Musailima

Musailima , Arabic مسيلمة بن حبيب Musailima ibn Habib , DMG Musaylima b. Ḥabīb († 632 at Yamama ), is the despicable diminutive form for a person namedمسلمة / Maslama , who lived in the time of Muhammad and saw herself as a prophet . He worked in Yamama with the Banu Hanifa .

Life

Musailima is described in Islamic sources as an imitator of the Prophet Mohammed and - according to a statement by Muhammad - as "Musailima, the liar" (مسيلمة الكذّاب) designated. He was born in al-Haddar in al-Yamama, in Najd , on the caravan route to Bahrain , where he then developed his activity as a prophet in the B. Hanifa tribe. Like Mohammed, he is said to have received his revelations from the Archangel Gabriel ( Jibril ). The Koran criticizes this claim in sura 6 , verse 93:

“And who is more wicked than someone who hatches a lie against God or says: 'I have been inspired (something as revelation)' while nothing has been given to him, and who says: 'I will send down something that is what God has sent down, the same is' ... "

At the center of his monotheistic view was ar-Rahman (the Merciful), whom the pre-Islamic Arabs had already known as the one God (cf. old Arabic deities ). Musailima made a name for himself among the tribes of the region as Rahman al-Yamama (The Merciful of al-Yamama). Several traditions from Arab historiographers, among them Ibn Ishāq , suggest that Musailima must have begun his proclamation before Muhammad's appearance in Mecca as a prophet.

Ibn Ishāq reports that opponents of Muhammad accused him of getting his wisdom from a man from Yamama named Rahman.

Ibn Ishāq also reports that Musailima wrote a letter to Mohammed with the following wording:

“From Musailima, the Messenger of God, to Muhammad, the Messenger of God. Then: I was given a share in the matter together with you. See, we own half of the country and the Koraish the other half of the country. But the Koraish are people who act hostile. "

To which Mohammed replied:

“In the name of God the Most Merciful, the Merciful. From Muhammad, the Messenger of God, to Musailima, the liar. Hail to him who follows the right direction. Then: Behold, the land is God's; he inherits it, if he will, among his servants. But the exit belongs to the godly "

This is a paraphrase of Sura 7, verse 128:

“The earth belongs to God alone. He gives them as an inheritance to whomever he wants from his servants. The end will (one day) be in favor of those who are godly. ”Translation: Rudi Paret .

In the last few years before Muhammad's death, Musailima succeeded in entering into alliances with other tribes in al-Yamama and in settling their members, insofar as they were settled, in a haram , a protected area, that he had created . There he spread his teachings in the form of recitations and rhyming prose (sadschʿ).

This socio-religious independence from Musailima lasted until after the death of Muhammad and formed a religiously oriented counterweight to the Medinan community of Muslims. Abu Bakr , the first successor of Mohammed, therefore sent his envoy to al-Yamama “to convert his inhabitants to the exalted God and to consolidate them in Islam. He (the Messenger), however, became apostate on the side of Musailima and professed his prophecy. "

The religious character of the struggle against the B. Hanifa, Musailima and other apostate Arab tribes (Hawazin, Ghatafan, etc.) confirms - in retrospective - the Islamic exegesis of the Koran , which interprets Sura 48 , 16 as a prediction of the struggle in the Ridda :

“You will (soon) be called to a (war) people who have tremendous fighting power. You will have to fight them unless they surrender ... ”.

Bakr ibn Nattah († 837 in Iraq), a respected poet from al-Yamama, refers to this passage from the Koran and describes the heroic past of his ancestors with the words:

"We are described in the revealed book (ie the Koran) as brave (fighters) like no other tribe:"

In the monographs of Islamic historiography , which were created under the title “Kitab ar-ridda” (Book on the Ridda ) in the late 8th and early 9th centuries, there are several references to the religious character of the B movement in the form of poems . Hanifa under Musailima:

"How bad are the B. Hanifa who oppose Islam or have done it injustice!"

death

Musailima fell in 632 at the battle of Yamama against the general of the Muslims Chālid ibn al-Walīd at the hand of a black man named Wahschi, who later boasted that he had killed the worst person. But others also boasted that they were involved in the killing of Musailima.

After the death of Musailima, the later caliph Umar ibn al-Khattab is said to have shouted: "The black slave killed him". According to another tradition, a woman from the Banu Hanifa tribe shouted: “Let us mourn the commander of the believers (di Musailima)! The black slave killed him ”.

Wahschi ibn Harb, a freed slave of Jubair ibn Mut'im, only accepted Islam after the conquest of Mecca and later lived in seclusion and drunkenness in Homs , where - according to the sources of Ibn Ishāq - some Medinians visited him to get from to hear him personally the story of the killing of Musailima. Ibn ʿAsākir devotes nineteen pages in his City History of Damascus to him and mentions that Wahschi was the first in Syria to be flogged for being drunk. He found death in a pool of wine.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ F. Buhl in: Short dictionary of Islam . Leiden 1976, sv MUSAILIMA. About the name variants: Musailima b. Thumama / ibn Ḥabib / b. Thumama b. Kabir / b. Kathir see MJ Kister (2002), pp. 2-3.
2. ↑ MJ Kister, p. 7: after Ibn Hajar al-ʿAsqalānī and the Koran exegesis.
3. ↑ MJ Kister (2002), p. 7, note 22; Theodor Nöldeke: History of the Qorāns . 2nd Edition. Edited by Friedrich Schwally. Vol. 1, p. 161.
4. ^ The Encyclopaedia of Islam. New Edition. Brill, suffering. Vol. 1, p. 1084. 3) The meaning of "Raḥman"
5. ↑ MJ Kister (2002), p. 4.
6. ↑ Ferdinand Wüstenfeld (ed.): The life of Muhammad. After Muhammed Ibn Ishâk, edited by Abd el-Malik Ibn Hishâm. Reprint of the original edition Göttingen 1859. Frankfurt am Main 2005, p. 200.
7. ^ Manfred Fleischhammer: Altarabische Prose . Publishing house Philipp Reclam jun. Leipzig 1988. p. 21; see also: Ibn Ishāq: The Life of the Prophet . From the Arabic by Gernot Rotter . Kandern 2004, p. 248 f .; MJ Kister (2002), p. 14.
8. ↑ MJ Kister (2002), pp. 21–22 and note 82.
9. ↑ MJ Kister (2002), p. 11 and note 36.
10. ^ Fuat Sezgin: History of the Arabic script. Leiden, Brill 1975. Vol. 2 (Poetry), pp. 628-629.
11. ↑ MJ Kister (2002), p. 34.
12. ↑ William Hoenerbach : Waṯīma's Kitab al-Ridda in Ibn Ḥaǧar's ISABA. Academy of Sciences and Literature. Depends on the humanities and social science class. Born in 1951 (No. 1). Wiesbaden 1951. p. 19; Corrections and additions by MJ Kister: Some notes in ridda verses . In: Israel Oriental Studies 5 (1975), p. 125.126.
13. ↑ The History of al-Ṭabarī . Translated by FM Donner. Albany 1993. Vol. 10, pp. 105-126.
14. ↑ Hans Jansen: Mohammed. A biography. Munich 2008, p. 287.
15. ↑ MJ Kister, (2002), p. 47.
16. ↑ MJ Kister, (2002), p. 47.
17. ^ A. Guillaume: The Life of Muhammad . Oxford University Press 1970, pp. 375-377.
18. ↑ Vol. 62, pp. 400-419. Beirut 1994.

literature

• F. Buhl in: Concise Dictionary of Islam . Leiden 1976, sv MUSAILIMA.
• The Encyclopaedia of Islam . New Edition. Vol. 7, Brill, Leiden-New York 1993, pp. 664f.
• W. Montgomery Watt: Muhammad at Mecca . Oxford 1979. p. 29.
• W. Montgomery Watt: Muhammad at Medina . Oxford 1972. pp. 132-136.
• MJ Kister: The struggle against Musaylima and the conquest of Yamāma. In: Jerusalem Studies in Arabic and Islam. Vol. 27 (2002), pp. 1-56.