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Encyclopedia of Religion entry for
Greeks
. Arabic ar-Rum "Alif. Lim. Mim. THE GREEKS have been defeated." "In a land hard by; But after their defeat they shall defeat their foes." "In a few years. First and last is the affair with God. And on that day shall the faithful rejoice." "In the promise of God: He aideth who He will; and He is the Mighty, the Merciful." "It is the promise of God: To his promise God will not be untrue; but most men know it not." Following al-Baizawi, the Jalalan, and other commentators, Sale remarks that- The accomplishment of the prophecy contained in this passage, which is very famous among the Muhammadans, being insisted on by their doctors as a convincing proof that the Qur’an really came down from heaven, it may be excusable to be a little particular. The passage is said to have been reveled on the occasion of a great victory obtained by the Persians over the Greeks, the news whereof coming to Makkah, the infidels became strangely elated, and began to abuse Muhammad and his followers, imagining that this success of the Persians, who, like themselves, were idolators, and supposed to have no scripture, against the Christians, who pretended as well as Muhammad to worship one God, and to have divine scriptures, was an earnest of their own future successes against the Prophet, and those of his religion, to check which vain hopes it was foretold in the words of the text, that how improbable soever it might seem, yet the scale should be turned in a few years, and the vanquished Greeks prevail as remarkably against the Persians. That this prophecy was exactly fulfilled, the commentators fail to observe, though they do not exactly agree in the accounts they give of its accomplishment, the number of years between the two actions being not precisely determined. Some place the victory gained by the Persians in the fifth year before the Hijrah, and their defeat by the Greeks in the second year after it, when the battle of Badr was fought; others place the former in the third or fourth year before the Hijrah, and the latter in the end of the sixth or the beginning of the seventh year after it, when the expedition of al-Hudaibiyah was undertaken. The date of the victory gained by the Greeks in the first of these accounts, interferes with a story which the commentators tell of a wager laid by Abu Bakr with Ubaiy ibn Khalf who turned this prophecy into ridicule. Abu Bake at first laid ten young camels that the Persians should receive an overthrow within three years, but on his acquainting Muhammad with what he had done, that Prophet told him that the word buz made use of in this passage, signified no determinate number of years, but any number from three to nine (though some suppose the tenth year is included), and therefore advised him to prolong the time and to raise the wager, which he accordingly proposed to Ubaiy, and they agreed that the time assigned should be nine years and the wager a hundred camels. Before the time was elapsed, Ubaiy died of a would received at Uhub, in the third year of the Hijrah; but the event afterwards showing that Abu Bakr had won, he received the camels of Ubaiy ‘s heirs, and brought them in triumph to Muhammad. History informs us that the successes of Khosru Parviz, King of Persia, who carried the terrible war against the Greek empire, to avenge the death of Maurice, his father-in-law, slain by Phocas, were very great, and continued in an uninterrupted course for two and twenty year. Particularly in the year of Christ 615, about the beginning of the sixth year before the Hijrah, the Persians, having the preceding year conquered Syria, made themselves master of Palestine and took Jerusalem. Which seems to be that signal advantage gained over the Greeks mentioned in this passage, as agreeing best with the terms here used, and most likely to alarm the Arabs by reason of their vicinity to the scene of action; and there was so little probability at that time of the Greeks being able to retrieve their losses much less to distress the Persians, that in the following years the arms of the latter made still father and more considerable progresses, and at length they laid siege to Constantinople itself. But in the year 625, in which the fourth year of the Hijrah began, about ten years after the taking of Jerusalem, the Greeks, when it was least expected, gained a remarkable victory over the Persians, and not only obliged them is quit the territories of the empire, by carrying the war into their own country, but drove them to the last extremity, and spoiled the capital city at al-Madayin; Heraclius enjoying thenceforward a continued series of good fortune, to the deposition and death of Khosru (Sale ‘s Koran in loco.) 
by which is meant the Byzantine or Eastern Empire. In the xxxth chapter of the Qur’an, entitled the Suratu ‘r-Rum, of the "Chapter of the Greeks", there is a reference to the defeat of the Byzantine power by the Persians with a supposed prophecy of future successes :-
citations: Dictionary of Islam, Hughes
article created 2006-04-12 , last updated 2006-04-12
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