An Invitation to Peace

An Invitation to Peace
In short, everyone was expecting the Byzantine Empire to be
destroyed. But right at that moment, and against these crushing falls,
the Qur’an announced a few years later in 620:
“The Roman Empire has been defeated in the lowest land; but
they, (even) after (this) defeat of theirs, will soon be victorious within a
few years. With God is the Decision, in the Past and in the Future: on
that Day shall the Believers rejoice with the help of God; He helps
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whom He will, and He is the Exalted in Might, most Merciful.”
In the precise language of the Arabs, the word for ‘few’ in the verse,
bid`, means a number from 3 to 9. It seemed absolutely impossible in
620 that the Christian Byzantium could ever be victorious again, let
alone in so short a time. One of the leaders of the Quraysh, Ubayy ibn
Khalaf, was so sure this could never happen that he bet the Prophet’s
closest companion, Abu Bakr, a hundred camels that the Qur’an’s
prophesy would be proved wrong. Islam prohibits gambling and
putting money on matters of chance, but the Prophet allowed Abu
Bakr to go ahead with this because since the Qur’an had said it, there
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was no possibility of him losing.
In 622, Heraclius gained a number of victories over the Persians and
conquered Armenia. In December 627, the two empires fought a
decisive battle at Nineveh, some 50 kilometres east of the River Tigris,
near Baghdad. This time too, the Byzantine army defeated the
Persians. A few months later, the Persians had to ask for peace with
Byzantium, which obliged them to return the territories they had taken
from it.
The Byzantine victory was completed when Emperor Heraclius
defeated the Persian ruler Khosrow II in 630, recaptured Jerusalem,
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and regained the “True Cross” for the Church of the Holy Sepulchre.
Qur’an 30:2-5 Tafseer at-Tabari (Commentary of the Qur’an), v. 21, p. 18
Warren Treadgold, A History of the Byzantine State and Society, pp. 287-99
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