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post World War divisions. But before this Syria is one large region. So from a historical and ancient point of view, the Arab world can be divided into three parts, specifically the Arab world, we're not talking about Europe and Africa, now, just the Arab world, it can be divided into the Iraq. And it's, you know, peripherals, regions. And then there are sham. And we talked about what Sham and Syria, what that represents. And then there's a separate sort of cut off peninsula. And that is Al Jazeera, which we now have is we call it Gulf. But when we use Gulf nowadays, we're referring to some Gulf states, Saudi Arabia, and you know, some of these regions, but the Gulf of

the old times that Jazeera, the old times is a much wider, you know, geographical region, almost a triangle, which meets seas on three sides, not four sides, but on three sides. And it includes Yemen. Nonetheless, Yemen is kind of cut off, it's it's there, but it's not too connected. It's a little bit to the side. And that becomes important historically, as we will see, also. So now, for a great period in history, Yemen controlled, and the rule of Sabah controlled the trade between Europe and the rest of the world. And between Asia and the rest of the world. This was the this was the avenue by which they would have to go their ports were of strategic importance. So this was what

gave them their economic strength and also their political importance. Because when you're important, strategically, economically, right, then your political power also rises. So this was one of the main means by which they have their importance. Now, the great flood occurs once again around the year 450 and 451. And what happens to them as a civilization collapse, that economy is gone, and the ports are destroyed now that pretty much everything they had going from themselves is finished. So that wrote that route that used to be for trade is no longer. Now there are other means by which route this this travel needs to take place. Now, this is a little bit of background on the Yemen

side, how is this connected to Arabia, a lot of Arabs or Yemenis or Arabs also, they left that region, and they started traveling to other parts of the Arab world. And they started settling as tribes in different places. Now this the Arab Yemenis have been traveling for a long time. Some narrations even say that the first tribe that came with is married to his Salaam way before this, you know, when they when they saw the water, right, that was also a Yemeni tribe originally, so they've been traveling and leaving Yemen for other travels within the Arab world for a long time already. But this was a major Exodus because of the economic downfall in that region. By the way,

elsen has alleged also historically happened to be tribes that left Yemen for economic reasons and settled in Medina. So they're also you know, their history is traced back to that original Exodus. Now, in the meantime, in the rest of Arabia, especially in the land of Hejaz, the children of Ibrahim alayhis salam, through the lineage of which messenger is my darling Salaam, they're settling in different places. They're not all in Mecca. He made the offer them in Mecca, this is true, but they were dispersed all over Arabia, they were not in one place. And about 100. This is around the same time that this collapse took place. There's a historical figure we learn about in, you know, in

the books of history, even Holden mentions him in detail. His name is Luca, and he was a leader among the Arabs who was from the family of a smart leader in his salon. And he makes a call to the children of Israel, the Arabs to unify and to move to Makkah, to make it a central city from which they can establish some sort some makings of a state. Now, the Arab concept of state is not the same as the Roman concept of state, or the Persian concept of state, or even what we consider state in our terms, but they're saying Arabs are Bedouins, they're dispersed. Let's unify our family forces, settle them together in one place and become one block strength and form something like a state.

This was the call that he made. And he was a very charismatic leader. So he was able to do this very, very quickly, when he but he, by the way, is born in the year 400. So he's born about 550 years before that great flood happens in another part of the world which is in Yemen. Now, he historically is called El Madame mayor. That's the title he was given historically, why means the one who caused gathering who made gathering happen, right, he allowed for all the Arabs that were disturbed, disperse, the children was married, I listen to commune and together were which city now? in Macau, Macau already had a population but very small, but now it starts becoming more centralized

and gets starts getting populated. Now this man or thing has three sons, and one of the most popular of his sons, the most famous of his sons, his name is enough. And enough, after he dies, he starts taking a role of leadership in Mecca. And he has again with his son had four of his and so now we're talking about the grandsons of the great gatherer, right and who are his grandsons? Those are Hashem muttalib, additions and nurofen. These are four sons once again, Hashem will pull it up the show

And often Hashem is born in the year 464. So is that before the flood or after the flood?

That's after the flood flood was 450, if you remember, right, so he's born after the flood. And you know, so this is about almost a little over a decade after there's a vacuum, there's an economic vacuum that takes place, right? And Hashem is born. Now, as Hashem grows up, he feels that there is this economic vacuum and the mccanns may be in a position to take advantage of that vacuum, and call attention of these other neighboring empires, to start making trade agreements with Makkah, and he sees this is an opportunity, because there's no competitor, the competitor would have been the, you know, Yemen, and they're basically collapsed. They don't have that position anymore. And a lot of

very powerful, you know, traders from Yemen have already left the region because they couldn't survive there anymore economically. So he said he goes himself to Sham and speak to the Saudis called, and he sends his brother of the Shams to hamartia. He sends nofilter rock and even sent one of his brothers to Yemen. So in other words, every neighboring Empire he's going and he's trying to make trade agreements with them. So now they look at Makkah as a port to do trade. The selling point for Mecca is the Arabs generally have respect for Mecca. idolatrous as they may be, they actually had accepted Mecca as the house built by Allah, even if they're doing *, they still had it in

their tradition, their lineage, that this is the house of Allah. So it already as the in the culture of that land in Hejaz. And, you know, even further down in the plains, this was already understood as a religious capital. So they said it's already in religious capital, why don't we try and make it also an economic capital and try to use that strategically to our advantage. Now, when they

these four brothers made these agreements, and these are you know, the word for agreement, this is important. Now the word for agreement is a laugh. And these four brothers who went and made agreements, they're called us haben. elf, the people of those agreements, the trade agreements, why is that word important? What does it remind you of the left equality so there's a historical connection between the term used for them and what we're going to be learning in solid college, that's where that's going to become important. Another name for them was also enlisted gteen which means the traders. Now Hashem Hashem was one of those four brothers. Hashem has a son named Abdul

muttalib. Born approximately 457. According to most historians, Abdulmutallab has a son named Abdullah. Abdullah has also the loss of Allah and epsilon. So now we have this timeline and connected to this Hashem being one of the key figures who was involved in the revival of Mecca as an economic power

and bringing it to fruition now. In the meantime, now we're going to look at another place. So we looked at some history of Yemen. While this is happening, we looked at some history of what's happening in the jazz itself. Now we're going to look at what's happening in the Christian world, in the Roman world. In the year 300. After he said, he said, I'm in the Christian calendar, the Roman Empire accepts, as an official state religion, Christianity, Christianity becomes the official straight state religion. But the Roman Empire isn't limited to Rome. They include parts of western Asia will be called Turkey, nowadays, Egyptian parts of Egypt, they include underneath them, Sudan,

and even Ethiopia. And those are also Christian regions at this time. And actually a good part of how Bashar was Christian and a part of Yemen was also a Christian originally, in a brief era in between, the Yemenis had a rebellion and they became a Jewish Empire. And when they became a Jewish empire for a brief period, this is the time when they started oppressing Christians. And since they're very close to how much I told you, the kind of disconnected the Emily's are disconnected from the Arabs, but from a map, they're very close to Ethiopia, to how Bashar and how Bashar is what religion, they're Christian, and they became briefly Jewish. And when they did their rulers started

offending or oppressing the Christian, some argue that this is this may even include us hello to those among the Christians who are more hidden and whatnot. Some argue that that happened in that region of Yemen. But when the abyssinians see when the habashi See, and if Europeans even see that the Christians are being oppressed, they move in to Yemen. And they actually invaded and they actually they they set up a king from among the Christian Yemeni community, and Yemen becomes a Christian region once again.

Over time, though, very quickly within Yemen, there's infighting, its political problems, right. Who are they connected to politically, now Yemen, they're connected to publisher, but they're not really in a colony of publisher. They're left alone, they brought Christian rule back and left. So Yemenis are ruling themselves. They're autonomous. But what happens is there's a military coup of raha used to be a general and he fights against his own King takes him over and becomes the new king. And he keeps ties he tells since how much he would be alarmed. He tells how much Oh, no, no, no, I'm not against you. I just wanted to have this region under my control, and I didn't think the previous had

been

was running things like, but I want to keep ties and allegiance with you, it became weaker than before, but the ties remain now this is important, the Christian allegiance that we're gonna come back to. Now, Yemen, you know the rulers, one of the ways they retain their power and one of the things that makes them build the people's allegiance to them is they remind people of what a great nation they are, and how they need to return back to the greatness. So what is ultra high reminded of, he's reminded of the days when Yemen used to be the center of trade before the flood. But after the flood, who took advantage of the vacuum, the coloration, and all the trade moves through

courage. So now abraha decides he's going to build what's called police. This is a huge shrine, which he wanted to make as an alternative was a Christian place of worship. But he wanted to make it as an alternative place of center. And it said that he used the most expensive equipment and you know, building materials and Exotic Items to build this huge monument and building really a shrine and temple. But his hope was it was it would undermine the value of markets a much more elaborate and glorious place to come. Now, he thought, because it's more interesting that people will come but people didn't go to Macau because they found it in a tourist attraction. What was the attraction in

Macau, it was religious. And you can't change people's religious sentiments overnight. So he gets really upset that he's exhausted all these resources into building this huge thing. And it's not getting any traffic, no, no traders change. So he writes a letter to the kingdom publisher. And he says, until the GABA is destroyed, we're not going to have any attention in our region in Yemen. So you need to help us now when he writes this letter, the Arabs get word of it. The Arabs hear about it. And when they hear about it, what do they do? They they're very upset that this conversation is even taking place. So some of the Arabs that were a little crazier than the others, there are

several narrations. One of them is they burnt the place down, they went to, they went to Yemen, and they burnt the, you know, the police down, they burned that building down. But another more popular narration is that they went there, and they secretly entered it, and they basically suffocated in it. Right. And they violated the place and they left. And this was their statement of, you know, this is what we think of your Kaaba, so to speak, right? And abre sees this, and this is insult to injury, he's already thinking about attacking. And now he has all the more reason and now he can actually think about it in political science point of view, if they have attacked you, or if they've

insulted you, is it easier to rally the troops and gather the people in your favor. So he sees this as an opportunity to rally everybody and go after the cover. But historically, we learned he was already interested in destroying the cover. This is important to note, a lot of times when we study this history, without studying it carefully, we think that his motivations were religious. Right? We have to understand the world works in strange ways. Maybe he has some religious aspirations in there. But what does it seem when you study the history What seems to be the case, his aspirations are political, and economic, he wants his nation to be the center of trade once again, and he sees

Quraysh now as this formidable competitor, also he realizes we have a huge army and we're backed by the Ethiopians who's who's back, who's back in the Munchkins, nobody. So we can do this without a problem. This will not be an issue, right? So he's, he gathers his troops now there are several narrations about how many, the least number that we have is 12,000. The biggest number historic in history books is 60,000. So we'll say between 12 and 16,000. troops are now summoned, and they're heading out and with them are between nine and 12, nine to 13. Actually, elephants, there's only there's one elephant that was really famous among them, his name is machmood. They say he was was a

colossal elephant, and he was sort of leading the pack.

So they make their way out. Now, as they go towards they make progress, they head towards life. When they get too far, if the Thai people, they don't fight them, they say we're ready to negotiate with you. Now, it's important to note Why would I want to negotiate with them? The rest of the Arabs would not want to negotiate with them because their false gods, their idols, where are they stationed?

They're not. And that's important. You know why nobody would attack Polish because polish is holding all of their idols. If you attack them, they're gonna go back home and do what to your idol. They're gonna break it. But if you still worship the false god let, and they kept the idle Empire. They didn't have the idle in at the harem. They had it in five. So they didn't care if it gets destroyed. They didn't. It wasn't a big deal to them. So they start making a deal. They cut a deal. They say we have no beef with you actually, we'll help you tribe of 35. Specifically, they said, we'll help you. They appointed a guy,

a navigator named Abu Hassan. And his job was because the way from America is complicated, I will guide your troops all the way to America without a problem. So the end

Get get a snitch, to go from five to go and destroy Makkah and Arab who's going to help them kill other Arabs, right? I happen to die on the way he died on the way and he was buried on the way and this is actually this became a monument. The arrows would go there and spit and curse and like throw pebbles at his grave and stuff because he was a historical sellout. And he sold the location of Buckeye and directions to Mecca out to the army. Anyhow. So he gets there in the month of Muharram. By the way, abre gets to the region in the month of June. Now this backdrop is very important. Why is this backdrop important? Because when we study this sutra, and a lot tells us and I'm Tara Keifa,

which is our job next week and cello taught us to study the words of the Silla. Today my focus was just history, and why this history is important. This history is important, first of all, to note that the reasons why Makkah was attacked. Were these political sentiments in their their economic sentiments in there, this is important to know. Now, if you look at solid Enfield, Allah azza wa jal talks about the political and the military safety of Makkah. And when you look at what he talks about, so the correlation talks about the economic security of Makkah, these two different aspects of the security of MCI are going to be dealt with in these soldiers. Now today inshallah Allah I'm

going to be very brief and just talk about you know, a sprinkling of aspects of the surah but really the our focus will be inshallah tada next week on the word by word analysis of the surah. Just but at least a sprinkling of items today in sha Allah tala number one is the issue of lm Tama. Did you see Did you not see is how it's translated? Did you not see? This is a figure of speech in Arabic. First of all, it's in the singular in English. It's kind of hard to spot because it had we said lm Tarot or lm Tara, the English translation would still say did you not see? Because for English, the word U is both singular or plural, it doesn't make a difference. But in Arabic, lm Tara is when

you're talking to one another Tara is when you're talking to a lot. So it makes a difference right. Now this is singular. This made a debate among them of a Citroen whether is this talking to the messenger sallallahu alayhi wasallam? Or is it talking to each and every individual who is being asked to reflect now there are evidences for both. There are evidences for both for example, local darbuka Allah tabula Yahoo. Shana, your master declared that you should worship none except he, and you should be the best of both parents now that you in that ayah is singular. But the messenger doesn't have what?

He doesn't have both parents. So who's the I'm talking to, even though it's your singular, it's talking to human beings, the rest of us, right? So there's precedents for the US singular in the Quran being used for the messenger and also for other than the messenger, sallAllahu wasallam. But the singular implies rhetorical function of that is, because this is not an ancient event. This is a very recent event. And perhaps a lot of the people who saw this happen in front of them, right? This, they were eyewitnesses to this, they are being asked to remember it one at a time each and every individual in the town can testify to what happened. And I'm Tara. So that's one way of

looking at it. Another is that the messenger is being asked Allah tala, which makes it a little more difficult to interpret. Because if you say to the messenger, did you not see how your master dealt with the people of the elephant? Well, there's only one problem. He didn't because he was born when he was born after then you understand Alam Tara in a figurative sense? In other words, did you not reflect upon? Did you not realize, Have you not heard enough times? And have you not fully, you know, heard full depictions of how Allah protected the city as you were growing up, even, in other words, the Quraysh were so amazed at this event. And what happened really is very, very amazing that

you could imagine that they talked about this all the time and in so much so that actually the Arabs didn't have a calendar, like the Christians have a calendar revolving around what the alleged death of Christ right, that's what their calendar revolves around. The Arabs didn't have a calendar and guess what their calendar became. I'll feel so and so happened 10 years before I'm in field such and so happened 10 years after item and from their point of reference became this. Right. So this is something that was talked about all the time as though you know, given the vivid nature of the language, people could even imagine what happens. So that's one way of looking at lm Tara. But then

there's the word cave. And the gold cave is very important, because it alludes to you feel it, you feel dodgy. How can I do that? How did you deal with them? If you look at the army and the size of it, the size of the army is greater than the population of Makkah.

You noticed the size of the army is greater than the civilian population What to speak of the military population. It is such an impossible scenario, that this situation would be resolved peacefully without

The loss of civilian life, it's impossible in history to imagine an event where such a massive army would come against a town which doesn't even have a population of soldiers to defend themselves. And even if they did, they've never seen an elephant, which is the ancient tank. Right? It's the tank of back in the day, and they have, you know, a dozen elephants, which is more than enough to basically destroy the entire town. Keep in mind, they don't have brick architecture, elephants can literally run the huts over they could you can flatten the entire city. In such an impossible scenario, how can it be, if not by the work of the master of the Lord, that the city's piece would be retained? So

the word gay find the ayah becomes very important that you know, didn't you realize how this could happen? If not for Allah azza wa jal? Did you not realize this cannot be just some random accident? Did you not realize that someone is taking care of the city, even in face of us haben feel the most vicious of armies the most, you know, well prepared, well equipped of armies. So that's really the point at which I'm going to conclude today in shallow Tyler is the reflection and some benefits of just the phrase. And I'm Tara and shallow tala will conclude the study of this surah and probably even get into the study of the next surah in our next session. So correlation, tie the two together

and do a word by word analysis because we don't need a separate historical analysis for sort of correlational because we understand the the scene that is set historically. So we'll deal with the Sooners, both of them in channel data at the same time. barakallahu li walakum and Hakeem when finally we'll end it was Hakeem was Salam aleikum wa rahmatullah