Ridda in Bahrain, Oman, Mahra and Yemen

Four quarters of the heavens, one answer

Whoever, in the twelfth year after the Hijra, had unrolled a map of the Arabian Peninsula and taken Medina as its heart, could have pointed his finger along four directions in which the sword was raised at the same time. To the east, beyond the palm oases of Najd, lay Bahrain on the coast of the Persian Gulf. Further eastward, behind the desert of ar-Rubʿ al-Khali, lay Oman on the Indian Ocean. To the south, beyond the sand sea, lay Hadramawt with its fortresses of clay. And in the heart of Yemen, between the highlands and the coast, whole tribes had renounced their loyalty to Islam as soon as the news of the passing of the Prophet ﷺ had reached them.

It was the Ridda, the apostasy, in its greatest geographical extent: not one front, but four; not one army, but four. Abu Bakr ﵁ stood in Medina and saw what no predecessor had ever seen: a young community, still wet from the first rain of revelation, surrounded by a ring of rebellious geographies each of which alone was broader than Medina itself. And yet he did not hesitate. He sent four generals to four quarters of the heavens, with one charge and one theological foundation: there is no distinction between the provinces of Islam. What Banu Asad in Najd requires, Bahrain on the Gulf requires; what Yamamah must undergo, Nujayr too must undergo.

This chapter is the history of those four campaigns as Suyuti ﵀ has recorded them. Four short sentences in his pen, four whole worlds in reality.

The world in which Abu Bakr ﵁ stood

Before the panels open one by one, the state of affairs in the twelfth year must be made clear. Khalid ibn al-Walid ﵁ had subdued Banu Asad and Ghatafan in Najd, and he had broken al-Yamamah on the battlefield where Musaylimah the Liar fell beneath the spear of Wahshi ﵁. The heart of Central Arabia had been pacified, and the Mushaf was being collected by the hand of Zayd ibn Thabit ﵁ in the houses of Medina.

But the peninsula is not a point; it is a vastness. The apostasy had begun in Najd and had spread like a flame along a fuse. Tribes that the Prophet ﷺ had personally visited or that had sent delegations in the Year of the Delegations, the tenth year, had lost their certainty at his passing. Some refused the zakat, others retracted the shahadah, and still others declared for local false prophets who had risen in his shadow: Tulayha in Najd, Musaylimah in Yamamah, al-Aswad al-ʿAnsi in Yemen, and the old chieftains who wanted the jahiliyya back rather than a prayer under a distant command.

Abu Bakr ﵁ stood in Medina and knew what a less resolute heart would not have known: that the distinction could not be allowed. He had already answered ʿUmar ﵁, when the latter had been startled at the idea of fighting Muslims over a hobble-rope:

That principle held not only for Najd, it held for every geography that touched the hem of Medina.

And so in that same twelfth year he sent out four men, each with an army, each with a front, each with the same charge. It was no scattering of forces out of weakness, it was a manifold hand going out from one will. Suyuti ﵀ sums it up in four sentences, compressed like knots in a rope, and each of those sentences conceals a whole history.

Bahrain: al-ʿAlaʾ ibn al-Hadrami ﵁ and the gate of Jawatha

Bahrain in the seventh century was not the island that bears the name today. It was the whole eastern coastal region of the peninsula, a belt of oases, date palms, and harbors that looked out over the Persian Gulf. Tribes of the Banu ʿAbd al-Qays inhabited its shores, and the Prophet ﷺ had instructed them in his lifetime and received their delegations with respect. But at his passing parts of Bahrain had turned away, and some tribes had returned to following the idols they had never wholly abandoned.

Abu Bakr ﵁ sent al-ʿAlaʾ ibn al-Hadrami ﵁ to this coast. Al-ʿAlaʾ ﵁ was no stranger, for the Prophet ﷺ had already sent him to Bahrain in his lifetime, and he knew the tribes, the palm groves, the freshwater wells, and the places where the salt of the Gulf turned the soil brackish. Whoever the Prophet ﷺ had attached to a province, to that province Abu Bakr ﵁ attached him anew, for continuity was no sentiment for the first caliph ﵁; it was governance.

The armies met at Jawatha. Suyuti ﵀ writes it in one line: “They met at Jawatha, and the Muslims were victorious.” In that awareness of the place-name lies something Suyuti ﵀ does not voice, but which the listening Muslim in the seventh century heard effortlessly: Jawatha was the site of the first mosque outside the Hijaz, built by the Banu ʿAbd al-Qays in the time of the Prophet ﷺ himself. What a few years earlier had been a sign of early embrace was now the stage of a battle to win back that same Islam. The mosque of Jawatha had heard the prayers of the first converts, and now its ground heard the clash of steel.

That is the geography of the Ridda in its most painful form: not foreign land that had to be conquered, but one’s own land that had to be won back. The victorious Muslims under al-ʿAlaʾ ﵁ established the matter of Bahrain anew: Islam was not a gift one could give back, and the bonds of the shahadah were no seasonal loyalty. Whoever had spoken it was bound by it.

Suyuti ﵀ keeps it brief, and we keep to his choice of words. The Muslims won, the coast held, and Bahrain returned to the community.

Oman: ʿIkrimah ibn Abi Jahl ﵁ against the past of his father

Beyond Bahrain, around the corner of the peninsula, lies Oman. It was in that time no unknown region to Islam, for the Prophet ﷺ had sent ʿAmr ibn al-ʿAs ﵁ there, and the two Azd brothers Jayfar and ʿAbd, sons of al-Julanda, had received him with respect and accepted Islam. At the passing of the Prophet ﷺ parts of Oman rose again, and tribes that had tasted Islam without breathing it deeply turned away.

Abu Bakr ﵁ sent ʿIkrimah ibn Abi Jahl ﵁ to Oman. Whoever reads the name ʿIkrimah ﵁ reads a whole history. He was the son of Abu Jahl, the arch-enemy of Islam in Mecca, the man who had fought his nephew the Prophet ﷺ to the bitter end and who had fallen on the battlefield of Badr beneath the swords of two young Ansari. ʿIkrimah ﵁ had lost the Quraysh at Badr and taken up his father’s war. He had fought at Uhud, he had fought at the Khandaq, and at the Fath of Mecca he had fled before the Prophet ﷺ as far as the sea, before his wife Umm Hakim ﵂ led him back to the hand of the Prophet ﷺ, who embraced him as though there had never been a Badr.

That same ʿIkrimah ﵁, his heart wholly turned, now stood at the head of an army that marched on behalf of Islam against people who had abandoned Islam. It is a symmetry that the Prophet ﷺ himself had foreseen when he is said to have spoken, concerning the conversion of ʿIkrimah ﵁, that no one should reproach him with his father, for the son was not the father. Whoever looks briefly at history sees only a name; whoever looks long sees a redemption.

Suyuti ﵀ records nothing more than that Abu Bakr ﵁ sent him to the people of Oman who had apostatized. He gives no account of the fighting, no list of the fallen, no description of the roads over which ʿIkrimah ﵁ marched. The history of Oman under his hand is an obedience in silence: the charge was given, the man went, the province returned to Islam. We keep to the brevity of Suyuti ﵀ because it is honest, for it refuses to dress up the story with details the source does not bear.

What the source does bear is something greater than a campaign. It bears the portrait of a man whose life had been broken into two halves: a first half lived in the shadow of Abu Jahl, and a second half completed in the light of the Messenger ﷺ. Oman was not merely a geographical charge for ʿIkrimah ﵁; it was the eastern gate over which he carried his new name. And the further history of ʿIkrimah ﵁ in this chapter, which we will meet in event ten, completes this arc in a way that the pen is reluctant to write and the heart is reluctant to read.

Hadramawt: al-Muhajir ibn Abi Umayyah ﵁ at Nujayr

The south of the peninsula knows a geography that the north does not have. Hadramawt, the Valley of the wadi systems, bears fortresses of clay and stone built on cliffs, so high that a siege is an endless exercise in patience. One of those fortresses was Nujayr. To Nujayr Abu Bakr ﵁ sent al-Muhajir ibn Abi Umayyah ﵁. Al-Muhajir ﵁ was the brother of Umm Salama ﵂, one of the Mothers of the Believers, and thereby a relative by marriage of the Prophet ﷺ himself. He was known for piety and administrative experience, and the Prophet ﷺ had already sent him in his lifetime to parts of Yemen.

In Hadramawt tribes of Kindah had risen under the leadership of al-Ashʿath ibn Qays, and they had entrenched themselves behind the walls of Nujayr. Suyuti ﵀ gives the name of the place and the name of the commander, no more: no siege is described, no list of the fallen, no exact outcome except that the Ridda in this region was ended under his hand.

What Suyuti ﵀ does imply by keeping his pen short is that the operations of Hadramawt were no tales of martial art but of endurance. Whoever wishes to take a clay fortress stuck high against a wadi wall knows no chivalrous combat. He knows days, sometimes weeks, of waiting under the sun, he knows water that must be carried by beast over kilometers of sand, and he knows the breaking of the courage of those within through the silent presence of those who stand without. That is the war that al-Muhajir ﵁ waged, and the fact that Suyuti ﵀ says nothing more about it than that he was sent does not mean that it was less hard. It means that for the chronicler of the caliphs it was one of four panels that had to be hung side by side, not one panel to be highlighted above the other three.

Hadramawt returned to Islam, Kindah was brought into the administration of the young state, and the southern gate was closed.

Yemen: Ziyad ibn Labid al-Ansari ﵁ against the remaining apostates

Yemen is a land unto itself. Before the Prophet ﷺ was taken away shortly before his passing, he had sent Muʿadh ibn Jabal ﵁ to Yemen as a teacher, with instructions that in the hadith literature would grow into an educational program in itself. In the lifetime of the Prophet ﷺ al-Aswad al-ʿAnsi had already risen as a false prophet in Sanʿaʾ, and he had, still during the life of the Prophet ﷺ, been killed by the effort of Fayruz ad-Daylami ﵁ and his supporters. The history of al-Aswad lies outside the pen of Suyuti ﵀ in this chapter, and we touch upon it only to understand from what the Yemeni Ridda had arisen.

After the passing of the Prophet ﷺ groups rose again in revolt in Yemen, not under one false prophet this time, but as loosened tribes who believed that their loyalty to Medina had ended with the life of Medina’s teacher. Abu Bakr ﵁ sent Ziyad ibn Labid al-Ansari ﵁ to a group of those who had apostatized. Ziyad ibn Labid ﵁ was one of the Ansar of Medina, one of the men of the first baiʿah to the Prophet ﷺ. That an Ansari was sent to Yemen says something about how Abu Bakr ﵁ chose his generals: not only Muhajirun were sent out, but the burden of governance was distributed over the two halves of the ummah, as the burden of the first defense of Medina had been distributed over them under the Prophet ﷺ.

Suyuti ﵀ keeps it concise and we follow him: Ziyad ﵁ marched out, he confronted the apostates under his jurisdiction, and the Ridda was ended. The tribes of Yemen that had still kicked against the hand of Medina came back under that hand, the southern plain became a plain of Muslims again, and the prayers in Sanʿaʾ recovered their rhythm.

Four sentences, one theological declaration

What Suyuti ﵀ does by setting these four campaigns side by side in four short sentences is to do theology with the typography of his page. He orders them not by the size of the battle or by the spectacle of the outcome, he orders them by simultaneity and by equal treatment. Bahrain, Oman, Hadramawt, Yemen: four quarters of the heavens side by side, four generals side by side, four victories side by side. No province received more attention than the others, no people was raised above the others, and whoever apostatized in the east was treated in the same manner as whoever apostatized in the south.

This is precisely what Abu Bakr ﵁ had meant when he had answered ʿUmar ﵁ that he would fight whoever made a distinction between the prayer and the zakat. The distinction he feared was not only the theological distinction between two pillars of Islam; it was also the geographical distinction between two provinces of its spread. Whoever might have said: let Bahrain go, it is far away and what it costs is more than it yields, would have given up the heart of the young state, for as soon as one province may be released, every province may be released. It is a chain in which every link bears the others, and if one breaks, the whole chain rolls into the sand.

Abu Bakr ﵁ knew this. The old man, whom many in the first months of his caliphate had judged weak and soft because he did not have the physical stature of ʿUmar ﵁ nor the eloquence that Quraysh was accustomed to in its leaders, proved in these four missions what he was: a heart that did not let itself be lured into compromise. No province was spared for strategic reasons, no tribe was excused for diplomatic considerations. Islam is one body, and in one body no foot is amputated to save the hand.

What the generals shared

Four men, four backgrounds, one charge. Al-ʿAlaʾ ibn al-Hadrami ﵁ was a Hadrami, originally from Hadramawt itself, sent however not to his own region but to Bahrain, to make use of his experience with southern and eastern coastal tribes. ʿIkrimah ibn Abi Jahl ﵁ was a Qurashi of the purest blood, son of Mecca’s greatest enemy, sent to the eastern end of the peninsula to show his new Islam in war against an old jahiliyya. Al-Muhajir ibn Abi Umayyah ﵁ was the brother of a Mother of the Believers, with Yemen experience from the time of the Prophet ﷺ himself, sent to Hadramawt where clay fortresses demand patience. Ziyad ibn Labid al-Ansari ﵁ was an Ansari, sent to Yemen where the message of Medina could best be brought back by one Ansari to those who had already received this message from another Ansari.

Four men, four passports of birth, but one name among them all: servant of the Messenger ﷺ. When Abu Bakr ﵁ chose his generals, he chose them not from one clan, not from one geography, not from one type. He chose them for what they were in Islam, not for what they were in the jahiliyya. That was, in its own way, an administrative sign that spoke to the ummah at least as powerfully as any sword, for the caliph ﵁ of the Messenger ﷺ treats his men in one manner and sends them to four directions because all four directions need one and the same thing.

The homecoming of the troops

When the four campaigns were completed, early in the twelfth year and continuing into the thirteenth, Abu Bakr ﵁ came to a snapshot that he must have processed in silence. The peninsula was, in essence, one again. What the Prophet ﷺ had left behind at his passing had been restored, and it was, to the eye, a return to the status quo. But whoever looked more closely saw that more had happened than a restoration: the Ridda had tested the ummah, and the ummah had not fallen. The tribes that had apostatized had returned, and they had returned with the knowledge that Medina would not withdraw its hand. No coastal region would be given up because it lay far away, no desert would be abandoned because it was hard, and whoever had spoken the shahadah belonged to a body that knew how to defend itself.

In Medina meanwhile, while these four campaigns were running, the mushaf was being collected. The world would later know that the two events did not stand apart from each other. What al-ʿAlaʾ ﵁ did in Bahrain, what ʿIkrimah ﵁ did in Oman, what al-Muhajir ﵁ did at Nujayr, what Ziyad ﵁ did in Yemen, was not only military: it was the defense of a geography within which the Mushaf could ripen. The borders were closed so that the Book could be opened, and the hand that raised the sword held in the same breath the pen that wrote in Medina over palm leaves and shoulder-blades.

The theological circle

At the end of this chapter Abu Bakr ﵁ stands in Medina, looking toward the four quarters of the heavens, not as a victor but as a keeper. What had lain on his heart was not the expansion of an empire but the preservation of a community. The zakat-refusers in Najd had not been treated differently from the apostates in Hadramawt, and the tribes of Yemen had not been dealt with differently from those of Bahrain. The circle was closed, and the ummah was whole again.

And in that whole unity lies the broader theological gesture of the caliphate of Abu Bakr ﵁. He refused to the very end that Islam should be hacked into panels by geography or by convenience. He held one law for all provinces, one prayer for all coasts, one zakat for all plains, for the Messenger ﷺ had left behind one ummah, and his caliph ﵁ would make no second ummah beside it.

Four sentences in the pen of Suyuti ﵀. Four quarters of the heavens in reality. One answer from Medina. Whoever says that one geography of Islam may be released because it lies far away has not understood what the word Islam ﷻ contains. This was the lesson of the Ridda, and Abu Bakr ﵁ wrote it not in a book but in the movements of four armies to four directions, at one moment in the history of a community that found its borders by guarding them.

Sources

• Jalal ad-Din as-Suyuti ﵀, Tarikh al-Khulafa (trans. Abdassamad Clarke, Ta-Ha Publishers, 3rd ed. 1995), pp. 63-64.