al-Arqam ibn Abī l-Arqam

Al-Arqam ibn Abī l-Arqam ( Arabic الأرقم بن أبي الأرقم, DMG al-Arqam b. Abī ʾl-Arqam ; born at 594; died between 673 and 675) was an influential merchant of the Banū Machzūm clan (بنو مخزوم / Banū Maḫzūm ) in Mecca . His house on Safā hill near the Kaaba served as a secret meeting place for the first followers of Muhammad .

Life

Al-Arqam's house in Mecca

The Islamic historical tradition , according to al-Arqam was the seventh, in Mecca the Islamic faith accepted. He owned a house on the Safā hill, near the Meccan sanctuary, where he gave refuge to Mohammed and his first followers from the city's polytheistic Quraishites . Al-Azraqī , Abū ʾl-Walīd, (d. 837), the local historian of Mecca, reports in the topographical description of this house about the beginnings of Mohammed's activity with the words: “There he (that is, Mohammed) hid himself from the polytheists and met (in the house) at al-Arqam ibn Abī ʾl-Arqam with his followers ”.

When naming the first Muslims of Mecca, the historiographer Muhammad ibn Saʿd (d. 845) consistently differentiates between those who converted to Islam before or during Muhammad's stay in the “House of al-Arqam” (dār al-Arqam): “NN accepted Islam before the Messenger of God entered the house of al-Arqam ibn Abī ʾl-Arqam and before he called (the people) to Islam ”and:“ NN accepted Islam in the house of al-Arqam ”. One of the last people to have accepted Islam in al-Arqam's house was Umar ibn al-Chattab . Ibn Ishāq reports that after his conversion, the Muslims left their hiding place and spread their religion with greater self-confidence.

Emigration to Medina

Later al-Arqam emigrated to Medina with the Prophet and took part in the most important campaigns. According to a family tradition reported by adh-Dhahabī in his biography, al-Arqam was preparing to go to Jerusalem (bait al-maqdis) to pray there. Mohammed is said to have stopped him from his plan with the following words, which have been passed down several times in the canonical collections of traditions :

"The prayer in my mosque (i.e. the Prophet's Mosque in Medina) is better than a thousand prayers elsewhere - apart from the Meccan sanctuary ."

Another fate of his house

Al-Arqam ibn Abī l-Arqam transferred his house in Mecca, which had played such an important role in the early days of Islam, to his descendants and declared it in his deed of donation a holy place and his foundation (sadaqa) within the Meccan sanctuary which could neither be sold nor inherited.

The house of al-Arqam remained in the family until the reign of al-Mansūr . Al-Mahdī then transferred the historic site to his wife al-Chayzurān, the mother of Hārūn ar-Raschīd and al-Hādī .

The Arab chronicler of the city of Mecca, al-Azraqī, mentions this house in his city chronicle, in the chapter on those places in Mecca where prayer is particularly meritorious, already under the new name Dar al-Chayzurān  /دار الخيزران / dāru ʾl-ḫaizurān  / 'the house of al-Chayzurān' which houses a mosque. The house is still known by this name today. It was also al-Chayzurān who had the house where Muhammad was born converted into a house of prayer, where prayer was particularly meritorious.

A detailed description of the history of this house goes back to an old family tradition, which is already documented by Muhammad ibn Saʿd, in the fourth generation after al-Arqam. It is preserved in the adaptation of al-Hākim an-Nīsāburī (born 933; died 1014) in his collection of those hadiths which al-Buchārī and Muslim did not include in their hadith collections . There the house of al-Arqam is called "House of Islam" .

Al-Arqam in Malaysia

Al-Arqam was an organization named after the house of al-Arqam to revive Islam in Malaysia, which was banned in November 1994.

literature

Arabic sources

• Al-Azraqī : Kitāb Aḫbār Makka . Ed. Rušdī aṣ-Ṣāliḥ Malḥas. Mekka 1933, Volume II, p. 162; 210.
• Ibn Saad : Kitāb aṭ-Ṭabaqāt al-kabīr . Ed. Eduard Sachau . Brill, Leiden 1904. Volume III / 1, pp. 172-174. Digitized - S. LVII: Table of contents in German
• Ibn ʿAbd al-Barr : al-Istīʿāb fī maʿrifat al-aṣḥāb. Ed. al-Biāwī. Kaio, n.d. Vol. 1, pp. 131-132.

Secondary literature

• Miklos Muranyi : The first Muslims of Mecca - the social basis of a new religion? In: Jerusalem Studies in Arabic and Islam. (JSAI), Vol. 8, 1986, pp. 25-35. See also: The First Muslims in Mecca: a Social Basis for a New Religion? In: Uri Rubin (Ed.): The Life of Muḥammad. Ashgate Variorum, Aldeshot 1998, ISBN 0-86078-703-6 , pp. 95-104
• William Montgomery Watt : Muhammad at Mecca . Oxford University Press. Reprinted in Pakistan 1979, ISBN 0-19-577277-6 , pp. 86-88.
• W. Montgomery Watt: Al-Arḳam In: The Encyclopaedia of Islam . New Edition. Volume I, p. 633.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ The Arabic term Dār means not only a house , but a larger residential and structural unit with outbuildings and storage rooms. See: MJ Kister: The massacre of the Banū Qurayza. A re-exemination of a tradition. In: Jerusalem Studies in Arabic and Islam (JSAI), Volume 8, 1986, p. 74, note 39.
2. ↑ M. Muranyi: The first Muslims of Mecca - the social basis of a new religion? In: Jerusalem Studies in Arabic and Islam (JSAI), Volume 8, 1986, p. 34.
3. ↑ See the evidence in Ibn Saʿd in: M. Muranyi: The comrades of the prophets in early Islamic history. Bonn 1973, pp. 34–35 and note 1.
4. ↑ See Uri Rubin: The Eye of the Beholder. The Life of Muḥammad as viewed by the early Muslims. Darwin Press, Princeton, New Jersey, 1995. p. 129.
5. ^ Siyar aʿlām an-nubalāʾ. Volume 2, pp. 479-480.
6. ^ AJ Wensinck and JP Mensing: Concordance et indices de la tradition musulmane. Brill, Leiden 1943, Volume 2, p. 438a.
7. ↑ See: MJ Kister: Sanctity Joint and Divided. On holy places in the islamic tradition. In: Jerusalem Studies in Arabic and Islam (JSAI), Volume 20, 1996, pp. 18-19.
8. ↑ Al-Wāqidī has a comparable report : after the conquest of Mecca, a Muslim informed Mohammed that he had made a vow to go to Jerusalem in order to pray in the event that the city was taken by the Muslims. Mohammed is said to have replied: “By the one in whose hand my soul rests! A single prayer here (i.e. Mecca) is more excellent than a thousand prayers in other countries ”. The Kitāb al-Maghāzī of al-Wāqidī. Ed. Marsden Jones. Oxford University Press. London 1966. Volume 2, p. 866.
9. ↑ ^{a b} Ibn Saad: Biographien … ( Eduard. Sachau , Brill, Leiden 1904, Volume III, Part I, p. 173; S. LVII: table of contents in German.
10. ↑ About them see: The Encyclopaedia of Islam . New Edition. Brill, Leiden, Volume 4, p. 1164.
11. ↑ Ignaz Goldziher: Muhammedanische Studien. Halle aS 1890, Volume 2, pp. 305–306.
12. ^ Fuat Sezgin: History of Arabic literature . Brill, Leiden 1967, Volume 1, p. 221.
13. ↑ al-Mustadrak ʿalā ʾṣ-Ṣaḥīḥain . Beirut 1990, Volume 3, p. 575; AJ Wensinck and JH Kramer (eds.): Concise dictionary of Islam. Brill, Leiden 1941, p. 55a.