Mother of the Believers: A Novel of the Birth of Islam

by Kamran Pasha

  Muawiya joined them, gazing up at the strange celestial phenomenon, and then he felt a sudden chill go down his spine. A sense of wonder that had always been foreign to his fiercely practical—some would say cynical—heart.

  And then he understood. The crescent and the star were a sign from God, an answer to the secret thoughts of his heart. Allah had showered his blessings on the Muslim Ummah that day and had shown Muawiya that His hand was indeed guiding the forces of history.

  In that instant, Muawiya knew that Islam would triumph and the nations of the earth would turn and face the Kaaba. And he knew with even greater certainty that he was destined to lead the Muslims to their glorious victory. Muawiya’s childhood dream of becoming king of the Arabs would be fulfilled, but on a scale far greater than he could have ever imagined.

  The Battle of Yarmuk was just the beginning.

  5

  The conquests that had begun under my father continued with miraculous speed during Umar’s reign. Damascus fell, as did Palestine. The Byzantine humiliation at Yarmuk had effectively destroyed Roman imperial power in the region after almost a thousand years of dominance. The Prophet’s command to treat conquered peoples with leniency, giving them the right to worship and live their lives as long as they paid the jizya tribute to the state, was a decisive factor in the ease of our victories. When word spread that the Muslims did not plan to impose their religion on the defeated peoples, quick and painless surrender became preferable to extended resistance. Our generosity toward our subjects was unusual in a world where conquerors were expected to vanquish and crush their opponents and played a major role in ensuring peace in the lands we took long after the last sword had been sheathed.

  This was particularly true of Jerusalem, which finally fell after months of siege. Umar himself traveled to the holy city to formally accept its surrender. The Christian patriarch of Jerusalem had led Umar through the ancient streets where the prophets of old had walked, until they reached the sacred site where the Temple of Solomon had once stood. It was a place that was deeply sacred for Muslims, not only because it had once been the House of God but because Muhammad had ascended to heaven from its stones during the Night Journey. But when Umar arrived, he was shocked to discover that it was a garbage dump. Literally. The Christians of the city had dumped hundreds of years of sewage on the holy site, under the misguided belief that they were honoring Jesus, who had prophesied that the Temple would be destroyed. As long as the plateau was left in disarray, the prophecy would remain in effect and the truth of Christ’s words would be evident for all to see.

  Outraged at the Christian desecration of the Sanctuary, Umar had personally cleansed the site with his own hands, carrying out rubbish in the folds of his cloak until the platform had been cleared and a small house of worship could be built. When the Sanctuary was again purified, Umar signed a treaty with the defeated Christians of Jerusalem, guaranteeing the safety of their lives and property and their right to worship freely. The Christian patriarch had politely asked that the Muslims continue the Byzantine policy of banning Jews from the holy city, but Umar refused. And so, for the first time in centuries, the Children of Israel returned to the Holy Land from which they had been expelled, ironically at the generosity of a religion they had rejected.

  And our policy of religious tolerance was soon to have a proactive effect in generating support for our expansion. After the fall of Palestine, the Meccan emissary Amr ibn al-As led a small force of a few thousand horsemen into the Sinai and invaded Egypt, which had been traded back and forth by Persians and Byzantines during their all-consuming war over the past century. Neither side had shown much compassion to the people of Egypt, who were merely pawns in the great game of empire. The Persians were fire worshipers and had no love for the Christianity of Egypt, which missionaries and warriors had been trying to impose on their ancient people for centuries. And the Byzantines looked upon the Coptic Christians of Egypt as heretics who had been misled from the true teachings of Rome and Constantinople. Both nations had brutally persecuted the Egyptians and tried to erase their religious identity. And so it was that when Amr’s forces appeared on the horizon, the local populace rose up against the last of their Byzantine rulers and helped the Muslims take control of the land beyond the Nile. The Muslims did not understand, nor did we care for, the minute differences of theology that divided the Copts from their fellow Christians. They were all People of the Book as far as we were concerned, and as long as they paid their taxes, we didn’t bother with what they believed or how they performed their church services. Thus it was that the Holy Qur’an’s commandment Let there be no compulsion in religion became the rallying cry that brought the oppressed peoples of North Africa into our fold. And it was the great irony of God’s purpose that the Muslim prayer call of No god but God was at last heard to echo at the Pyramids, where Moses himself had sought to convince Pharaoh of this truth in a world long gone.

  And even as the west fell to the forces of Islam, the east opened to our armies like the petals of a flower in the springtime. The defeat of the Persians in Iraq had rumbled through the Sassanid provinces like a landslide, and under Umar’s command, the Muslims tore through the heart of Persia. We crushed the last of the Sassanid troops at the Battle of Qadisiya and soon Ctesiphon, the mighty capital of Persia, fell to Islam and the ancient empire of the shahs vanished into the annals of history.

  As nations fell before us with stunning ease, the coffers of Medina began to overflow with gold and jewels, tribute coming in from all over the world to the new empire that had slain the old. I heard one account that said that the storehouses of the Bayt al-Mal held tens of millions of gold dirhams, more wealth than had ever physically existed inside all of Arabia. It was a bounty beyond comprehension, and Umar was rightly concerned that such a concentration of wealth would corrupt the hearts of the Muslims. He ordered wide distributions from the treasury to the poor and placed the elderly and the sick on regular pensions to ensure that they were provided for. But no matter how much Umar gave away, more kept flowing into our coffers, as the borders of Islam expanded from the deserts of Africa to the mountains of the Caucasus.

  It was an exciting time to be alive, and every day news came to Medina of some stunning victory of the Muslim armies. And yet I can only write of those battles as others have relayed them to me, for in all those years, I did not cross the borders of Arabia. With my husband’s death and then my father’s, I found that my role in the life of the Muslim Ummah was becoming circumscribed to Medina. During the Prophet’s life, I had traveled with him on his battles and had been his constant companion on diplomatic journeys to unite the Arab tribes. But after his passing, I rarely left the confines of the oasis except to go to Pilgrimage in Mecca, and then only under a heavy honor guard of the Caliph’s soldiers. The freedom that I had loved as a child was gone, and for all intents and purposes, I had become a prisoner to my honored status as Mother of the Believers.

  Since there was nothing I could do to change things, I decided to make the most of the role that was given me. I became a teacher to both men and women, and every day prominent Muslims would come to my apartment and speak to me through the curtain, asking for spiritual and practical advice. My prodigious memory proved to be a valuable asset to the believers, as I could easily recite word for word conversations that I had had with my husband years before. I became one of the most trusted narrators of hadith, oral traditions about the life and teachings of Muhammad, which were soon being passed by word of mouth over the vast distances of the Muslim empire. Whenever the people wished to know what my husband had said regarding anything from how to properly cleanse themselves after defecation to the appropriate inheritance shares for their grandchildren, they came to me and I told them what I knew.

  My reputation as a scholar had led Umar to rely on me heavily for advice during his reign, and I felt great pride that a young girl in her twenties had become an influential voice in the court of the Caliph, who was fast becoming the mos
t powerful man on earth. Yet despite his unquestioned authority, Umar remained a deeply humble and austere man, wearing patched clothes and sleeping on the floor in his tiny hut. When envoys from conquered nations arrived in Medina, they were invariably shocked to find that their “emperor” lived like a beggar, without even the security of personal bodyguards.

  But even as my prestige in the community rose, my loneliness increased. I and the other Mothers had been forbidden by God to marry again after the Messenger’s death, and so we lived alone in our apartments, the old jealousies fading away under the bond of shared boredom. In truth, even if God had permitted us to remarry, none of us would have done so. It was impossible to love any man other than the Messenger.

  It would have been an easier life had we been blessed with children, but that was not to be for any of us. And so I contented myself with the company of the children of my loved ones. You, Abdallah, my sister’s son, became the closest thing I would ever know to a child of my own, and I loved you accordingly. I took great pride in watching you grow from a carefree child into a mature and responsible young man, and I know that as long as Islam is led by men like you, our nation will be safe from the temptations of power.

  I also spent a great deal of time with my younger brother, Muhammad, who had been born during the Prophet’s final Pilgrimage to Mecca. After my father died, his mother, Asma bint Umais, married Ali, and Muhammad was raised beside Hasan and Husayn, who were also like children to me. Though I had no affection for their father, the grandsons of the Prophet were innocent and sweet, and whenever I saw them, I was reminded of my gentle husband. Hasan was a fun-loving youth who was always climbing trees and racing with the other boys, and his handsome face, so much like his grandfather’s, was always bright with a smile. Husayn was the more serious of the two, shy and reserved, his eyes exuding a deep compassion and sadness that reminded me of his ghostly mother. My little brother, Muhammad, was their constant companion and protector. If any of the naughty boys ever acted up or played rough with the Prophet’s grandsons, Muhammad was there to teach them a hard lesson in playground manners. He had always possessed a passionate sense of justice, a quality that would sadly lead to tragedy for him and the whole Ummah one day.

  Though I loved the children of Ali’s house, my relationship with the Prophet’s cousin was still strained. We were always formally cordial in each other’s presence, but the chasm between us continued to grow over the years. My refusal to forgive Ali for his suggestion that the Messenger divorce me had become a matter of stubborn habit now, a fault of my pride that would be the cause of much sorrow.

  But despite the minor frictions between members of the Prophet’s household, the life of Medina was one of peace and placidity. The excitement and the terror of my youth were replaced by a pleasant monotony of quiet days, each little different from the one before or the one to come. It was utterly safe and utterly boring, and some part of my adventurous spirit longed for a return to a time when every day was a matter of life and death, when the future was covered in mists and clouds and my heart beat loudly in the thrilling anticipation of change.

  And then one cold winter day, when my twenties had at last given way to my thirties, the golden age of Islam ended with a single act of violence. Umar was standing at the head of prayers in the Masjid when a Persian slave sought revenge for the conquest of his nation. He rushed the Caliph and stabbed him viciously in the gut, before taking his own life.

  Umar was mortally wounded by the assassin, but he lived long enough to appoint a small council of believers to choose a successor. As he lay dying in great agony, I saw him look up and smile and I heard him whisper something that I did not catch. When I turned to your father, Zubayr, who had leaned close to Umar and caught his words, he was pale.

  “He said he sees his daughter holding out her hand,” Zubayr recounted, and I felt a chill go through me as I remembered the stories of the little girl he had buried alive during his days as a pagan. Umar raised his hand weakly and I watched him curl his fingers as he took hold of something I could not see. And then the Caliph of Islam, the most powerful and noble leader I had seen next to my own husband, passed away to his eternal reward.

  That night, Umar was buried alongside my husband and my father, and that day, I erected a curtain inside my apartment, separating their graves from the tiny space where I lived.

  The council of believers had no time to grieve, for the fate of the empire was at stake. After three days of secret consultation, the elders of Medina emerged and proclaimed the sweet-hearted Uthman to be the next Commander of the Believers.

  It was a decision that made political sense, since Uthman was a prominent leader of Quraysh and could be expected to keep the nobles of the far-flung empire in check. But in the end it would prove to be a disastrous mistake, one that would lead to the horror of blood flowing through the streets of Medina.

  6 Medina—AD 656

  The first several years of Uthman’s rule were unremarkable. The conquests of Islam continued unabated. The Muslim armies pushed west out of Egypt and seized control of most of the Mediterranean coastline. On the eastern front, our soldiers pushed through the dying remnants of the Persian empire to seize the Kerman province, where a race of fierce tribesmen called Baluchis reigned. To the north, Armenia and the mountains of the Caucasus came under our dominion. Following my husband’s commandment to seek knowledge even if you must go to China, Uthman sent an envoy to the Emperor Gaozong and invited him to accept Islam. The Chinese overlord politely declined to convert but was shrewd enough to open trade with the Muslim empire and allowed our people to preach and propagate our faith inside his borders.

  Perhaps most significantly in the realm of international relations, Uthman supervised the building of the first Muslim navy. His kinsman Muawiya, who had become the highly respected governor of Syria, soon led a naval attack on the Byzantine forces off the coast of Lebanon. The Muslims, filled with the brash confidence of decades of success, rammed the Byzantine ships, bringing their own vessels so close to the opposing fleets that their masts were almost touching. And then our warriors leaped across decks and engaged in ferocious hand-to-hand combat with the Greek sailors, using their fiercely honed skills from urban warfare on the ocean.

  The Byzantine marines were accustomed to shooting at their enemies from a distance with arrows and launching flaming pellets at rival ships, but they had never fought in this fashion, with ships used merely as bridges for foot soldiers. Their confusion quickly devolved into chaos, and the sea was stained crimson with the blood of imperial sailors. Muawiya emerged triumphant, his prestige rising like the sun among the Muslims. In later years, we would learn that the victory could have been even greater, for the emperor himself had been on one of the Byzantine ships that Muawiya’s men had boarded. The lord of Constantinople had escaped certain death only by disguising himself as a common sailor and jumping into the sea, where he was rescued by his men and rushed to safety on the island of Sicily.

  Uthman continued and expanded upon his predecessor’s military success, but it was in the spiritual realm that he left his greatest legacy. As the caliphate continued to grow by leaps and bounds and the number of Muslims went from thousands to millions, the need to present the standard written copies of the holy Qur’an became pressing. The Holy Book had never been compiled into one document during the Prophet’s lifetime, primarily since he was illiterate, as were a great many of the Arab tribesmen, and symbols on a parchment were meaningless to them. Because of this stark reality, Muslims committed the Qur’an to memory and relayed its teachings orally. This system worked well in the early years of our faith, but as we came into contact with highly advanced civilizations where literacy was the norm, the need to present the Word of God to the new believers in written format became a priority.

  My father had kept a private copy of the Qur’an in his study, one that he had compiled after the Garden of Death, where many of the Companions who had memorized the entire Qur’an had bee
n killed. Before his death, Abu Bakr had passed along his personal compilation to Umar, who had subsequently left it to his daughter Hafsa. When Uthman learned that she still had the folio in her possession, he asked her to submit it to him for verification. And then he summoned those in Medina who were known to have memorized the entire Qur’an, forming a committee in which I and my sister-wife Umm Salama participated. We were given Hafsa’s codex, which was a jumbled collection of verses written on parchments and palm leaves, and asked to verify its accuracy. Once it had been confirmed by all those in the holy city who knew the Qur’an by heart, Uthman ordered copies of the authorized text to be made and sent to the capitals of every province of the empire. And thus he ensured that the Word of God would not be changed according to the desires of men, as the Prophet had claimed to have happened with the scriptures of the Jews and Christians. And in doing so, Uthman fulfilled the prophecy of God in a verse of the Qur’an itself: Truly We have sent down this Reminder, and truly We will preserve it.

  I have often thought that Uthman would have been fortunate if he had passed away shortly after issuing the standard written text of God’s Word. He would have been remembered purely as a man of great wisdom and vision, whose life had been of great service to the cause of Islam.

  But, alas, this was not meant to be. His memory has been tainted by the actions of evil men and fools. And I grieve to say that I count myself among them.

  AS THE YEARS OF Uthman’s reign grew, so did the wealth of the Muslim empire—and the ambitions of its leaders. Uthman had increasingly relied on members of his own clan, the Umayyads, to administer the business of the rapidly expanding state. Some of his kinsmen, like Muawiya, were efficient and respected governors who were loved by their subjects. But as the empire grew ever wider and the supervision by Medina became more difficult, local politicians from among the Quraysh, many of whom had embraced Islam only when Mecca fell and they had no choice, became increasingly free to rule as they wished.