Muhammad, the Qur'an and Islam
this sura may have been accepted by the Abyssinians can only be inferred
from the accounts of the Sira traditions and from the apparent fact that the
Muslims were granted asylum. Certainly the Abyssinians must have
recognized that Muhammad's message was nearer to that of Christianity
than to Arab paganism; moreover, their decision to accept the Muslims, as
mentioned previously, may have also been politically motivated.
As presented in the Sira traditions, the general reason for the emigration to
Abyssinia was that Muhammad could not protect Muslims from the lower
classes from persecution. At least one set of traditions gi^149 ves two
emigrations to Abyssinia instead of one, but Western schol^150 ars usually
agree with another set, which presents the flow of emigrant^151152 s from
Mecca as having been intermittent. Concerning the names of those who
emigrated and their numbers Sira traditions give differing accounts, and^153
one collection of such traditions seems to inadvertently list Ibn Mas`ud as
having gone to Abyssinia, only to have him be the first to publicly recite the
Qur'an in Mecca a short time later. The Meccans are then said t^154 o have
sent two or three emissaries to bring the refugees back. Ac^155156 cording to
these accounts, the Meccans wanted to continue their persecution of the
Muslims, and it was no doubt also in their interest to try to keep a local
problem from becoming an international one. In the end, the Meccan's
attempt to bring the Muslims back was a failure, and the evidence of
Muhammad's increasing influence must have troubled them all the more.
After the emigration to Abyssinia, Sira traditions relate that Umar became a Muslim. At the time,Umar is said to have been the most influ^157 ential
Muslims, which is evidenced by his success in securing the right for
himself and other Muslims to pray at the then idol-filled Kaba. Tradition^158 states that Muhammad also prayed at the Kaba, and that his direction of
prayer ("qibla") was Syria (or better: Jerusalem), howeve^159 r, this is
extremely unlikely, since the word "qibla" first appears in later suras.^160