The Holy Quran with Five Volume Commentary (Vol 5) — Page 549
they were too weak to offer effective resistance to Abraha, 'Abdul-Muttalib advised his compatriots to repair to the surrounding hills. Before leaving the city, 'Abdul-Muttalib, holding the skirts of the Ka'bah, prayed in the following words full of extreme pathos: رحله فامنع حلالك ان المرء يمنع لا هم و محالهم غدوا محالك لا يغلبن صليبهم i. e. just as a man protects his house and property from plunder, so do Thou o Lord, defend Thine own House and suffer not the Cross to triumph over the Ka'bah ("Tārīkh Al-Kāmil," by Ibn Athīr, vol. 1, p. 156 & Muir). Abraha's army had hardly moved when the Divine scourge overtook them. "A pestilential distemper," says Muir, "had shown itself in the camp of Abraha. It broke out with deadly pustules and blains and was probably an aggravated form of smallpox. In confusion and dismay the army commenced retreat. Abandoned by their guides, they perished among the valleys, and a flood swept multitudes into the sea. Scarcely any recovered who had once been smitten by it and Abraha himself, a mass of malignant and putrid sores, died miserably on his return to Sanā'. " It is to this incident particularly that the Surah refers. The fact that the disease which destroyed Abraha's army was smallpox in a virulently epidemic form is supported by the great historian Ibn Isḥāq. He quotes ‘Ā'ishah as saying that she saw two blind beggars in Mecca and on enquiring who they were, she was told that they were the drivers of Abraha's elephant. (Durr-e-Manthūr) 3445