“If You leave them and our Ka‘bah, then do as You will.

“Never have I heard of men more vile than those who seek to raid and violate Your sanctuary.” (1)

Then Abd al-Muttalib released the door-ring and departed with his people in one of those directions. By morning, Abraha was at al-Mughammis, having prepared to enter Mecca. He had drawn up his army and made ready his elephant—an elephant the like of which had never been seen in size and strength. It is also said that he had twelve elephants with him.

Nufayl approached the largest elephant, took it by the ear, and said, “Kneel down, Mahmud, and return rightly guided to where you came from, for you are in Allah’s Sacred Territory.” The elephant knelt down. They urged it onward, but it refused. They struck its head with pickaxes, but it refused. They then placed their hooked poles beneath its belly and forelegs and pulled it in an effort to make it rise, but it refused. When they turned it back toward Yemen, it rose and hurried along; when they turned it toward Syria, it did the same; and when they turned it toward the east, it did the same. But when they turned it toward the Sacred Precinct, it knelt down and refused to rise.

Nufayl fled until he climbed the mountain. Allah sent against them birds from the sea, like swallows, each bird carrying three stones: two in its feet and one in its beak, like chickpeas and lentils. When they descended upon the people, We sent them against them. No one struck by those stones survived. Yet not all of the army was struck, and they fled in confusion, unable to find the road by which they had come. They asked after Nufayl ibn Habib to show them the road to Yemen, while Nufayl watched them from one of those mountains. The people cried out and surged into one another, falling along every road and perishing in every place of destruction. (5)

Allah sent upon Abraha a disease in his body, and his fingertips began to fall away. Whenever a fingertip fell, it was followed by a discharge of pus and blood. (6) He reached Sana‘a with those of his companions who remained, reduced to the state of a fledgling bird. He did not die until his chest split open, exposing his heart; then he perished. (7)

Al-Waqidi said: As for Mahmud, the Negus’s elephant, it crouched down and did not proceed against the Sacred Precinct, and so it survived; and the elephant