Mubāhala
Mubāhala ( Arabic مباهلة) was a ritual of mutual curse in ancient Arabia in order to be able to recognize the truth in the sense of a divine judgment . The curse of God should be conjured up on those who err.
Mohammed also resorted to this form of the ordal in the context of his dispute with Christian emissaries from the Najran oasis about the divinity of Jesus. According to Ibn Ishaq's tradition , Muhammad urged Christians to submit. But they replied that they had already submitted to God. Mohammed accused them of lying because they ate pork, worshiped the cross, and claimed that Jesus was the Son of God and asked them to perform a mubahala while reciting the following Koran surah.
“And if now, after (all) the knowledge that you (from God) has acquired, (any) who (interlocutors) argue with you about it, then say! 'Come here! We want to call our and your sons, our and your wives and us and you (men) yourself (together) and thereupon (each party for itself) take a (common) oath and let the curse of God come upon those who lie. ' (Then it will show which of us is in possession of the truth.) "
One member of the delegation who had already converted to Islam said that it would be bad luck to curse a prophet. The next day they met in a remote place, the “Red Dune” near Medina. The Christians asked for time to reflect and, given the possible consequences and the growing power of Muhammad, asked them to renounce God's judgment. Mohammed agreed, but demanded tribute payments. A protection treaty was concluded and the Christians of Najran received the rights and duties of dhimmis .
For the Shiites, the Mubāhala event was of central importance, because on this occasion the Prophet is said to have taken his daughter Fatima , her husband Ali ibn Abi Talib and her sons Hasan ibn Ali and Husain ibn Ali under his cloak in order to attack the Christians of To compete in Najran. An election of the Prophet's family, the so-called "people of the house" Ahl al-bait , is derived from this incident . The statement in sura 33:33 that God wants to purify the "people of the house" is interpreted in Shiite exegesis as a preliminary reference to the Mubāhala. To this day, various Shiite groups, such as the Alawites , keep the memory of the Mubāhala in the form of a festival that takes place on the 24th of Dhū l-Hijjah .
literature
- Louis Massignon: "La Mubâhala. Étude sur la proposition d'ordalie faite par le prophète Muhammad aux chrétiens Balhàrith du Najran en l'an 10/631 à Médine" in Annuaires de l'École pratique des hautes études Année 51 (1942) 5 -26. Digitized
- Werner Schmucker: Art. "Mubāhala" in The Encyclopaedia of Islam. New Edition . Vol. VII, pp. 276-277.
- R. Strothmann: "The Mubāhala in Tradition and Liturgy" in: Der Islam 33 (1958), pp. 5–29.
Individual evidence
- ^ Alfred Guillaume: The Life of Muhammad. A translation of Ibn Ishaq's Sirat Rasul Allah. Oxford 1955, p. 277