[40] This happened in the battle of Ohod (so is called a mountain half an hour’s distance from Madína, on the route of Mecca). Muhammed fought with seven hundred men against more than three thousand Koreish from Mecca, in the third year of the Hejira (A. D. 624). Otba, the son of Vaccasi, and brother of Sâd, who fought on the prophet’s side, hit him with a stone, so as to knock out four incisors of his inferior jaw.
[41] The edition of Calcutta and the manuscript of Oude have erroneously: “Hakim, the son of Mervan,” instead of Aś, which I substituted for Mervan, according to Abulfeda, I. p. 271. Elmacin (Hist. Sarac., p. 38) reads “Hakim, son of Abúl-Aś.”
[42] Abulfeda (I. p. 271) says 500,000 gold coins. Elmacin (loco cit., p. 39) states five talents of Africa, said to be worth 504,000 gold pieces.
[43] Abulfeda (I. p. 261) mentions Abdalla, son of Sâd, son of Abu Sarh, Amerite, a foster-brother of Osman (ibid., p. 154). Elmacin (loco cit., p. 39) calls him Abdalla, son of Sáid, son of Abu Jerh, who had been a writer of revelations, and who, because he had apostatised from Islamism, would have been put to death by the prophet, after the taking of Mecca, in the eighth year of the Hejira (A. D. 629), if Osman had not interceded for him.
[44] This relates to an expedition which Muhammed undertook, in the ninth year of the Hejira (A. D. 630), towards Tabúk, a place situated about half-way between Madína and Damascus, beyond the limits of Arabia; it was in the midst of the summer heats, at a time of great drought and scarcity; besides the fruits were then just ripe, and the people had much rather have remained to gather them. But the first cause of discontent was the exaction of a tribute for covering the expense of the expedition. Abubekr, Omar, Osman, Alí, Talha, Abder rahmen, contributed largely to it; others declined their pecuniary and personal aid; three of the anśars, friends above alluded to (see [p. 27]), were permitted to remain. Alí staid at Madína as lieutenant of the prophet, who moved with an army of thirty thousand men to the frontiers of Syria, which were defended by an equal force of Greeks. He encamped during twenty days near Tabúk, and then thought it necessary to retreat.
[45] If I am not mistaken, allusion is here made to Zeinah (Zenobia), the wife of Zaid. Muhammed, having gone one day to the house of the latter, who was not at home, found Zeinah in a dress which permitted him to remark her beauties, with which he was so smitten, that he could not refrain from an exclamation betraying his sensation. Zeinah did not fail to apprise her husband. Zeid then thought he could not do less than to place his wife by a divorce at the disposition of his master and benefactor, whose slave he had once been, and by whom he was not only affranchised, but adopted as a son. On that very account, Muhammed was prevented by law from marrying Zeinah; but he procured to himself an authorization from heaven, in a verse of the Koran (chap. XXXIII. v. 36), and after the term of Zeinah’s divorce, took to wife the object of his desires, at the latter end of the fifth year of the Hejira (A. D. 626).
[46] During the contest between Alí and Moaviah, the armies of both chiefs were in the year of the Hejira 37 (A. D. 657) encamped opposite to each other in a plain on the banks of the Euphrates, called by the Greeks Barbelissos or Barabrissos, and by the Arabs Safin; and in ninety engagements, which took place between them in a hundred and ten days, on the side of Moaviah fell forty-five thousand, and on that of Ali twenty-five thousand men. In the night which preceded the decisive day of Safin, Ali is said to have killed with his own hand four hundred enemies.—(Abulfeda, vol. I. pp. 305-313.)
[47] See vol. I. pp. 103-104, note 1.
[48] Muhammed, according to his traditions, was born in the twentieth year of Nushirvan’s reign, which, as this king began to reign A. D. 531, would be in 551. This does not agree with the date of the prophet’s death in 632, at the age of sixty-three years, about which the best historians are unanimous. For the same reason, the date of his birth, as stated by Silvestre de Sacy, on the 20th April, 571, cannot be true. According to Weisi, Muhammed was born in the thirty-eighth year of Nushirvan’s reign, on the 1st of April, 569, which was a Monday, and it was on a Monday he was born and died (see Gemäldesaal Mosl., Herrsher Iter Band, Seite 22, note).
[49] متعه.