The Prophetic Method

THE PROPHETIC METHOD of Abyssinia to recognize his authority in the province. A Christian by faith, Abrahah had built a massive church in Sana’a, after which he launched an intensive propaganda campaign to induce people to go on pilgrimages. In this way, he hoped to divert the lucrative pilgrim trade from Makkah to San’a’. It is recorded in Arab history that when all his efforts failed, he set out to destroy the Ka’bah so that people would have nowhere to make their pilgrimage to, save the church he had built in Sana’a. For this purpose, he took an army of elephants, which gained him the name “Lord of the Elephants.” Even the names of some of the people who built his church are known. The Arabs called the road he passed along, ‘The Road of the Elephants.” The spring from which they drank, the gate through which they entered Makkah and the year of their attack were also similarly named. What most leaders would have done under such adverse conditions was raise a popular movement against the political threat of foreign imperial powers. They would have sought to rid their land of the yoke of foreign domination and revived the nationalistic instincts of their people. But the Prophet of Islam refrained completely from instigating any nationalistic freedom struggle of this nature. There were also critical economic problems facing Arabia when the Prophet came to the world. Arabia was an almost entirely arid land: in an agrarian age, it had no agricultural foundation on to base its economy. This problem affected every individual in the land and could easily have provided