Ridda Wars
As the Ridda Wars ( Arabic حروب الردة, DMG ḥurūb ar-ridda ) denotes the campaigns that Abū Bakr , the first caliph , led to the subjugation of the Arab tribes that turned away from Islam after the death of Muhammad in 632 . Ridda (" apostasy ", "apostasy") is the name for the broad deposition movement that began among the Arab tribes after Muhammad's death. Only the victory of the Muslims in the Ridda Wars and the final submission of the tribes involved in the Ridda movement created the conditions for the expansion of the Islamic state beyond the Arabian Peninsula .
The Ridda Movement
In many cases the ridda expressed itself in the fact that tribes refused to pay the alms tax zakāt . They pleaded that their duty of loyalty applied to Mohammed alone, but not to his successor Abū Bakr, which was customary under the tribal laws. In other cases the Ridda was involved in local power struggles: after the death of Muhammad and the Quraysh's brief loss of power, groups that had worked with the state of Medina were replaced by other groups that had always been critical of outside interference, repressed. In Yemen , this withdrawal movement had already started before Muhammad's death. Here in March 632 men from the Madhhij tribe, under the leadership of a certain ʿAbhala, who was also called al-Aswad ("the black") , expelled the representatives sent by Mohammed, including Chālid ibn Saʿīd , the Persian cooperating with Medina Ruler Schahr murdered, and large areas of the country brought under their rule.
In part, the Ridda movement also had a religious dimension, as many of the leaders of the movement appeared as prophets or priests. Al-Aswad al-ʿAnsī, the tribal leader who established himself in Yemen but was eliminated before Muhammad's death, preached like him in the name of Allah and practiced forms of sorcery. With the tribe of Banū Hanīfa, who lived in Yamāma in Eastern Arabic, the Prophet Musailima stood out, who also showed monotheistic echoes in his teachings by preaching in the name of Rahmāns . In the Najd region of central Arabia, two prophets appeared, in the north with the Asad Bedouins Tulaiha and in the south with the Tamīm the prophet Sajah.
Course of the wars
When Abū Bakr's delegations from various Arab tribes arrived in Medina and refused to pay zakāt, Abū Bakr pointed out that paying the tax was a fundamental religious imperative and that refusal was an apostasy . In September 632 he moved with a small army from Muhādschirūn and Ansār to Dhū l-Qassa and sent messengers to some loyal tribes to ask for support. Al-Wāqidī reports that while Abu Bakr was camping with his people in Dhū l-Qassa, he was attacked by Chāridjah ibn Hisn al-Fazārī . The Muslims, whom the attack took by surprise, dispersed and took a long time to regroup. After beating Chāridscha to flight, met divisions of the tribes of Aslam, Ghifar, Muzaina , Aschdscha' , Dschuhaina and Ka'b in Dhū l-Qassa.
According to the report of Saif ibn ʿUmar , Abū Bakr sent eleven armies to Dhū l-Qassa to subdue the apostate Arab tribes. The most important of these armies was that of Chālid ibn al-Walīd , who should fight with his troops first against Tulaiha and then against the renegade tribal prince and poet Mālik ibn Nuwaira. About a month later he triumphed against the troops of Tulaiha, executed Mālik ibn Nuwaira in the late autumn of 632 and in the spring of 633 inflicted a crushing defeat on the forces of the Banū Hanīfa under the leadership of Musailima on the plain of ʿAqrabāʾ in the Yamāma .
Another battle front was in the part of Eastern Arabia called Bahrain . Here the governor al-ʿAlāʾ ibn al-Hadramī, appointed by the Muslims, fought together with members of the Tamīm against a coalition of different tribes that were under the leadership of a certain Hutam and had brought the places Qatīf and Hajar under their control. The insurgents were defeated on the mainland and fled to the island of Dārīn in the Persian Gulf, which was also captured by the Muslims a little later.
Among the Azd in Oman , after the death of Muhammad, the two brothers from the Julandā family, Jaifar and ʿAbd, who had formed an alliance with Medina, were ousted by their former rival Laqīt ibn Mālik al-ʿĀtiqī. It was the two Meccan generals Hudhaifa ibn Mihsan and ʿIkrima, the son of Abū Dschahl , who came to the aid of the Medina-friendly party and reinstated the two brothers from the Julandā family. While Hudhaifa remained in Oman as a representative of Medina, ʿIkrima moved on to Mahra and Yemen to fight against insurgents there.
Abū Bakr sent the Meccan al-Muhādschir ibn Abī Umaiya to Yemen to crush the disengagement there that had already begun during the Prophet's lifetime. He moved via Mecca and Taif through the territory of the Badschīla to Najran and recruited more fighters in the areas he crossed. Together with them and the troops of ʿIkrimas who had come over from Mahra , he succeeded in defeating Qais ibn al-Makschuh, who had settled in Sanaa after the death of al-Aswad . In addition, al-Muhādschir took action against the rebellious Kinda tribe . From Sanaa he moved eastward in the direction of Hadramaut in 633 and helped the Muslim governor there, Ziyād ibn Labīb, in suppressing a Kinditic uprising led by al-Ashʿath ibn Qais . With the capture of his fortress an-Nujair, the Arab disengagement in Yemen ended.
literature
- Arabic sources
- al-Wāqidī : Kitāb ar-Ridda, Riwāyat Aḥmad ibn Muḥammad Ibn Aʿṯam al-Kūfī . Ed. Yaḥyā al-Ǧubūrī. Dār al-Ġarb al-Islāmī, Beirut, 1990. Digitized
- Secondary literature
- Fred McGraw Donner: The Early Islamic Conquests. Princeton University Press, 1981. pp. 82-91. ( Preview on GoogleBooks )
- Wilhelm Hoenerbach : Waṯīma's Kitāb ar-Ridda from Ibn Ḥaǧar's Iṣāba. A contribution to the history of the apostasy of the Arab tribes after Muhammad's death. Mainz 1951.
- Michael Lecker: "al-Ridda" in The Encyclopaedia of Islam. New Edition Vol. XII, pp. 692b-695a.
- Elias Shoufany: Al-Riddah and the Muslim Conquest of Arabia. Toronto: University of Toronto Press 1973.
supporting documents
- ↑ See Shoufany: Al-Riddah and the Muslim Conquest of Arabia. 1973, p. 95.
- ↑ See W. Montgomery Watt: “Al-Aswad” in The Encyclopaedia of Islam. New Edition Vol. I, p. 728a.
- ↑ See Lecker: "al-Ridda". P. 692a.
- ↑ See Shoufany: Al-Riddah and the Muslim Conquest of Arabia. 1973, pp. 112-115
- ↑ See Shoufany: Al-Riddah and the Muslim Conquest of Arabia. 1973, pp. 117-131.
- ↑ See Lecker 694a.
- ↑ See Shoufany: Al-Riddah and the Muslim Conquest of Arabia. 1973, pp. 134-136.
- ↑ See Shoufany: Al-Riddah and the Muslim Conquest of Arabia. 1973, p. 138.
- ↑ See Lecker 693b.
- ↑ Cf. GR Smith: Art. " An -Nu dj air" in The Encyclopaedia of Islam. New Edition Vol. VIII, p. 97.