Muhammad still ruled from Medina. When delegations arrived to offer submission, he sat on the ground in his mosque with the steadiness and conviction that won so many followers, never claiming to be anything more than the Messenger of God. His humour was dry: once an old woman asked if Allah allowed old women into Paradise. No, he replied. She started to weep, at which he added, ‘He changes them first into nubile virgins.’
Born into a world of family feuds, he knew the strength but also the danger of dynasty. ‘Genealogy is lies,’ he said, but he took immense trouble with an increasingly complex court. The family is important: its fissures still exist in Islam today.
When Khadija died, Muhammad married around thirteen more wives, many of them political alliances. First he married his follower Abu Bakr’s daughter, Aisha: he was in his fifties, she a teenager, but he adored her, his favourite. Two younger wives, widows of fighters killed in battle, joined the household along with a Jewish girl, Rayhana, who had been enslaved after the crushing of her tribe. He had married his beautiful first cousin Zaynab to his adopted son, the ex-slave Zayed; they were unhappy, but Muhammad admired her. When she heard that ‘The Messenger of God is at the door,’ she dressed up and ‘excited the admiration of the Messenger’. His son offered her to him and he finally agreed to marry her. Zaynab was jealous of Aisha. ‘Zaynab was my equal in beauty,’ admitted Aisha, ‘and in the Prophet’s love for her.’
Along with the wives, Muhammad’s daughter Fatima cared for him: married to his cousin Ali, she was the mother of his grandchildren Hussein and Hassan. Moving between their separate houses, the Prophet liked to sit with his wives and joke and discuss life, sometimes remembering Khadija. He loved to play with his grandsons, letting them ride on his back, saying, ‘Oh, what a fine camel you have.’
Yet already there was tension at his court. During the wars against Mecca, Aisha, looking for a lost necklace, became separated from her husband in the desert until rescued by a young man who returned her to the Prophet. She was accused of adultery. The loudest accuser was Muhammad’s son-in-law Ali. Aisha was supported by her rival Zaynab and Muhammad ultimately believed Aisha, but this was just the beginning of the feud that still divides the Islamic world.
Heraclius’ concept of holy war had reached Muhammad – Abu Sufyan had actually seen the emperor parade through Jerusalem – and he commandeered it as his jihad. Muhammad offered peace – ‘Invite all to the way of your Lord with wisdom and beautiful preaching,’ he said – but he also advocated war: ‘Kill the idolaters wherever you find them.’ He wrote letters demanding conversion even to the emperor, who sent back a fur coat as a gift; and the Roman governor of Egypt sent back a Coptic girl, Maria, whom he married. Later, in 630, Muhammad sent two columns to raid Syria. One reached Aqaba (Jordan); the other was intercepted by Roman troops and defeated. But they brought back interesting intelligence: Rome was rotten. The spoils of the empires, Persia and Rome, weakened by plague and war, were irresistible. But everything depended on one man, and there was no plan for the succession: who can succeed God’s last prophet? There was only one Messenger of God.
PRUNE THE FORESKINNED ONES WITH YOUR SWORDS! CONQUESTS OF THE MUHAMMAD FAMILY
In 632, Muhammad, by then aged sixty-two, caught a fever. Realizing he was dying, his followers asked where he wanted to be. ‘Aisha,’ he said, so they took him to her and he died in her arms, leaving the elders to choose his veteran companion Abu Bakr as Amr al-Mu’min, Commander of the Believers, later known as khalifa – caliph. But Ali and the family disagreed. The Meccan aristocrats were sceptical, while much of Arabia now broke away under their other prophets. Abu Bakr sent forces under his top paladin, Khalid bin Walid – Sword of Islam – to retake these backsliding provinces. Khalid killed one prince who had converted to Islam so he could marry his beautiful wife. It caused a scandal in Mecca, but in 634 Abu Bakr dispatched Khalid, his other general Amr al-As and Abu Sufyan’s two sons, Yazid and Muawiya, into Syria with 20,000 troops.
To contemporaries – and historians – the Arab invasions seemed astonishing in their speed and span, but only recently the Arab armies of Ghassan and Lakhm had galloped through Palestine and Syria; now it is likely those warriors served a new cause. Plague had culled Roman and Persian cities but had barely touched the desert. The Arabs were fielding armies of 12,000 or more at a time when Heraclius could muster only 5,000. They travelled fast on camels, leading their horses. Then for battle they transferred to horseback.
