Look who is on the move, again, Viruse?.
The ʿām al-fīl (Arabic: عام الفيل, Year of the Elephant) is the name in Islamic history for the year approximately equating to 570 CE. According to some Islamic resources, it was in this year that Muhammad was born.[1] The name is derived from an event said to have occurred at Mecca: Abraha, the Abyssinian, Christian ruler of Yemen, which was subject to the Kingdom of Aksum of Ethiopia,[2][3] marched upon the Ka‘bah in Mecca with a large army, which included war elephants, intending to demolish it. However, the lead elephant, known as 'Mahmud' (Arabic: مَـحْـمُـوْد, consonant letters: m-ħ-m-w-d),[4] is said to have stopped at the boundary around Mecca, and refused to enter. It has been theorized that an epidemic, perhaps caused by smallpox, could have caused such a failed invasion of Mecca.[5] The year came to be known as the Year of the Elephant, beginning a trend for reckoning the years in the Arabian Peninsula. This reckoning was used until it was replaced with the Islamic calendar during the times of ‘Umar.
There were recurrences of the plague in Syria–Palestine about every decade between 688/89 and 744/45. [35] "The Umaiyad [sic] dynasty was literally plagued by this disease ", in the words of Dols. [36] The deaths of the Umayyad caliphs Mu'awiya II ( r . 683–684 ), Marwan I ( r . 684–685 ), Abd al-Malik ( r . 685–705 ), Sulayman ( r . 715–717 ) and the Umayyad governors in Iraq al-Mughira ibn Shu'ba ( r . 661–671 ) and Ziyad ibn Abihi ( r . 685–673 ) may all possibly have been caused by the plague epidemics in Syria and Iraq. [37] [21] The caliphs routinely withdrew from the cities to their desert palaces when the plague emerged during the summer months. [36] Notable among them was Caliph Hisham ( r . 724–743 ), who preferred his palace at Rusafa over Damascus because he viewed the latter to be unhealthy. [38]
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