Lives Of The Sahaba 15 – Umar b. al-Khattab – PT 04
Date:
Channel: Yasir Qadhi
Series: Yasir Qadhi - Lives Of The Sahaba
File Size: 40.51MB
Episode Notes
In this talk, Shaykh Dr. Yasir Qadhi discusses at length about the major conquests of Umar ibn Al-Khattab RA.
Here, we are made to ponder and reflect at the sheer inability of comprehension of the defeat of the major powers in this era at the hands of a handful of Muslims who fought united against the Persian and Byzantine might and yet, emerged victorious. It is nothing but the will of Allah that saw this shocking event unfold and is beyond human understanding and intellect and hence, continues to perplex historians worldwide.
For more information, do watch the video as Shaykh Yasir Qadhi attempts to diligently and honestly analyse and unfold the incidents that led to these conquests and their details.
AI Generated Transcript ©
Bismillah al Rahman al hamdu Lillahi Rabbil alameen wa salatu salam ala Sayyidina Muhammad wa ala alihi wa sahbihi Marina Marburg. So today inshallah Allah will begin talking about the major conquest of the hora de la jolla and and inshallah Allah I hope to be able to finish them in two weeks today and next Wednesday, and the age of Morocco top is undoubtedly the age of the most magnificent conquests in the entire history of Islam. So this era is really the golden era of conquest. Not only was it grandiose and completely unexpected, it is also an unprecedented display of military conquest and a reversal in the history of humanity. In other words, it's unexpected,
nobody could have ever predicted this entire change of events in the world scenario. And until today,
and 1450 years almost have gone by 1400 something has ever gone by, it remains a cause of bewilderment of head scratching, how could a group of uncivilized, uneducated, unschooled in the arts of war, Bedouins, come out of the desert, and take on the mighty superpowers of the world, and have such miraculous success. Nothing could have predicted that the Byzantine lands and the sassanid Persia would be completely demolished, or at least carved into half in the case of the Byzantine lands and demolished in the case of the sassanid Persia. And
if you look at the numbers, it is even more staggering. Realistically, the Muslims did not enter with more than 20,000 people, when it comes to a sham. When it comes to all of Syria, they took on the superpower of the world with barely 20,000 people and the sassanid. Empire, they probably had even less than this, maybe 12 to 15,000 at max they took on and for them to have this type of success. It truly is something that is it is a miracle for us. For us. It is a miracle. Of course, modern historians, and will mention some of these things in our lecture today. modern historians, they look back and they find causes. And some of these causes are legitimate, they will find out Oh,
this was happening, this was happening, this was happening. And of course, Allah subhanho wa Taala is more susceptible as Bob, just like when we talked about the hedgerow. And we talked about the fact that what happened in Medina created the circumstances that could allow the processor to flourish, and the Wars of blast, and the wars between the house and the garage, and all of the seniors dying, you can say this is a physical cause. And it's true. But who caused the physical cause? How did this come about? And therefore, we say that perhaps some of these causes are legitimate and valid. And when you look back, they can point to the fact that Oh, the Roman Empire
was not a just Empire, there was a lot of tyranny going on a lot of persecution, the sassanids had intrigues going on, there were factions who hated other factions. And in fact, one of the main generals purposely did not get involved, because he was hoping that the leadership would become weakened, and then he would take over so he wanted basically the Muslims to act as a buffer. And somehow the Muslims came and destroyed the both parties. So you can look back, and you can point out two causes. But all of these causes, they just came out of nowhere out of coincidence that every one of these causes simultaneously coming together. And of course, Allah subhana wa Tada. You can see
how these so for example, as up as well, right went up in an exam. How did I start finish? How did I finish the weather conditions, right? So again, you can say, Oh, the weather changed and shrug your shoulders if you don't believe in God. But the fact of the matter again, it's so obvious. So for us as Muslims, all of these conquests and victories truly is a a miracle from Allah subhanho wa Taala. Now, we already mentioned the Battle of your move, which began in the in the reign of of workers today. And of course, the two main battles really are your MOOC and called the sia. But of course, there are quite literally dozens, if not almost hundreds of other mini battles. And the fact of the
matter is, neither do we have the interest nor the time, nor even the reason to going down all of this list. But we
We'll just mentioned the two or three of the main battles and overall historically what happened and
maybe inshallah I hope next week or the week after I can give you a map on on the screen, but it is just amazing if you can visualize that by the time of a worker so the death barely the Arabian Peninsula is just about concrete. And to be very frank, one can even say there are spots in the Arabian Peninsula, that are really just no man's land is not as if and to this day, there are spots that are no man's land Roberto Holly, but besides this, it's not as if even the Arabian Peninsula is fully conquered. But Abu Bakr Siddiq radi Allahu taala turns his sights on a sham and eventually returns his sights on the Persian Empire and from the east, so bit by bit land after land province
after province. So after the fall of telephone, which is the capital of the sassanids, the Muslims go onwards, and all of these major cities in what is now Iran, Iran and Iraq and and all of these lands, Hamadan array georgeanne Azerbaijan hora, sun Kidman, CG Stan, and in fact, in the reign of Thermopylae, hottub, Muslims even reach Macron. And whereas my Quran,
in sinned in the rate of Komodo hottub, they reached the land of what is now Pakistan. I mean, this is absolutely phenomenal, that one success after another, and they just keep on going. Now it is true that that Earth might have been a fan, he built on the legacy of immutable hubbub. So wherever and whatever the law one, one, or some kind of pushed it forward, that is true. But it was Omar who opened the door, and earth modeled Yolanda simply riding the wave after him. It was Omar, who began one province after another, this is in the east. And as for the West, as for the West, as well, the entire what is now modern Syria, and Jordan, and Philistine comes under Muslim lands. And from here
again, on to Egypt and Libya, what is now Sudan, and then Libya. And then as model, the longer it takes over, and we get to whole strip of Northern Africa, until all the way eventually in the earlier years, we get to Andalusia, as we all know, so the point is, if you look at the map of the oma, really, the biggest conquest and the most amazing victories, and the entire 14 centuries of Islam occur in these years of emotional hot top. And we go back to the statement of Eben Massoud that we have ever been in Israel, ever since almost accepted Islam. We have ever been in Israel since Omar accepted Islam from the beginning, up until the end, Omar Abdullah Hata was the one whom
even as the process and predicted he kept on pulling from the bucket, and the bucket became as if it's a big well from which the animals drink. And he kept on pulling and I never saw anybody pulling like the pulling of Remember, these are the conquests of Mr. Nakata, radi Allahu taala. And, of course, this is on the political side. And it's also interesting to know that on the intellectual side of things, other things are developing as well. This is the first time that the broader world hears of the Muslims, Jews and Christians, the Roman Empire, the Persians, this is the first time they hear of Islam and the Muslims by and large. And we have to this day, engagements and encounters
and writings that are preserved from the other side. To this day, we have them how they viewed the Muslims, and some of those stereotypes that existed that they invented, continued to exist up until our times and we find literature to this day, and then maybe someday, if you guys are interested, I can have a separate talk about how they perceived us in the earliest of times. And the first 100 years is a very interesting talk. And they're number of specialized books that that are present and
and people have written about them, where they find bits and pieces in the ancient writings of the Syriac Christians of the Coptic Christians of the Roman historians of the Persians whatever writing and they try to piece together how they viewed the Muslims and of course, they didn't even call us Muslims. They call this Saracens.
Saracens is an ancient word for tents to others. So they call the Arabs the Saracens or they call them
high greens, the children of hijab, so how good he is like a derogatory term, that Tagil is a slave lady, made woman. So how Julian's are they call them ishmaelites. The children of Ishmael We are the Israelites, they are the ishmaelites. So they have these derogatory terms, or even they call them the Arabs. The term Muslim, even was not used because they wanted to make them like derogatory. And in fact, interesting to note, by the way, this is everybody's interest in this I myself, I'm very interested in this as well. In fact, it is interesting to note that the first some of the first Chronicles that we have, some Christians thought that Muslims were a type of sect of Judaism. Why?
How because
Their law was so similar to Jewish law. So they thought that these are some type of bizarre Jewish sect, because Christians did not follow their law. And Muslims did also, Muslims did not eat pork, Muslims were circumcised. So from the perspective of these ignorant Christians, they had no clue what the Muslims were the first encounters, looking at them and interacting with them. They assume that the Muslims might be some type of Jewish messianic sect, as well. By the way, this notion of the process of them having taken from the sources of Judaism and Christianity, this is now when it first comes into play by the non Muslims of Damascus and whatnot. And this motif remains throughout
medieval Christianity up until our times because the question I've said many, many times the Quran itself says the question remains, where did the process from get the stories from? Clearly the Arabs did not know the stories the people of Makkah did not know this choice Mark? Quinta, Allah Maha Antara como como publica right Where did you get these stories about Quinta de him? Mama Quinta Medina Mojave, you weren't there. You don't know these stories. The Bible was not translated in Arabic, Christians and Jews were not preaching to the pagans of Arabia. So this question, even to the Christians of Damascus and Egypt, they could not understand where are these new group coming
from. And they seem to have some type of Judeo Christian relationship. So these interesting notions came about. But anyway, we're not quite interested in in that. So back to our story of our mobile hotspot. So Armando hottub
clearly understood that in order to conquer these lands, we need to have quality fighters and quality leaders. And all of the leaders that he chose, were of the early war ha Joon, all of the leaders were of the khoresh, early maharjan. Early converts to Islam, because again, you cannot doubt their Islam. And of course, Paramount amongst them is aborto VEDA ami image ri, and he is sent as a commander to Syria, Saudi who cos is sent to Iraq, Zubaydah. Vanilla one eventually is sent as well, along with our calls to Egypt. And one of the interesting quirks of Bob's CSR policies was that he was the first person to see that the banner omiya were true leaders, the buddleja were
politicians, he recognized this in them the room a year from a luciferians progeny. So he was the first to appoint the sons of Abu sufian as governors and of course this was without him and realizing this is one of those other law. Whatever happened after this? That was the seed of the Omega dynasty, right. It was a formidable hot dog who placed while he his older brother is eat, this is not yours even more Alia, this is yours, even of you, Sophia. There's two years eats yazeed, the son of soufiane, Abu Sufyan and the Z the son of Huawei. Yes, it was the older brother of Huawei. So he was the one who placed Jay Z as the governor of Damascus, as we'll talk about right now. And when
you see died, in the plague, the famous plague of following him was his famous plague that took place, or I should say, infamous play that took place. So then he appointed his younger brother, while we have to be the governor of Syria. And once we entered Syria, he never left it as a ruler until he died, basically. And he saw from being a minor governor of the province to the major governor of the entire region, to basically challenging as we know it, or the law one and then eventually becoming the founder of the Omega dynasty. All of this basically begins in the reign of The Hobbit, of course, where are we at this time is a young man in his 20s while he is just too
young, very young man in his 20s and the the bundle ommaya. were known for their CSN governorship. And what everyone wants to say about
the nomads. Firstly, as Sunni Muslims, we do not ever say anything bad about Mongolia. And we don't doubt his intention. Yes, he was not to the level of the great Sahaba there's no question about that. But he is a Sahabi. So our tongues are pure and clean. When it comes to Mongolia. And whatever he had, he did, we don't have to necessarily agree By the way, we talked about this as well. respecting the Sahaba does not mean you have to agree with their political decisions. This is not disrespect. But we do not say anything about their nia. We do not accuse them of evil or wanting to harm the oma. They were humans, and the emotions of humans are in them. And so the fall so humans
are in them as well. But we do not accuse them of ever wanting to harm the religion. And they might have done mistakes in their CSR, but it is best to keep clean of saying anything negative and Alo be the judge of all of the people that asked for the Sahaba what are the Allahu anhu modeled on all of them? Allah is pleased with them and they are pleased with him. So where are we from is he had as we know, he decided to basically put his son in charge in that
was the beginning of the Omega dynasty, but that will happen many many years later.
Now, today inshallah hotelera, I want to discuss the conquest of two regions and that is without the Sham and muscle. So, these are the two regions we will discuss and then inshallah next week, we will go and discuss telefone and assassinated empires and hollow sun and all of those others that will be next week in shallow data. So below the Sham remind me what had happened in the time of Abu Bakar.
What had happened the time Okay, so the
so the expedition had gone forth. The expedition had gone forth, and the Battle of
the Battle of
Yarmouk had begun. That's the point that in the reign of a will go to so do, the conquest had already begun. And the Battle of Yarmouk was fought in this time, and the conquest of Sham had already begun, and who had appointed?
How did he How did he lead? Now, the battles are ongoing in the data Sham, and it was at this point in time when Abu Bakar passes away, and memorable hottub becomes the halifa. And the first act that Omar does is he decides to take Hadith out of the position of leadership, and in his place, put aborto VEDA, Hamad Al Jazeera aborto VEDA Ahmed Abner Jarrah, and there are many theories as to why he did this. And some of them are there, many of them are found in the books of classical Islam. And the one that is predominantly known to most of us is that he wanted to show that how to deliver lead is not a good luck charm, that it's not necessary for Holly to be the leader. Now, this is a theory
but there are other theories as well. And there's nothing in incorrect to point out that there are also narrations that clearly seem to suggest that Armando hotdog did not agree with some of the decisions of Khalid and he viewed Khalid as maybe being great military, but not great as a politician. And frankly, there's nothing wrong with that assessment of him or if he wants to say that, that a military person is not necessarily a leader. And he felt that about obey that would make a greater leader overall. And call it can be used underneath him, which is what ended up happening. So obey the amygdala right when the message came, as we all know, going over this
quickly. He tried to stall he felt awkward, and he didn't want to take over. But eventually the news spread and Khalid confronted him and said, Why didn't you tell me that? We're supposed to swap places basically. And so how did accepted the demotion like a true moment? And this shows us the loss of holiday, whatever was the reason we really don't care? How did we know Waleed accepted the decree of permanent hotpot and he became whatever was the position and continued in that position until later on, he rose again in his ranks. And
Bob told them that as soon as you get this letter of mine, march on to the city of Damascus demisch March onto the scene of Damascus, and Damascus, much can be said about damage Damascus. Damascus is one of the oldest
continuously inhabited cities in the world today. It dates back to over 6000 years. There's hardly any city in the world that is continuously been inhabited. In one region, like the city of Damascus, it goes back to pre Babylonian almost times. And we have evidence, archaeological evidence of continuous human settlement there from as long back as we have human history, and Damascus was the jewel of the Byzantine Empire. And it was really the jewel of whoever was the owners of it because of so many reasons. His strategic location has fertile soils, its beauty, it falls straight on so many paths, the east and the west, the Silk Road as well. And the north and the south as well. There
was the the heritage she thought it was safe, which basically ended at Damascus on one side and Yemen on the other side. And as well it is the the Silk Road as well as going through it. So the intersection and there are other trade routes as well. So the intersection of multiple world global trade routes is happening straight at Damascus. Damascus was the center of political intellectual economic capital of the almost the world at that time. And remember, the hot dog wanted, of course it for the Muslims. The Muslims surrounded the city of Damascus and Damascus had six gates, and they decided that the only way to conquer the city was to lay it out in siege, cut off the supplies, make
sure that they don't have anything coming in. Eventually the people will be forced to
Forced to basically surrender. And so that is what happened that they divided them themselves up. And each of those six gates had a leader don't need to get into all those details. I didn't purposely go into all of that. Again, these are the stories that are ended, they're not as interesting for us as the details of the Sierra, the point is that they strategically laid siege to the city. Now the Romans again, it is truly phenomenal. Where are the Romans? Where are the Byzantine army? Why aren't they attacking and getting rid of this small force of Muslims. And the fact of the matter is, yes, now modern historians point out this happened that happened, there was a
break of chain here. So all of this other law, everything a lot xojo planned, this is a mighty Empire, and a small group of maximum maximum 15,000, you know, are marching in, and one city after another. Now it is true as well that your MOOC was a massive defeat on the Romans. And that really not only demoralized them caused them to split up, and they could not really gather back together. And even though small skirmishes took place, and small contingents did come to try to defeat the Muslims. Again, allies are just blessings when you have a law on your side, you cannot, you cannot. But when. So the Muslims are small, not really prepared. They've never ever had experience of laying
siege to a city the size of Damascus. I mean, you want to compare high bar, which are small little settlements with one wall to Damascus, which is one of the largest cities of the world at this point in time, the Muslims have zero experience, but still panela again, it's truly phenomenal to understand one success after another. And the leader of Damascus, the governor was the son in law of heraclius. So Family Affair, always, always all all kingdoms are family affairs, and the brother and sister and cousin everybody. Yes, so. So the daughter of heraclius was married to this man by the name of farmers. And he was the governor and the warrior basically, who's in charge of the city. And
this man pharmacie launched a number of attacks, and he tried his best to fight. But after a number of months, some say for some say six months, basically, how long are you going to fight supplies are dwindling, doesn't seem to be any reinforcements coming. Reinforcements were sent. But about Aveda, and others and harder than others had very intelligently, basically positioned
small contingents or armies on the roads as well. So as soon as they heard of reinforcement, they would come and attack that because the city is under siege, nothing can happen now. So they will then send the troops to have a fight, then come back. So throughout all of these months, the morale of the people of Damascus, the demo scenes, there they are, they're called, is going down and down. Until finally, Thomas decides to basically call it quits, and a surrender is negotiated. Now, there has been always a controversy since the beginning of time. Was Damascus concrete or did it surrender, and that is because apparently, simultaneously, while these negotiations were going on
hot it, in fact, did manage to scale the walls from one side and then launch an attack. And so it is said that the forces of aboard obey the who had negotiated a treaty, and Khalid who had attacked the city, they actually met together in the center of the city. And there was a dispute was this a conquered city? Or was it a surrendered city, and laws have changed beyond the scope of our class. But when a city is conquered, they're different rulings, when the city surrenders, there's different rulings. But by and large, the Muslims then agreed whatever actually happened, we will consider Damascus to have surrendered. And one of the perks of the surrendered city is that a surrender city
has more rights than a conquered city. Think about it. Think about it. If you surrender, even in the court of law, if you're accused of a crime, if you say I'm guilty, automatically, your sentence goes down. Whereas if you fight it and then you're declared guilty, then what? Your sentence goes up. This is like human nature and Islamic Sharia is no different. That when the city agrees to surrender, they actually have some privileges and ranks and you can put some conditions in and so the the Muslims decided whatever happened, we'll consider Damascus to be a surrender. And so Damascus came into Muslim hands in the year 14 Ah.
Now, we'll talk about this more next week but no tear. Omar had a policy that the conquered people should be left separate from the Muslims. The Muslims should not live in the cities of the conquered people. This was his policy. And wherever the Muslims went and conquered, they always built their own Muslim mini cities outside of
Concrete cities.
And he did this for many, many, many reasons of them is that he didn't want the Muslims to feel that now this is their land, and they can stop conquering other lands, they should always feel they're on the get go. And then he wanted the Muslim to retain their purity of purity of faith, not to be corrupted by others. And perhaps one could also say, and again, we don't know why all of these things happen. But perhaps we could also say that it is even better for the people who are conquered, that they don't feel the presence of the conquer amongst them all the time, they actually feel free. Now imagine if you see your conquerors walking in and out, they might actually
psychologically not be good. So maybe it's better even to leave them alone. So wherever the Muslims went, they built many cities, outside of the concrete cities. And ironically, understandably, those many cities expanded, expanded, expanded, until the conquered cities were forgotten. And the mini cities became the actual cities. And much of the Muslim land today, is built on those cities. Kufa was one of those garrison fortresses. bazzara was one of those garrison fortresses of our hero, which was first thought, which was when it gets to right, Cairo, was originally thought for thought was one of those garrison cities. Now Cairo is I think, was the second most populated city in the
world, or the third most Jedi, whatever it is, right, starting from that garrison city, of just the Muslim tents. And then everybody goes there. And the original city is neglected, until finally those major now interesting thing. For Damascus, for some reason, that didn't work. They tried to, but it didn't work. And Damascus was one of the only cities that the Muslims basically moved into it. And when they moved in, as we know, Islam, then flourished after a few generations. And now of course, the city is all Muslim. So Omar, after the conquest of Damascus, he commanded his ew soufiane to be his governor, as I said, is he passed away in the throne in the plague, that is called the plague of
unwellness. This is one of the worst plagues of early Islam, and 10s of 1000s of people died. And he has either who can also die in that play. And while we was then placed in charge of Damascus, the Muslims continued marching onwards conquering a number of key cities of Syria. And again, one by one as they conquered the cities, the Roman soldiers, the Byzantine soldiers, disperse and the morale is going down and down, until finally, the eye is set on the price of Jerusalem. Until finally, the Muslims are now basically feeling confident enough to go to Jerusalem. And all of these cities are fortresses. They're all within walls upon walls, Jerusalem is no different, and they laid siege to
Jerusalem for four months. And the same as in Damascus, many small battles and skirmishes took place. And once again, we really don't quite understand. Where are the Byzantine armies. Now, this is Jerusalem. This is the holiest of Holy, this is where according to their beliefs and doctrines, Jesus Christ walked and lived and died and was resurrected as Christian belief. I'm just quoting them. This is their belief, we believe Jerusalem to be the third holiest place and of course, beta, mocha, mocha does all of this is over there. Wait till this is over there. Nonetheless, again, modern historians have their theories this happened, this happened, this happened. And maybe that's
true. A lot of the things are true. But in the end of the day, we say a lot the most adaptable as Babb simply caused all of these factors, and no major Roman artillery contingent cavalry is coming forth. And the Muslims are simply allowed to remain in Jerusalem, under siege siege in keeping the city under siege for weeks and weeks and weeks. And finally, the Bishop of Jerusalem, just like farmers of Damascus, the Bishop of Jerusalem, his name was sophronius sophronius. So fronius basically agreed to surrender. But with the condition that the halifa himself come to receive the keys of the city, the halifa come to receive the keys of the city, meaning Bob has to come and only
then will I surrender. So harder than Well, he wrote a letter back to Omar and he said, After four and a half months, they're willing to surrender, but the condition of surrender You must come, then they will surrender. And of course, this is the famous story that we're all familiar with of Omar and his servant and you all know it of Trading Places and then before the city is the servants place, you all know the story. And this is where the story takes place. Now, there is a theory in our times and again, very, very likely
that the the bishop so fronius
Wasn't too keen on remaining under Roman rule.
And the reason was that the Romans are the Byzantines, or Firstly, religiously intolerant, which is very true. They could not tolerate any other strand of Christianity. And Christianity historically has been of the most intolerant of faiths since its inception, until basically the Reformation and Renaissance where secularism was invented. And things took a different secularism had to have been invented by Christians because they could not live with one another. In terms of religious differences, Christianity, and especially at this time, the sixth century, there are so many sectarian issues going on, between various groups, so many councils taking place over the nature of
Jesus Christ, who is Jesus Christ, is he fully human, partially God partially, this one will partially, to one will two wills does the spirit dwell with him in him is the spirit coexistent. So all of these questions of theology that even the average Christian has never heard of at this point in time, you are having many, many sects coming about. And each sect cannot tolerate the other sect. And right now we have at least 30 different understandings of Christianity, and especially in Jerusalem, can you imagine, to this day Jerusalem, you have all these various versions of Christianity, right? Eastern Orthodox, Roman orthodox, there are many of the Russian Orthodox, you
have the coptics, you have the historians, you have the, of course, the Catholics, you even have Protestant ministers now over there in those days was no different. So the theory that they of course have evidence for is that people like sophronius,
thought that it might actually be better to get foreign rule, non Christian rule, rather than Christians ruling over Christians who are not going to tolerate any other type of Christian. And so this is a very valid theory. And again, if it's true, it goes back to what I just said, a little while back, that allows religion is what some people expect. And all of these spab came into play here. And that is why, and it is very true that the level of religious tolerance that Muslims brought was unprecedented for the region. Muslims didn't care what your version of Christianity was, it is true, you couldn't practice Christianity, the way that a Muslim could practice Islam, we'll
talk about that in a while. But you could practice Christianity in your house and in your church, Judaism in your house, and in your synagogue, you could live by your laws, and nobody's gonna Inquisitor give you an inquisition, nobody is going to go out and torture you. If you believe that Jesus has two wills or one will. If you believe that Jesus is fully divine and fully human, or partially divine and partially human, nobody's gonna quiz you. And this was the freedom that they cherished at that time, and they got it under the Muslims. So this is a theory which is, seems to be very, very valid, and a lot of soldier knows best. So don't worry about the other one, as we know
came with, with his servant. And it is also said in some books that he asked, beloved, even the robot to give the event and beloved had stopped giving than at the depth of the process of voluntary self imposed exile basically, and not exile but not going to give the event because it was too painful for him. And so he rarely gave her then maybe twice after the death of process may give her that. So this was one of the times he gave them in beta democritus. And paddle. I mean, what an amazing story to think about right then one of them was in Medina, was in now in beta democritus. And the adaptability, obviously, what's it going to do to the Sahaba. And as you can imagine, and I
tried to look as much as possible, but unfortunately, we don't have the detailed accounts of, you know, Omar going to this area that much, we just have bits and pieces we don't have. And again, this is the reality who's going to preserve all these memories, but one can only imagine how the Muslims felt, I can only imagine the all that they had, and especially coming from where they came from. And the Muslims were not they hadn't seen these types of architecture, these types of buildings, and now they are walking in Damascus and now Jerusalem, and this is now all under the realm of Islam. And truly it is just a scene out of a type of fairy tale if you like, it looks like this to us. Of
course this happened because it's the deen of Allah azza wa jal, but the very people who are being tortured in Makkah by the Polish, now they are walking in the streets of Damascus and Jerusalem, as the rulers will light it to something, if you just think about it, and it's just seems, literally how could this have happened but that is Allah's religion, legal hero, Allah de NyQuil, Li, the very people that once could not even pray openly. Now they are conquering the largest and the most prestigious cities in the world, and they're walking in its streets as the rulers and this is again How I wish that we could somehow a preserved even eyewitness account but unfortunately, not that
much is preserved. So as we know he entered the city.
He met with the chief leaders in particular sophronius, as we mentioned, the patriarch of Jerusalem. And this was where they negotiated the treaty between the two of them. And this is called a schrute. Or Maria. And this is the the Treaty of Rome, what are the conditions of Roma. Now, this whole notion of the Treaty of Rome are actually need to pause here and talk a little bit about it, because it is used all the time by islamophobes. It is one of the key doctrines that islamophobes bring up over and over again.
the far right, the people on fox news that people they always bring this up, why? Because to be very honest, the treaty is not very liberal. It's not a treaty that is based on Western liberalism. It's very clear.
If you look at the treaty, there are conditions put on the algorithm. And these conditions are not in the modern sense liberal there restrictive. Christians have to dress in their clothing, they cannot proselytize, preach Christianity to others, they cannot
build new mosques, they can only sustain their old ones, they cannot ring the bell anymore loudly on Sunday, they must have their gatherings in their places they cannot. So you know, basically, they are not allowed to basically be openly Christian proselytizing, they can be Christian in themselves, but they cannot convert others, nor can their religion be given
any type of public privilege that would make it appear to be better than Islam. Okay, whereas, of course, Muslims will be given now, and Muslims, you know, and so all of these conditions are there. Now, firstly, realize that the whole story of charlatan or Maria,
some people have attempted to dismiss it, I'm not of that opinion, the reason they attempt to dismiss it is because they're embarrassed at it. So they say, Oh, the study is not authentic.
If we were to start looking at these nods of history, we would not have any history at all. Because history, by and large, unlike the CLR, unlike the even the CLR, by the way, we're lacs with these knots. We talked about this before, the finer details of the CLR. Much of it is just oral tradition. And there's gaps and whatnot. If we were to start looking at his nods for each and every incident, from the time of the oma years or whatnot, we would have no history left. So the fact of the matter is, people want to deny this one incident, because it makes them embarrassed. Because when you look at it from a modern, liberal light, the story appears backward. Not back. I mean, the story appears
regressive harsh to the non Muslims. But the fact of the matter is, it is mentioned in almost every book of history. And the books of fifth have pretty much all mentioned this as a part of their film they have derived from it. If you're not you cannot open up hardly any book or film, except that you will find and of the conditions of the shooter, Maria is that al Qaeda, so the books are filled, took this treaty as a generic framework. Because this is the first time the halifa himself I'm going to hop off, is now sitting down with the Christians and negotiating the treaty with them. What are their religious rights. Now, of course, the flip side, they're allowed the freedom to be Christians
in their personal lives. And in their churches. Nobody's going to quiz them, they're allowed to pass that religion down to their children. Nobody can force them to become Muslim. These are all conditions in the treaty. Right? They cannot be forced to become Muslim, that their children will be taught their doctrines and their own. So on the flip side, the freedoms that these people were given were freedoms that they were begging for they wanted and the concessions they were asked to make. were relatively minor and expected for the people over the time. So had the Romans been in charge. Other versions of Christianity could not even have had their churches. Muslims just said, don't ring
the bell on Sunday. Do it inside of the church. Okay. So and you can go on and on. It is a mistake to compare Omar's pact with the Geneva Convention with America, Canada, England, Australia. It's ludicrous to think that Islamic law will be similar to liberal law. It's not. And people who fall into this trap you're never going to get out of it. And us you know me by now, I'm not an apologist. The truth is the truth. Islam is not liberalism. liberalism has its own philosophy. liberalism has its own philosophy, and it has its own roots. And that's a separate topic to assume that Islam and liberalism have to be the same is nonsensical. Islam is its own. It has its own paradigm. It has its
own soul. It has its own reasons and of the basic premises of Islam is that Islam is true
of the basic premise
liberalism is that religion as a private area, don't bring it into the public of the basic premises of Islam. If Islam is true, then no other philosophy has the right to be preached in public.
If Islam is true, then the Muslims should have the dominance, just like in the nation state, people of the nation state have more rights than people who are not to the nation state. And nobody bats an eyelid at that. Okay.
I was born in America, simply because I was born in America, I have more rights than those of you that are on h one j, one k one q one p one T one visas? Correct. Are you any lesser human than I am? No. Why do you have lesser rights and deny? we discriminate on the nation state? Nobody bats an eyelid. It goes over our heads. We think it's normal, because that's the world we have been born into. So what if Islam discriminate based on religion? It is the reality. And I talked about this in more detail in other lectures, but we shouldn't be embarrassed and sugarcoat it. Yes, Islam discriminates, like every single other philosophy discriminates, you cannot have a philosophy,
except that it describes philosophy of
politics, except that it discriminates. People have to prefer themselves, whether it's the tribe, whether it's the nation state, whether it's a racist philosophy of ethnicity and racism, but people have to always have privileges, that they're going to confer upon us and the other whoever the other is, is not going to get it in the nation state. Look at the rhetoric that mainstream America has for the immigrants. In fact, Europe, look at the downright racism, those immigrants, right, as if And literally, they're called in America, what aliens look, even the term that is used, literally they're not, it's as if they're not even human, those aliens, those illegal aliens, this is
dehumanizing. And the blatant racism, right, and I think I'm going to tangent here, but will lie, we should not feel ashamed or embarrassed at all about our Islamic law, it makes a lot more sense. People have the same religion, values,
ethical laws, they have much more in common than people of a nation state.
And that's a whole separate topic, I don't want to get too but the point is a shortage of money. Yeah, they seem to be valid, there's nothing wrong with them. And
to compare it to a liberal framework, you're going to lose, it's not liberal, but compare it to other civilizations at the time. That's what you should compare it to compare it to any other land that is ruled by Christians, and see how much tolerance was there, and then see what Bob did, and then see if you can criticize, this is really what we should compare with. And therefore, the shorter Maria seems to be completely valid, and there's no reason to simply discard it.
Now, the The story goes on that the patriarch was showing up around, and he took them to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, which is basically the church where it is claimed that Jesus died and was resurrected. Of course, that's their claim. We don't believe this at all. But that's their claim that that's where he was crucified. And in today's time, of course, this is the holiest of holy places for Christians, the same churches still standing to this day. Well, I don't know if the same structure but definitely the same location. And
Bob had to pray a lot. And the patriarch allowed him to pray in the corner. And Omar said, No, I am worried that if I pray here, the Muslims will use it as an excuse to build a Masjid.
And He therefore went outside and he prayed in an open area. And that open area was then converted to a Masjid, as he knew what happened. And to this day, it is called mustard or more to this day, in, in quotes, there is a mustard called mesothelioma, which is outside of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. Anybody been there? By the way? I have not been you. I've been there. So you want to message me on your site, the mosquito? So how far is it from the church?
Not far at all this and you can just
cross over there. And that's what I thought. I mean, I haven't been there myself yet. But so the church of invertible, hubbub, so the church of much of the club is in front of the church. This is where hermano hottub prayed. And, again, these are legends and stories. And it seems to be true that the patriarch was so impressed with the role models, attitude and demeanor and o'clock, that he handed the keys of the church over to Omar for safekeeping. That now that remote is the halifa He is the boss basically. So the patriarch hands the keys of the Church of the Holy subculture over and over, handed it to one of the local army, basically commanders and it remains in his family to this
day, so the legend goes
so again,
This seems to be true as well that to this day, the keys to this holiest of holy shrines in Christianity is in the hands of a Muslim who is from the same family. The same family. Okay. But you haven't seen this yourself. You saw it on the TV.
Okay, I would, I would personally, I believe you've seen this. I would love to somehow if one of us can go meet this family. Right? You met the guy
from the time around local top
martial law. Okay. So this is what I wanted to hear like the witness verification, okay. We'll show you the shaded area.
We haven't it's not not directly okay. So again, it's very interesting, Mashallah that we have the, the keys of the holiest church in Christianity, still in the hands of a Muslim who handed it to after so many years. And by the way, there is also a quirk here that the Christians like it this way Why?
Because the Christian denominations are fighting with one another. And there's tensions and even their small areas. Each one is assigned. This is the Greek Orthodox is the Russian guys's Armenians guide. These are the Catholics and whatnot. So who amongst them would have the key would cause Civil War, so to give it to a third party, the Muslims solves the problem for the Christians.
And it is again, that Allah and Allah azza wa jal, but then he decreed this entities for everybody's advantage to this day. So the conquest of Jerusalem took place in Rugby World in the 16th year of the hedgerow. It was only a year and a half after this where the
phone was which is the plague broke out, and over 20,000 Muslims died in Sham and the the plague really all also reached Medina and other areas, but the worst was sham. That was where it broke out in Sham and some very famous Sahaba died, such as Aveda himself, he passed away in the 18th year, we're still going to get back to him one or two things other but in the 18 year history he passes away. While I live in Japan, this is the young he was still young and now he passes away because of the bone because of the plague.
Should I beat him in the house? No one of the main leaders as well, Father live in a bus. The older brother of
Abdullah ibn Ibis, and father is the oldest brother, and I'm following passes away is, of course we already mentioned he passes away, the son of Abu sufian and 20,000 of the Muslims, they die in this in this tragedy, which was the plague and of course everybody's dying as much as the Muslims at this time. In any case. So back to our story on what is in Jerusalem. And
when he is in Jerusalem when he's in bladder Sham, Ahmedabad allows asks permission from Omar to invade Egypt
and ask permission to invade Egypt. And it looks like Omar wasn't that eager. He was happy to have now come to Philistine concentrating now on the assassin as the Persians. But Allah insisted he said this is the right time the the Romans are weakened, you know they're already debilitated Now is the time to attack. So Omar was coaxed into allowing him 4000 men to go, nonetheless, when Ahmed made his way to Egypt, or changed his mind. And Omar sent him a letter that if you haven't entered Egypt yet, come back immediately. We need you basically for the Persian for assassin is we need you for those guys. Okay. It is said again, all of these are theories, we will never know that when the
messenger came to to the house, he had a hunch that this would be the message to go back. So he told the messenger, okay, I'll open it in a wireless go on. Till tomorrow, I'll open it. And the next day, he opened it after having entered Egypt.
And the letter says that if you get this before entering Egypt, which was the whole point, then you have to come back and he got it after entering Egypt. So he said, Oh, well, tough luck. We can't listen to them now because the letter doesn't apply. Okay, so he was very technical because that wasn't the purpose of that clause. The point was that you know, as soon as you get this come back, but yeah, and and of course our Egyptian brothers are happy in run jumping for him the love that he did not he didn't we were all happy for you will have to the law that allows continued going.
Now, of course, Egypt I mean, hello, what is Egypt Egypt is the land of the most ancient one of the greatest civilizations and
Christianity had flourished in Egypt. In fact, it is true to say that Egypt was the intellectual capital of Christianity, that most Christian patriarchs or Fathers of the Church are coming from Egypt, that the quantity of theologians that Egypt is producing is unparalleled, and especially Iskandariyah Alexandria, especially Alexandria. And of course, Alexandria has perhaps the largest library in the world at this time. It is the center of intellectual learning at this time, and the Byzantine Empire was very proud of its control over Egypt. But of course, as usual, there were tensions. Now heraclius had handed over the governorship of Egypt to one of his bishops, Cyrus of
fastest Cyrus of fastest, the Egyptians called him Cyrus Pico, Pico, aka sauce, Cyrus B, coca sauce, because Cyrus was from the Caucasus region, the Caucasus region is a place basically in Russia, where the Caucasians come from, okay, the term Caucasian goes back to this region, the old cars, the old cars, okay, so the Caucasians in Arabic We call it the old cars, right? This is old cars. So this service guy was from old cars in Arabic and English to call the caucuses so they called him Cyrus Pico cuz the coca sauce sorry, and most likely, it is this cocoa sauce that the Arabs heard and took and wrote down as more Opus magnum opus, okay, most likely, and many, many, many, many,
many months ago when I was on this point in the Sierra. I said, My Opus is a title given to the ruler of Egypt. Actually, this is what is mentioned in many history books, but it appears to be not correct. maracas is the Rococo sauce aerobicized, and is therefore one man. It is not the title of the ruler. It's not like the joshy, which is a title. It's not like, it's not like the Caesar case or kisara. This is the name of one man mo copus. Who is mocha was by the way, everybody should know maracas Who is mockus?
What gift
Mario complete, and dual dual
and serien and other cloth and whatnot. And he responded with honor and respect. This is that Cyrus, he's still in charge. This is the same guy will focus he's still in charge. So this guy will Opus actually was a fanatic Christian zealot, a religious zealot. And he was himself a theologian, who had derived a new, a new interpretation. All of this is happening in the sixth century, about various
minutiae like the details about the nature of Jesus Christ. And to be honest, I don't even fully understand it, nor am I that interested myself in these things, that what are all these intra Christian disputes? But the point is that Malthus was sympathetic to
basically die offsite Christianity, which is melkite, which is proto Catholic Christianity, Catholic, the Catholic faith was called the melkite faith from the melkite. You get the Catholics, and you get the Russian Orthodox and the Greek Orthodox and the Armenians, they're all breakaway. These are the melkite and the melkite are Diouf sites, okay. And the opposite dial for sites is what?
dial for sites was the opposite. Very good. model, not euro not euro for size.
model for sites, dial model dial mono, okay model for sites very good model for size and monitored sites are the coptics. Right. And I think if I noticed, I don't I'm not sure if the stories are monetized, but definitely the coptics or monitor sites. Okay. So the coptics are, of course, the ancient Christians of
Egypt, Morocco, this is sent by heraclius. He is not Egyptian, he is from the US. And he is a die off site. And he derives a new interpretation, whatever. And we see within the darker side, creed, and he wants to enforce it on the coptics. He's a fanatic. And he wants all of Egypt that is Coptic, to convert to melkite, or what is called melkite Christianity, which is proto Catholic Christianity. It's not it's not quite yet Catholic, because it's going to Catholic is going to develop and another 300 400 years. This is proto Catholic Christianity. And so there's no doubt that the people therefore hated Byzantine rule. And they didn't want these people in charge. And again, all of this
later historians are now coming and saying
This is why the Muslims could conquer. Okay, maybe. But again, how could it be facilitated at this point in time? A lot of soldiers did it. Okay, one of the main reasons the people of Egypt did not want Byzantine rule. And this is true. They hated the Byzantines. Why did they hate the Byzantines? Anybody who tries to take your religion away, you're gonna hate him. This is human nature. And my office was that type of person. Now, another quirk here, mo colcrys wasn't a pure melkite
mo caucus was not a pure melkite. He's kind of a muqtada. Now, okay. And he has tensions with the patriarch of Rome, because he has his own data. And he's tyrannical. So he as well wants to break away from the Byzantines for his own selfish reasons. Because following right, all of these are factors that will lie he will look back. If you're a cafe or an atheist, you're a secular guy, you'll say, Oh, look at this. But if you're a believer and ally xojo, as we are, he will say it's so obvious. Wherever you look, there are all these reasons coming together. And these reasons are not just coincidence, this is a loss other than all of these interesting factors come together.
Otherwise, how can 4000 people conquer the land of the great Pharaohs? Think about it? How can it be but again, aloha muszaphar, literally 4000 people entered Egypt and the entire civilization It is one of the most amazing conquests of early Islam, hardly any bloodshed, unlike even in Damascus, and of course, the Persians bloody messy battle. Egypt was one of the easiest conquest. It's almost as if they're walking in and conquering one city after another. So
amber enters Egypt in 18 H 18. h and begins conquering the smaller towns of the Nile one after the other before he moves on to the big fortress city, on the coast of denial that they called Babylon after the original Babylon. This is not that Babylon, that Babylon is not in Muslim rule. This is their Babylon that they named after the ancient Babylon. And just so that you understand the modern city of Cairo, which is based on the Islamic city of Foos thoughts, was based on the Egyptian city of Babylon. Okay, so you can say Babylon is Cairo, even though that's very simplistic, but this was that same region, Babylon, and it was the big city that they first encountered. And so Ammar, moved
on to the city of Babylon. And he laid siege to it, and they could not win it was simply too much now, now they're getting to basically the garrison fortresses. So he wrote to him a real hot top that look, I mean, your letter came to me who's to look elsewhere in the city in the in the in the land, and now I'm surrounding Babylon, and I need more men. And so I'm going to have Bob basically agreed to divert some of the men from other places and send them to Egypt, and 4000, another 4000 came until finally he had around 10 to 12,000 men, and included in these was the howdy rasulillah, although selam Zubaydah are one. Okay, she's available now one now is now a part of the Egyptian
Vanguard. And so with this, Babylon eventually basically agrees to agrees to surrender, and more cultus was very eager to sign a peace treaty with the Muslims. more openness, as we said, wanted to break away from heraclius. But iraklis refused to allow more focus to surrender. So Macaca sent a letter that look, there's no point I need to surrender. And these are the conditions and heraclius basically refuse to do so even though more hawkers wanted to pay jizya. Why? Because once again, all of these are factors that are taking in here that
that he wants to be put in charge, he wants his version of Christianity to go forward. Nonetheless, Eliza wishes will that it was not it was not surrendered, and therefore no conditions, or Hara or first thought or Babylon was conquered, because towards the end of the siege, the equivalent of December in the year 640, a group of Muslims managed to skill over the wall in the middle of the night, open up one of the doors of the city, and the Muslims basically came in and conquered, completely conquered. So there is no surrendering, more Opus wanted to surrender. And Allah willed he would not surrender, and that means the Muslims could do whatever conditions they wanted to do.
Then the Muslim army turned its play its eyes on Heliopolis and Heliopolis was a major center of ancient Greece. And of course to this day, it is a famous city. Heliopolis Of course literally is the worship of the Sun God, which is why in Arabic It is called.
It is called ancient, ancient, the sun god, the iron
The sun god, right, and it is considered to be a tourist destination. And it is today the till today the temples of the ancient gods are here. And they conquered ancient, the concrete Heliopolis. And one by one, we're not going to call it although this one by one, they're conquering all of these Egyptian cities, until finally, the biggest, and the most important city of that entire region, in fact, of all of Africa, is now in front of them, and that is Alexandria. Alexandria, of course, is named after Alexander the Great. He's the one who founded the city 600 years ago, 600 years ago from this point in time, Alexandria is also a very ancient city, and Alexandria was considered to be of
the wonders of the ancient world, because in Alexandria was the famous lighthouse. You know, there are Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. One of them was in Alexandria, there was a lighthouse that was considered to be a miracle for its time. And so Alexandria has the largest library, it has the most number of aroma of Christianity theologies of Christianity, and it is one of the most heavily fortified cities in the world. Because the Romans before them, the Greeks after them, the Byzantines, there were three civilizations, the Greeks, and the Romans and the Byzantines, all of them are building their fortresses and walls around it. And Alexandria, one side of it faces the
sea, which means it has direct access to Rome to Constantinople, Rome, read the Constantinople right now. And so Alexandria, was a huge challenge to the Muslims. And the Byzantine leadership fully understood the dangers of Alexandria falling into Muslim hands. And so all forces converged on Byzantine on the alexandrian basically, way to try to stop the Muslims from doing getting to, to Alexandria. And in fact, a journey that would have lasted two days took the Muslims more than 10 or 12 days to do, because every single, you know,
bit by bit every single half a day or whatnot, they would encounter another troop or another in Calvary that had come to attack them. And so that small journey of a day and a half, took them almost five times that amount to finally get to Alexandria. And finally, Alexandria was surrounded, and they
surrounded the city in the year 641. See, and this city, they could not crack it at all for the longest time. Why? Because plenty of water,
direct access to the ocean. So while they're being in siege, supplies are coming in from the Romans from the Byzantines. Because the Muslims didn't have a naval force at this time. They're not stopping the ships from coming in. And the fortress walls are fortified for over 500 years. There's multiple layers outside Alexandria, not even one layer, you have the Greek and the Romans visiting. Additionally, you have these catapults that have been built in, and the Muslims. Again, they haven't seen this technology to this strength before. And the casualties that the Muslims suffered for the next six months, was in the hundreds, if not 1000s, the cannibals kept on bombarding the Muslims.
And they really did not know what to do. But the Muslims did not give up. And weeks turned into months, months, were almost going to turn into the year, six or seven months, basically. But eventually heraclius himself said heraclea is the Emperor. He said, I will come myself at the head of a naval force and defend Alexandria. This was a huge
change of winds, when the Emperor is going to come at the head of an naval Force and Army, and he's going to rescue Alexandria against somebody else. What are you gonna do?
The weapon of
what else are you going to do? And so panela? Again, one of those would I mean, again, how do you explain these things? He is on the shore of Alexandria, here are not exactly on a Constantinople, and he is taking care of basically getting ready of the naval force, and he dies, the Emperor dies before ever stepping on the ship. How do you explain these things? Again, for our perspective, all of this is just one by one by one. And of course, what's going to happen when the Emperor dies, it's going to happen. Chaos, complete chaos. The whole plan of taking goes completely stops. Right? The entire naval fleet that had been planned, sees this because now other issues happen. And by the way,
another point here, of course, there's internal intrigues, Civil War, nephews and other people want to become Emperor. You all know Rome and constantly these are not there's lots of entries going on. So when the Emperor is dead, who's gonna go send an army outside the army, the simply does not go
And the whole population of Alexandria from being optimistic to being saved, realize there is no help coming for many months, the siege is wearing them down. And so finally, they simply agree to surrender. They agree to surrender. So Alexandria then indeed does surrender. And Ahmed
comes in as a conquer another concrete to the surrender city. He didn't fight the people, it is a surrendered city. And it is true though that the next year, when the new Emperor came to power, he launched a powerful offensive, he kicked out, the Muslims had to evacuate, but only for less than a year. Then they went back in and they reconquered, Alexandria and Alexandria has then remained in Muslim hands up until our times, even though it was threatened twice, it was threatened twice, severely.
The first time was threatening the crusades, the crusades, and there was some pedals because again, Alexandria is a naval city. It's a city where you have access to the fleet has access, and then it was threatened
by Napoleon Bonaparte in 1781 82, where Napoleon conquered Alexandria, Napoleon conquered all of Egypt in two weeks, and then he abandoned it in one night when he couldn't know how to deal with the people and whatnot. He simply left it after a while, but he conquered it through Alexandria. In any case,
one of the famous Muslim, one of the famous non Muslim historians of Muslim civilization is very famous guy, Hugh Kennedy has many, many books about conquests and history. Hugh Kennedy writes in his book, The Great Arab conquests, that even more striking talking about the conquest of Egypt is the verdict of john of I don't know who pronounces Nicky you I don't know pronounces john of Nick. He was one of the chroniclers of the ancient world. JOHN of nicaea, was no admirer of Muslim government, and was fierce in his denunciation. But he says of Ahmedabad, us. So this is a chronicler of the Byzantine Empire, writing about unbelievable loss. So Hugh Kennedy is translating
for us. I can't go back to the original. So Hugh Kennedy was a very famous historian still alive. As far as I know, he's written many books. His most famous book is about under loose By the way, it's online. Sorry, it's on Amazon. It's written very good books about under the sun especially, but also about the Arab conquest. So he says, this Chronicle writes, so he's quoting somebody 1300 years ago, about Ahmed Ignace. He extracted the taxes that had been determined upon, but he took none of the property of the churches. He committed no access violation or plunder, and he preserved his conditions throughout all of his days. So it took from us what he had said he would take and he
didn't take anything more. And he allowed our churches, he allowed us to be who we are, and he did not spoil, spoil means to obviously conquer and to take, he did not harm anybody. He fulfilled his part of the bargain, even though this chronicler hated the Muslims, but still, he had to admit that Obama was a fair as a fair ruler, and Hugh Kennedy who is an expert of Islamic civilization and history. He writes, I quote from his book
of all the early Muslim conquests, that of Egypt was the swiftest and most complete.
Within a space of two years, the country had come completely under our rule. Even more remarkably, it has remained under Muslim rule ever since. Seldom in history, in human history. Can so massive political change, have happened so swiftly and been so long lasting?
Egypt's culture, religion, ethnicity, language, literally changed overnight, and it still remains to this day. What does every Egyptian even Egyptian cops, what do they speak? They speak Arabic.
How did this happen from a civilization that was in one way, literally in less than two years? The Muslims came in, and SubhanAllah. This great and ancient civilization remains in the heritage of Islam and armor. I know people are coming shells, just five minutes, I'm done. I don't want to go back to Egypt next week. I want to finish up. I wanted to make Alexandria his capital, who would not he wanted to make Alexandria the capital of Egypt. But Omar objected, with a very valid reason. Who can guess the objection or a valid reason?
strategic strategic,
the naval city, people are always going to come attack it. You can't have a capital when we don't have a Navy. That is in water that is exposed to water. Because again, we didn't have a Navy. We didn't have a Navy. We had some ships. Those ships got to send and mccrane they weren't we
We didn't have a full fledged Navy. Or if man was the first to begin the Navy, it was then the oma years that actually then had a full fledged Navy. Okay, we didn't have nav now. So I'm gonna I'm gonna hop over again and it truly is amazing. You look at these leadership qualities, where are they coming from? How can somebody who's never ever been in a ship never ruled a metropolis? Never, never seen the sea never done so how can I mahato be negotiating from Medina. And he's telling the and I skipped over a lot of stuff, even in the siege of Damascus. He is telling the Aveda go do this, make sure you go to him do the Yanni in one siege and Armada saying keep some people there and take
another there take another there. And one wonders, no maps, what education were any if this isn't a genius that comes from up above, you cannot be taught this type of stuff, right? So even now, Alexandria No, because that city is not safe. So go find another place. And so Amar'e decided to go back to the second largest city and that is Babylon, Babylon. And an incident is mentioned here again, in the books of history, that when he was first in Babylon, when he conquered Babylon, when they were packing up the tents.
Legend has it that on his tent, a pigeon had settled and made a nest with eggs on it. So he said, Let the tend to be don't leave my tent there. And so when Omar said no to Alexandria, he took that as a sign
that that's where I need to build the capital. So he went back to that place. And
those tents were basically called full stops. And so he called the city for stopped. And
that place where the tent was, eventually he built it into a Masjid. And to this day, mustard Rouse is one of the most ancient messages in the world. And it is in this, of course, not the same building, but the same place to this day in Egypt. And this shows you where was first thought Mr. Rouse is in Cairo. Cairo is now so big madonia swallows the whole dunya up, right, and swallows everything around it. So, first thought was built outside of Babylon.
For start, grows, grows, grows, grows, and Babylon basically is swallowed by it. The fatimids come, and the fatimids want to build their own magnificent city. So they build a city outside of facade. And they call it the conquering city. I'll call her. I'll call her the conquering city. And they build their alpha Hara outside of Woodstock. And then I'll call her grows, grows, grows, grows, until I call her swallows for Stuart and Babylon. And it then becomes Is it the second largest city in the world? Or what do you know? The third?
Mashallah, so, so, so I bought her basically then takes over but it is Alpina, who's thought all of this goes back to basically this city. The famous story happens to the urban Cathy had mentioned that when Egypt was conquered the people, the Egyptians came down with a blouse and said that this Nile of ours, this Nile of ours, always blocks at one time of the year. And we have to always do a festival in order to cause it to flow. He said, What is that festival? They said on the 12th night of this particular month, we always take a virgin girl front, we choose this girl from her family, and we paid the family make them happy and whatnot. And we sacrifice this girl by throwing her into
the river to get the Nile to flow. We dress her up and we give her fine jewelry, and then we throw her into the Nile. And then the Nile comes to us.
So our mother said, this is something that cannot happen in Islam. Islam cannot allow this. So according to legend, and all of this is legend at the end of the day, there are no it's not this is found in the ancient books. The Nile did not flow that here.
So amber wrote a letter to a mobile hotspot, saying what do we do now? Give you the whole story to him. So Omar replied back that I will write a letter to the Nile
you throw this letter in the Nile instead. So Rama wrote this letter, and it is mentioned even Kathy has this and bar. faqir forgot with it the ancient books. What is it called for help was done for to help with and all of these books I mentioned this Bella duty. But Bella azurion photo albums done which is the most classical books have been Korea is very late and cathedra 770 Digital, we have the ancient books of history of poverty.
Have these a preserve these these legends and stories? So Omar wrote a letter. This is the letter translated from the slave of a law or Omar, Amira meaning to denial that is found in the land of Egypt. So from Omar to the Nile, okay, I'm not bad.
If you only flow based on your own initiative, then do not flow for we have no need of you. But if you only flow on the command of Allah, Allah had alcohol, and he is the one who causes you to flow, then we ask Allah to Allah, that you shall flow. This is the letter. So I'm gonna read this letter out to the people threw it into the Nile. And it is said that the next day, the Nile tripled in size. And from that time on, no more virgin births.
Now, some of the our scholars have,
again criticized the story, again, the it's not comes up, and they criticize it because it sounds superstitious. Okay. Quite the contrary. I don't at all think it sounds superstitious.
They say How could oma write to the Nile? And honestly, I one wonders with my utmost respect to these critics? Do you really think Armada is writing to the Nile?
What's the purpose of the letter?
The people of Egypt? I mean, it just surprises me that you have these hardcore, or an AMA that just don't understand. They're so narrow minded in these things, you know, they're not understanding. So how can Omar right to the Nile, this is confirmed? What do you really think? Or what is writing a letter to denial, that denial is gonna listen to him. This is a letter for the people that owe people and it's read to the people, all people denial is under the command of Allah, make dua to Allah. And this is almost tawakkol. This is almost yochanan, a man that his tawheed that the people will see that denial is not a God, because again, the Egyptians they had this notion, look, the
Indians have the Ganges River, the Knights had the Egyptian had to know that the Nile is some type of demigod or something. So I wanted to prove to them to hate. And this was the point of the of the lecture. And
two final points, inshallah we're done. It is also mentioned that Ahmed had an idea. And he wrote to me asking permission to do this idea. He said, Why don't we connect to the, what is now called the Mediterranean Sea with the Red Sea?
Because this will give us direct access, and supplies and whatnot can come. But Omar felt that this would give the Byzantine Empire direct access to Makkah.
Hmm, think about it. Right. And so he vetoed the idea. Of course, the idea remained in the minds of the people for 1500 years. And it was only in the 50s, no, 30s sorry, 20s and 30s, when the Suez Canal was finally built, this is the idea of us. Why don't we dig a canal from the Mediterranean to the Red Sea, connect to the Mediterranean to the Red Sea. This will save us
so much time and money. And it was a good idea. But I also had a good reason to say no, and that is that the Muslim woman was not ready to have that direct linkage from the Byzantine Empire to the Roman Empire. So Egypt therefore came under Muslim control, basically, the 18th year of the digital 18 to 19th. And the 20th. It was finished two years, by the 20th of the entire land of Egypt. And as well, Nubia, which is now Sudan, as well, portions of Libya, they began to be conquered. Now, it is interesting to note that Egypt, with my utmost respect to my Egyptian brothers and sisters, did not play a major role in the early part of Islam at all, it was relatively insignificant. It was just a
province of the provinces. And it was not any type of center of activity. And it was actually one incident that was to change this forever, and to put Egypt on the center of the Muslim world. And that is, of course, the Mongol invasion. Right? When Ganges Khan, Genghis Khan came out of nowhere, and destroyed 80% of the Muslim world, and brought to an end the Abbasid Caliphate and raped Baghdad and some are condemned Tashkent are wiped out and no, and the civilizations that were once of the greatest civilizations never ever flourished. So Avalon has done for example, where it was, it never recovered. And it is now where it is from the invasion of the Mongols. Right to that time to that
day of Watson, by the way, was one of the centers of civilization back in those days, summer condors Well, all these years, you look still at the architecture in the middle of the desert, in Afghanistan, the middle of the desert. You find these
Amazing structures, all gone after the invasion, the Mongols, and it appeared the clamor had come. One small miniscule dynasty stood up and fought against the Mongols, and for the first time in human history, one, and that is avoided vaporous from the Mamelukes. And the Mamelukes were small dynasty in Egypt, insignificant, they would have been a footnote of one of the footnotes of a book of history. They were completely insignificant in the grand scheme of things. But that is allows world to zoom into shadow to the lumen Tisha, and he took this small dynasty of the Mamelukes. And it became the center stage of the oma. And ever since that year of 1261. The Battle of angel loot, the
Battle of Goliath, the wall of Goliath, right, the Battle of the wall of Goliath Angel loot. Ever since that time, Egypt has remained a center of intellectual and political activity of the Muslim Ummah for 1000 years. For the first, you know, few 100 years, Egypt did not have that time, in fact, if anything was associated the ultimates. Right? If anything, it was not a source of pride because of the optimist. People were scared and they hated the optimist, but somehow to LA, and Egypt became the capital of even the modern world as well, because of Muhammad Ali and whatnot, and all the bash and all of this and, and to this day, if there is any intellectual and political, and, you know,
basically a civilizational capital of the Arab world, really it is to this day, Egypt. And that is why our own President when he wanted to show that he's making a gesture to the Arab world when he got elected, where did he go speak in Egypt, in Egypt, that's the whole notion being the final point of Charlottetown. I know a lot has been done, but
I don't want to come back to Egypt next week.
So when the Muslims conquered Egypt,
Egypt was basically 100%, Coptic Christian, by and large, because Byzantine Christianity was something else melkite. So Egypt was 100% Christians, the Muslims come in, they have less than 10,000 people, you can say 0.001% are now Muslim. Okay.
Now, fast forward 14 centuries, and Egypt is roughly 90% Muslim, and 10% still Coptic? Okay. And Egypt because it was a civilization because records because it was all you have plenty of raw data that can be used and has been used. And research has been done to demonstrate and prove that there was never any one era where they just converted all of them. Rather, it was a very, very slow, organic process. Bit by bit, Islam, from one to two to three, it's a bit by bit just slowly coming. Until pre modernity, things settle down. When colonialism comes and because of colonialism, tensions between Christians and Muslims rise even more. Because before colonias came, that type of tension
was not there, tensions between Jews and Muslims as well because of Zionism and colonialism, otherwise, that tension did not exist. So why do I say this? We have evidence to demonstrate
Muslims never forced their religion onto others.
And one of the main purposes of conquering a civilization are now made clear. Why did Islam go and conquer other civilizations? Exactly because of Egypt,
you are not going to convert to a faith that is exotic and faraway and foreign. And if you do, you will be the one out of the million. He will be the Malcolm X's and the you know, Alexander Russell webs of America, one out of a million, you will not convert until you see the reality of that faith. You notice you sense the civilization the man, you interact with the people. And that's what happened in Egypt. And in other lands, there was no forced conversion. But when the people are interacting with Muslims and Islam, what happens slowly but surely, people continue to convert, for whatever reason, sometimes they convert for the wrong reason. And I mentioned this earlier, and we
say so what to go ahead and convert for the wrong reason Allah will bring the right reason in your heart. This is how confident we are of Islam, maybe mentally converted to get off the jizya tax. So what Go ahead, whatever your need is, we're not going to ask your Nia because we're so confident Our product is so good. You're going to start liking it eventually as the reality correct. That's the reality. So we have this, this attitude, and we shouldn't be ashamed of this attitude. This is why Islam went out to conquer other civilizations. There's no way people are going to convert. So did was Islam
spread by the sword. Yes and no. If you mean by the sword, a sword was put on somebody's throat and forced to convert. No, never. But if you mean by the sword, the political domain of Islam, then yes, Egypt was not threatening the Muslims that they had to go attack, Damascus, even the Persians were not an existential threat. Anybody who says this, that these were defensive wars, I'm sorry, you're making a mockery of your own intelligence. They these are not defensive wars, what did Egypt do to deserve an attack by the Muslims? They didn't know they're living their lives. But if we hadn't attacked, we wouldn't have had 90% Egyptian Muslims. The same goes for us and our forefathers in
Buxton in India.
This is the reality.
People converted, not by force never. But by interacting and seeing the beauty of Islam. And this is why the number one reason why the domain of Islam was indeed spread by the sword, not the religion of Islam, the political domain of Islam, how we should not be ashamed at all to admit that and as Hugh Kennedy himself said, no other civilization took root and remained like the Arabs and Muslims in Egypt and with this inshallah Allah we conclude our talk for today, and inshallah next week we'll continue talking about
Persia and assassinate Empire and other conquest, inshallah.