101 Reasons Why We Left Islam – Chapter 4: Islamic History – Reason 55
Chapter 105 of the Quran is called Surah El-Fil or The Elephant. It is a very short Surah of only five verses that goes like this:
- 1. Have you not seen how your Lord dealt with the People of the Elephant?
- 2. Did He not make their plan go wrong?
- 3. He sent against them swarms of birds.
- 4. Throwing at them rocks of baked clay.
- 5. Leaving them like chewed-up leaves.
The Year of the Elephant is said to be around 570 CE, marking the year of the Prophet was born. It is named after an event where supposedly Abraha, a Christian ruler of Yemen, marched with an army of elephants to destroy the Kaaba in Mecca. According to Islamic tradition, God sent flocks of birds carrying stones to defeat Abraha’s army, as mentioned in Surah Al-Fil in the Quran.
Commentators had a problem with the chapter from the start to the end. It begins by making a claim that is not true. “Have you not seen?” – No! We did not see what happened in the year of the Elephant. The Quran is the eternal words of Allah, and it should be spoken to all of us, not just the people of the 7th century. So, some scholars, assumed that the Quran was speaking to the Prophet and that is why you see in some translations the verse written as “Have you not seen (oh Prophet) how your Lord dealt with the People of the Elephant?” – however, the Quran used “Oh Prophet” eleven times. This is not the case here. Even if the Prophet had not been born and had not seen that event, it would still be puzzling. One would argue that if there were evidence left behind, say bones of elephants and the clay that the birds throw, and the verse could have begun with: ‘Have you not seen the evidence of how your lord dealt with the people of the Elephant?’ then we have something to go by. But here is the issue, there is absolutely no evidence found in or around Mecca of this battle, the many elephant bones that can be carbon dated, or the Hadith mentioning the elephant graveyard of this battle. A vast army of Elephants would have left behind thousands of bones – nothing has been found in Saudi Arabia or the Arabian Gulf. There is simply no evidence to back this, except the need to have ‘faith’ in the story that it did happen. Yet, it starts with an assertive command: “Have you not seen!”
But there have been many facts that challenge this story. Consider these:
- Yemen does not have wild elephants, and any elephants would have had to be imported by sea from Africa or India. In the technology of that period, that would have been difficult and expensive.
- An Elephant needs around 225 litres of water and 130kg of food a day. You heard this right – a day!
- The journey from Yemen’s capital to Mecca is around 1000km (600 miles) by road – nearly all of it is dry desert.
- The journey would take elephants that walk at a speed of 20 to 25km a day, around 45 days.
- A conservative army of just 20 Elephants, would require 4500 litres of water and 2600kg of food – a day. For a journey of 45 days, that would be 202,000 litres of water, 117,000 kg of food.
- To put this in context, this is more food and four times as much water as that carried by the Titanic some 1300 years later.
And in all this, we did not calculate the food and water needed to sustain the soldiers.
But if we go purely by the theme of this verse and not by the historic accounts, we can argue it is implying the power of Allah in protecting his holy house using the power of birds to terminate a powerful army, even great army of elephants. But that test failed, not once but many times. We refer you back to reasons 43 and 44 – The destruction of the Kaaba and the Smashing of the backstone. Where were the swarm of birds on these occasions? And to add more doubt to this story, there is absolutely no record of this ‘magnificent’ event in any other sources other than Islamic ones. Christian sources that do record the existence of Abraha, a Christian ruler of Yemen, never mention any conflict or military activity against Mecca or its tribes.
Final thought and conclusion to this chapter:
Our review of historical issues in the Quran shows that the narrative that we were being told from childhood does not check very well against historical facts. The standardising of the Quran involved human processes, the book is not direct word for word, letter by letter from Allah. We also showed the mythologies such as Zul Qarnain, mixing characters such as Mary and Mariam, infighting in Islam predate CIA and the West, and even historical stories such as ‘The Year of the Elephant’ and the divine power of Allah do not really check against the facts at the time or what happened afterwards. In chapter 6, we dive into the end-of-time prophecies of the Prophet. These were supposedly ‘future’ predictions that would prove Muhammad’s Prophethood. As the theme will continue, there are many questions and challenges, and outright fail- these are typically authentic Hadiths Islamic Dawah do not want you to read or examine closely.