Abu Bekr did not again go out to fight.
Abu Bekr never again left Medîna to lead his troops. Some say that afterwards he regretted this; but it is not likely that he did so. Medîna, where he continued to reside, was his proper place. From it, as a central point, he was able to direct the movement of his commanders all over the peninsula; and with operations in so many different quarters to control he could not have been better situated.
No chief ‘Companion’ appointed to a command.
It is more open to remark that none of the more distinguished Companions of the Prophet were appointed to commands. The same was the case with Omar, who was known to say that he purposely refrained from nominating them to any government, both out of respect to their dignity,[23] and also to strengthen his own hands by having them about him as advisers. This latter reason may also well have weighed with Abu Bekr, who used to take counsel on all important matters with the leading Companions. Still, it is singular that men like Aly and Zobeir, who took so prominent a part in the battles of Mahomet, should now altogether disappear from operations in the field.
CHAPTER V.
CAMPAIGN OF KHALID AGAINST THE FALSE PROPHET TOLEIHA.
A.H. XI. Nov. A.D. 632.
Materials for the first epoch imperfect.
The materials for our story at this point are few, obscure, and disconnected. The scene of confusion that reigned throughout Arabia is presented to our view in but dim and hazy outline. With the Prophet’s life, Tradition proper ends. The prodigious stores of oral testimony, which light up in minutest detail the career of Mahomet, suddenly stop. The grand object of tradition was, from the oral teaching and example of the Prophet, to supplement by authoritative rulings what was wanting in the Corân. That motive ceased with the death of Mahomet, and with it tradition, as such, ceases also.[24] What history we have for the period immediately succeeding is in the form of loose fragments—the statements, it may be, of eyewitnesses, or gathered as hearsay from the memory of Arab tribes, or from legends in the neighbouring conquered lands. Hence it is that, after the death of Mahomet, we are left for a time to grope our way by evidence always scanty and often discrepant. The further back we go, the obscurity is the greater; and it is most so while, in the first year of Abu Bekr’s Caliphate, Islam was struggling for existence. There was little room then for thought beyond the safety of the moment; and when at length the struggle was over, nothing was left but the sense of relief from a terrible danger, and the roughest outline of the way in which it had been achieved. No date is given for any one of the many battles fought throughout the year. Here and there we may be guided by the apparent sequence of events; but as the various expeditions were for the most part independent of one another, and proceeding simultaneously all over the peninsula, even this indication too often fails.[25]
Arrangement of narrative of campaigns against apostate tribes.
Such being the case, the thread of our narrative here must run an arbitrary course. Taking Tabari as our guide, we begin with the campaign of Khâlid against Toleiha in the north-east, and follow him thence southward to Yemâma. We shall then take up the provinces assigned to other leaders, as they lie geographically around the coasts—Bahrein, Omân, Hadhramaut and Yemen.
Khâlid ibn Welîd.