This was the miracle of the Kaaba’s owner… A reflection from the reality of the verse that was to be revealed to our Master years later:
“THE SOLDIERS OF THE HEAVENS AND THE EARTH BELONG TO ALLAH”[1]
Each Ababil bird was almost consciously and purposely landing a stone on the head of an Abysinnian… These stones, called “sijjeen” were entering their body from their heads and fully piercing their bodies...
The people of Quraish, watching from the mountains, began to celebrate both in shock and euphoria!
There was a great mystery to these stones… Whoever it hit, their flesh was immediately infected and inflamed after which these inflamed parts fell off their body. The soldiers were scattered in frenzy, running in all directions trying to escape the birds. Abraha, on the other hand, had mounted a camel and taken the road with his accomplice. Then suddenly he too was hit with a stone and his body was immediately inflamed, and his body parts started falling off. In a short period of time nothing was left of the army of 60,000 soldiers other than decayed body parts and a few who were still writhing and squirming in pain…
After the event cooled down and all the birds left, the Meccans came down from the mountains and started their celebrations of gratitude, while a very few among them, the monotheists, prayed to the creator of the universe in appreciativeness and thankfulness…
This is the Saga of the Elephant which transpired 50 days before the birth of our Master… All of the Meccans and visitors who were there at the time saw and experienced this event. This is why when the chapter (Surah) “The Elephant” was revealed soon after the mission of risalah was given to our Master, nobody was able to object. It was also after this event that measles and pox disease started to appear… Perhaps the ‘sijjeen’ stones carried by the Ababil birds contained these pathogens…