Coming Homt 177Muhammad had segmented his army into divisions that encircled the city
and closed in on the center together. A few Quraysh groups posted them~
selves on the hills, led by Suhayl, lkrimah, and Sanl,'an, but after the first
confrontations, they realized that resisting was pointless. Suhayl sought
refuge in his home, and Ikrimah and Safwan ran away. T he Prophet had
demanded that no fighting or battle should take place on that day, which
he called "the day of mercy.,,14
Some eight years before, the Prophet had left Mecca secretly, but with
dignity and with his head held high. The Prophet now came back to
J\.fecca in broad daylight, victorious, but this time he prostrated himself
on his mount in thankfulness to the One as he recited the verses from the
surah "AI-Path" (The Victory):Verily We have granted you a manifest victory, that God may forgive you
your faults of the past and those to follow, fulfill His favor to you, and
guide you on the straight path, and that God may aid you with powerful
help. It is He Who sem down tranquility into the hearts of the believers,
that they may add faith to their faith.^15He entered Mecca expressing the deepest humility, and he required that
the greatest kindness should be shown to the Muslims' form er foes. He
performed the greater ablution and prayed eight cycles of voluntary ritu-
al prayer before resting for a few hours. After that, he mounted his camel,
Qaswa, and went to the Kaba sanctuary, where he performed the seven
rounds of circumambulation. T hen, with his stick, he pulled down the
idols and destroyed them while repeating the Quranic verse "T ruth has
arrived, and falsehood perished: for falsehood is bound to perish."16 He
had the keys to the sanctuary brought to him and required that all reli-
gious images be obliterated, in order to reconcile the H ouse of God with
its essence, which was to celebrate the worship of the One, Who cannot
be represented and must not be associated with any image: "There is
nothing whatever like Him, and He is the One that hears and sees.,,17
This gesture of destruction by the Prophet was, in appearance, the
exact antithesis of all that he had usually been doing sinn~ l(>~ving Mecca,
as he had had mosques (devoid of any image) built to mark the sacred
space of worship of the One God. On the level of the spirirual message,
however, this gesture was exactly of the same essence, since by breaking