The Mizan Series: How to Weigh Doubts (5): Abraha, the Elephant, and the Claim of Borrowing From the Maccabees

The Mizan Series: How to Weigh Doubts, Article Five

Abraha, the Elephant, and the Claim of Borrowing From the Maccabees

Is it enough to find a story about elephants in an old book to conclude that the account of the People of the Elephant was taken from it? This claim is raised by combining the reports about Abraha, the use of elephants in ancient warfare, and what appears in the Books of the Maccabees. It is sometimes added that Abraha is mentioned in church tradition together with his brother, as though this description alone overturns what the Islamic sources relate.

A fair inquiry begins by separating these questions. Whether Abraha existed, who led the campaign of the Elephant, whether the details reported about it are sound, and whether the Qur’an borrowed from an earlier text are related questions, but they are not all answered by a single piece of evidence. Nor does answering the doubt require denying every similarity or authenticating every report that has become popular.

What Did the Qur’an State?

Allah the Exalted says: “Have you not seen how your Lord dealt with the People of the Elephant? Did He not make their plot go astray, and send against them birds in flocks, pelting them with stones of baked clay, and make them like eaten straw?” (al-Fil 105:1–5).

The surah establishes that Allah brought the plot of the People of the Elephant to nothing and sent against them birds pelting them with stones of baked clay. But it does not name Abraha, does not give the size of the army, and does not fix the year of the event in the Christian calendar. This observation stays within the limits of the text; it is not a denial of what the Sira relates. It simply prevents us from reading every historical detail into the words of the Qur’an and then treating an objection to that detail as an objection to the surah itself.

As for the elephant being held back, this occurs in authentic hadith. In the account of al-Hudaybiya, when the Prophet’s ﷺ she-camel knelt down, he said: “Al-Qaswa’ has not become stubborn, nor is that her nature; rather, she has been held back by the One who held back the elephant” (Sahih al-Bukhari, Book of Conditions, chapter on conditions in jihad and truce with the people of war, nos. 2731–2732, from the report of al-Miswar ibn Makhrama and Marwan). This is evidence from the Sunnah, in the context of heading to Makkah and honoring its sanctity, not merely a detail that some storytellers took from a foreign tale.

A Muslim believes what Allah and His Messenger have told, and then examines the narrations that add to it with the appropriate tools of criticism. Whoever disputes the authority of revelation itself has a different discussion to pursue. But the claim that this account was borrowed from a specific book is a historical claim that needs its own evidence, and it does not become true merely because the one making it does not believe in the Qur’an.

Abraha in History and the Inscriptions

Abraha was a historical ruler of Yemen in the sixth century CE, attested in inscriptions and specialist studies, not a name known only from books of tafsir. He was a Christian ruler who waged military campaigns to extend his power, so there is no contradiction at all between his religious affiliation and his leading an army, and that affiliation cannot be taken as proof that the war was impossible (Christian Julien Robin, on the military campaigns of King Abraha in desert Arabia in 548–565 CE [in French], Comptes rendus de l’Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres, 2018, vol. 162, no. 3, p. 1313).

Among the evidence is the Murayghan inscription, known by the siglum Ry 506 and dated 552 CE. It relates to a campaign of Abraha in central Arabia and celebrates his victory. But establishing this campaign is not the same as establishing that it was the campaign of the Elephant itself, and Christian Robin has discussed this identification and set out the reasons for objecting to it (Christian Julien Robin, on Arabia in the Qur’an and some terms reconsidered in the light of pre-Islamic inscriptions [in French], in Les origines du Coran, le Coran des origines, Paris, 2015, pp. 42–44).

We therefore use the inscriptions to establish the ruler, his military activity and his historical setting, and we stop at the limits of what they indicate. We do not present an inscription about a victorious campaign as an explicit record of the destruction of the People of the Elephant, nor do we treat the event’s absence from it as proof that it never happened: not every monument is a complete record of its owner’s life. At the same time, that an event was possible in its historical context is not proof that it occurred with all its details.

Which Book of the Maccabees Is Meant?

A general reference to “the Maccabees” hides an important difference. In the First Book of the Maccabees, chapter six, elephants appear in the army of the king fighting Judas and his forces. The text relates that Eleazar rushed beneath one of the elephants and killed it, and it fell on him and he died; then Judas’s army withdrew before the strength of the royal army (1 Maccabees 6:28–47, especially 43–47). This is a battle story, not a story of birds pelting aggressors with stones, and the elephants in it belong to the army opposing the Maccabees.

In the Third Book of the Maccabees, chapters five and six tell of a threat to destroy the Jews in Egypt with elephants, then relate the appearance of two angels, the confusion of the aggressors, the elephants turning on the forces that controlled them, and the deliverance and release of the Jews (3 Maccabees 5:1–2; 6:16–29). This comparison comes closer to the point of the doubt, since it combines the danger of elephants with deliverance by divine intervention, and an answer would not be honest if it reduced the similarity to the presence of one animal. Even so, the difference is plain: the book relates a community’s rescue from a planned execution, the appearance of two angels and the elephants turning on the troops, while the surah speaks of the People of the Elephant and the frustration of their plot by birds and stones. Acknowledging what the two share does not oblige us to erase these differences, just as listing the differences does not by itself dispose of the claim of borrowing.

When Does Similarity Become Evidence of Borrowing?

Similarity is the start of a question, not a ready-made verdict. For a claim that one text depends on another to be preferred, one must examine the kind of elements they share: are they broad themes, such as the rescue of the wronged and the destruction of the aggressor, or distinctive words and details that follow one another in a sequence hard to explain without a connection? Then one examines the age of the supposed source, whether it could have circulated, and the indications linking it to the text under study.

It is not necessary to find a manuscript bearing the name of whoever copied from it in order to consider the possibility of influence, since reports can travel orally. On the other hand, saying that the story existed in the ancient world is not enough to prove that it reached a particular person, still less that he used it. Likewise, a long gap in time does not make transmission impossible, and the priority of one text does not make every later text resembling it a derivative of it.

Whoever interprets the birds as the two angels and the stones as the elephants turning back needs indications that justify these transformations, not to assume borrowing first and then rebuild the two texts until they meet.

The researcher remains entitled to compare the two accounts, but the result of the comparison must be stated in proportion to its evidence. The existence of a narrative parallel does not by itself prove that the other event was invented, nor that the Qur’an took its account from it.

Similar Names Do Not Make Their Bearers One Person

Ethiopian tradition mentions Abraha and his brother Atsbaha in the context of Christianity’s entry into Aksum in the fourth century CE. The Dictionary of African Christian Biography presents this tradition, distinguishes it from the contemporary evidence connected with King Ezana, and mentions the possibility that kings bore more than one name (A. K. Irvine and Belaynesh Mikael, the fourth-century entry “Abreha,” Dictionary of African Christian Biography, drawn from the Dictionary of Ethiopian Biography, vol. 1, 1975; the identification of Ezana with Abreha is presented as a hypothesis, not a settled fact). This is an area with its own historical problems, and it cannot be reduced to the claim that the bearer of the name must be the sixth-century ruler of Yemen.

Accordingly, arguing from the Abraha mentioned with his brother first requires proving that they are the same person, despite the differences in time, place and context. Even if it were established that a community venerated a certain person, that would be information about how they regarded him; it would not by itself be a document refuting every report about his wars. The standard for identifying persons is the whole body of evidence, not similarity of name or the standing of its bearer among his followers.

A Summary for Young People

If you hear that a Qur’anic story was “taken” from an older book, ask for the specific text, read it in its context, and then ask what evidence connects the two texts. Acknowledge the similarity that exists, and distinguish between comparison and borrowing, and between the report of revelation and the details of historians. In our case, the historical existence of Abraha is supported by evidence outside the Islamic tradition, and 3 Maccabees contains a story worth comparing; but putting these two facts together does not prove that Surat al-Fil was borrowed from it. The strength of a response lies in its fairness and precision, and in not making the evidence say more than it can bear.

All parts of The Mizan Series: How to Weigh Doubts