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Ash'as and his men returned
to the fort. At the agreed time he opened one of the gates, and
the Muslims poured into the fort and fell upon the unsuspecting
garrison. There was a terrible slaughter, and it continued until
everyone in the fort had laid down his arms. Ash'as and a group
of men and families that remained near him were scared.
The fort of Nujair had now fallen. When
Muhajir checked the list prepared by Ash'as, he noticed that the
name of Ash'as was not in it. He was delighted. "O Enemy
of Allah!" he said to Ash'as. "Now I have a chance
to punish you." 1 He would have
killed Ash'as, but Ikrimah intervened and insisted that Ash'as be
sent to Madinah, where Abu Bakr could decide his fate. Consequently
Ash'as was put in chains.
Within the fort the Muslims had taken many
captives who were to be sent to Madinah as slaves, and these included
a large number of attractive young women. They were led out of the
fort and passed Ash'as, of whose perfidy they had by now come to
know. As they slowly filed past him, the captive women looked at
him reproachfully and wailed, "You traitor! You traitor!"
2 To add to his discomfiture, Ash'as was
sent with this same group of captives to Madinah. It could not have
been a very pleasant journey!
Ash'as was no stranger to Madinah. He had
visited the place during the Year of Delegations, when the Kinda
submitted to the Holy Prophet and embraced Islam. During that visit
he had also married Um Farwa, sister of Abu Bakr, but when leaving
Madinah he had left her behind with Abu Bakr, with the promise of
picking her up on his next visit. This next visit was now taking
place under very different and uncongenial circumstances.
The Caliph charged Ash'as with all his crimes
against Islam and the State. He expressed his low opinion of the
way Ash'as had betrayed his own tribe. Was there any reason why
the accused should not be beheaded at once?
Attention has been drawn to the smooth tongue
of Ash'as. This time he excelled himself. Not only did he win a
pardon, he also persuaded Abu Bakr to return his wife to him! He
remained in Madinah, though, unwilling to return to his own tribe.
In later years he fought with distinction in Syria, Iraq and Persia,
and in the time of Uthman he was made governor of Azerbaijan.
But his treacherousness never left him.
Many were the people, including Abu Bakr, who wished that he had
not been pardoned after his apostasy. In fact when Abu Bakr was
dying, and spoke to his friends of his regrets about things he had
not done and wished he had, he said, "I wish I had had Ash'as
beheaded." 3
Students of Muslim history might recollect
that Imam Hassan's wife, who poisoned him4
at the instigation of Caliph Muawiyah, for which service he paid
her 100,000 dirhams, was the daughter of Ash'as. 5
With the defeat of the Kinda at Nujair the
last of the great apostate movements collapsed. Arabia was safe
for Islam. The unholy fire that had raged across the land was now
dead. Arabia would see revolt and civil war many times in its stormy
history, but it would never again see apostasy.
The Campaign of the Apostasy was fought
and completed during the eleventh year of the Hijri. The year 12
Hijri dawned, on March 18, 633, with Arabia united under the central
authority of the Caliph at Madinah. 6
This campaign was Abu Bakr's greatest political
and military triumph. Although the Caliph would launch bold ventures
for the conquest of Iraq and Syria, it was by his able and successful
conduct of the Campaign of the Apostasy that he rendered his greatest
service to Islam. And this would not have been possible without
the arm of the Sword of Allah.
1. Tabari: Vol. 2, p. 548.
2. ibid.
3. Tabari: Vol. 2, p. 619, Masudi: Muruj,
Vol. 2, p. 308; Balazuri: p. 112
4. Qadi Abu Bakr ibn al-'Arabi says in Al-'Awasim
min Al-Qawasim (Al-Maktabah al-'Ilmiyyah, Beirut, pp. 213-4),
"If it is said that Muawiyah intrigued against Al-Hassan
in order to poison him. We replied that this is impossible for two
reasons. One of them is that he did not fear any power of Al-Hassan
once the latter had surrendered authority. The second is that this
is an unseen matter which only Allah knows. How can you state it
without proof and accuse any of His creatures in a distant time
when we do not have any sound transmission about it? Moreover, this
occurred in the presence of the people of sects who were in a state
of sedition and partisanship. Each of them ascribed what he should
not ascribe to his companion. Only the pure is accepted from it.
Only the resolute just man is listened to regarding it."
Muhibb al-Din al-Khatib comments on the above as follows, "In
the Minhaj as-Sunnah (2:225) Ibn Taymiyya spoke about the Shi'a
claim that Mu'awiyah had poisoned Al-Hassan, 'That was not established
by any clear proof in the Shariah nor by any plausible statement
nor by a clear transmission. This is part of what it is not possible
to know. Hence this saying is a statement without knowledge …
In our time, we saw people among the Turks and others who said that
he was poisoned and died of poisoning. People disagree about that
and even the place where he died and the fortress in which he died.
You will find each of them relating something different from what
the other people related.' After Ibn Taymiyyah mentioned that Al-Hassan
died in Madinah while Muawiyyah was in Syria, he mentioned the possibilities
of the report, assuming it to be sound. One of them is that Al-Hassan
was divorced and did not remain with a wife …" (see
also Al-Muntaqa, [al-Dhahabi's abridgement of the Minhaj],
p. 266)" See also Defence against Disaster, Madinah
Press, 1416/1995, pp. 203-4.
A report mentioned by As-Suyuti in Tarikh Al-Khulafaa says
that Yazid bin Muawwiyah bribed Al-Hassan's wife to poison him by
offering to marry her in return. This illustrates the conflicting
and contradictory nature of these reports, which are almost certainly
Shi'ite fabrications. Ibn Hajr Al-Asqalani merely says in his biography
of Al-Hassan in Al-Isabah, "It is said that he was
poisoned to death."
5. Ibn Qutaiba: p. 212; Masudi: Muruj,
Vol. 3, p. 5. This is Masudi's figure. Some historians have given
the sum as 150,000 dirhams.
6. For an explanation of the chronology of
the Campaign of the Apostasy, which is subject to some possible
sources of error, see Note 3 in Appendix B.
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