for injustice is unacceptable, even toward beasts.

He then said, “Al-Qaṣwāʾ has not balked, nor is that her temperament; rather, the One who held back the elephant has held her back. By Him in whose hand my soul rests, they will not ask me for any proposal that exalts the sacred limits set by Allah without my granting it to them.”

In brief, the Kaʿbah was once attacked from Yemen by a mighty army led by a huge elephant whose purpose was to demolish the House. When they reached al-Mughammis, the elephant refused to advance and dug in its heels. They shouted at it, but to no avail, so the army remained stuck there. Allah then sent against them birds in flocks (abābīl). Each bird carried a stone in its claw and dropped it on a man’s head so that it pierced his skull and exited through his backside: “So He made them like eaten straw” (Q 105:5)—like a crop devoured by cattle, ground into the earth. Umayyah ibn al-Ṣalt alluded to this when he said:

“The elephant was halted at al-Mughammis,
Crawling on as though grievously maimed.”

Thus Allah protected His House from the plot of that tyrannical king who had set out to destroy it. Allah, Exalted is He, has said: “Whoever intends therein to commit deviation by wrongdoing—We shall cause him to taste a painful punishment” (Q 22:25).

At the end of time another people will march against the Kaʿbah—a vast army. Concerning them the Prophet ﷺ said, “When they reach al-Baydāʾ, an expansive plain, Allah will cause the first and the last of them to sink into the earth.” The ground will swallow them, together with their markets and everyone accompanying them. This indicates the sheer size of the army, for they will even have their marketplaces with them for buying