Critical Podium Dewanand Islam
Jihad against the Sudanese
Sacrificer unknown
Sacrifice code wfor0399
Sacrifice date 25 march 2009
Jihad against the Sudanese
After overrunning Byzantine ruled Egypt and giving the Coptic Christian
population the choice Islam, death or Jizya, the Muslim armies attempted
to penetrate deeper into East Africa then known as Nubia. At the time
of the Muslim invasion in 650 C.E., the ancient kingdom of Nubia stretched
from the south of Egypt from Aswan to Abyssinia, and from the Red Sea
to the Libyan desert. The Nubians were Christians and were ruled by kings
who had zealously guarded their freedom from their Byzantines who were
their Christian co-religionists. The capital of the kingdom was a city
named Dumqula that was deep into the forests of the Nile valley.
In the summer of 642, the Muslim general who commanded a battalion near
the Nubian border. His battalion was a part of the armies of Muslim occupied
Egypt, Amr-ibn-Al-Aas sent an expedition to Nubia under the command of
his cousin Uqba-ib-Nafe. The expedition was ordered by Amr-ibn-Al-Aas
on his own account, without the knowledge or approval of Caliph Umar.
In those days many Muslim commanders undertook expeditions into non-Muslim
lands through their own overzealousness to claim their name in the history
of the Islamic Jihad and also to bring in personal fame and glory. The
Caliphate was rife with personal and clan dissensions from the inception.
This is borne out by the fact that out of the first four caliphs Umar,
Uthman, Ali and Abu Muawiya ibn Sufyan, the first three were murdered
by Muslims of the opposing clans. This speaks for the unity of the Ummah
in those formative days. The Shia Sunni Schism that came later was the
first major faultline withing Islam, that was to be replicated with the
national boundaries that came about when the Caliphate started falling
apart a few years later after the death of Abu Muawiya ibn Sufyan, the
fifth caliph. To build his own fiefdom Amr-ibn-Al-Aas attacked Nubia from
Egypt since he thought that the victory over the Nubians would be an easy
affair and that he would inform the Caliph after he had conquered another
land and claim its governorship for himself.
Uqba-ibn-Nafe who had till made a great name for himself as the butcher
of the Copts and Conqueror of Egypt and North Africa, and who had led
his horse to the Atlantic complaining that there were no lands left for
him to conquer in which to spread the glory of Islam by terrorizing the
conquered people to accept Islam or death . But here his non-existent
allah refused to favor him and his accursed followers and he came in for
an shock in Nubia.
As his army proceeded into village after village, they encountered burnt
out houses and farms. The wells had been filled up with mud and there
was no population to fall prey to the advancing Muslims. The Muslim army
was surprised that there were no pitched battle to be fought, where they
could challenge the champion of the Nubians to come forth and face the
Muslims to be slaughtered with some foul trick, after which the Muslim
army would overawe the resisting Kafirs (non-Muslims) with their ghastly
slaughter and frighten them into submission to Islam, as had happened
till then with the Byzantine and Coptic Christians as also with the Zoroastrians
(Sassanid Persians) in Iran. In Nubia, the Nubian army never challenged
the Muslims to open warfare. They hid themselves in the forests during
the day and attacked at nightfall, when the Muslim army retired. There
were only skirmishes and haphazard engagements and in such type of warfare
the Nubians excelled the Muslims. The Nubians also did never engage the
Muslims in hand-to-hand combat nor in single combat, as the Hazar Mard
champions of the Persians The Nubians were skilful archers and attacked
from a safe distance perched on tree tops. They were never seen by the
Muslims who camped below. We have it on the strength of Muslim historian
Balazuri that they would shout to the Muslims where would they like to
be hit by the arrow, and where the Muslims mockingly named some part of
the body, the arrow invariably struck there to the great grief of the
Muslim who had mockingly challenged the Nubians to hit him.
One day Uqba came across a concentration of the Nubians. Before the Muslims
could attack the Nubians; the Nubians subjected the Muslims to a merciless
barrage of arrows. The arrows were aimed at the eyes of the Muslims who
had defensive armor all over their bodies, except over their eyes. and
in the encounter 25000 Muslims lost their eyes. The Nubians were also
very fast in their movements. The Muslim cavalry was known for its speed
and mobility; but it was no match for the Nubian horse riders. The Nubians
would strike hard against the Muslims, and; then vanish into the dark
before the Muslims could recover their balance and take counter action.
The hit-and-run raids; by the Nubians caused considerable damage to the
Muslims.
Uqba decided to retreat from Nubia after informing Amr-ibn-Al-Aas of
the state of affairs. He said that the Nubians avoided pitched battle,
and in the guerilla tactics that they followed the Muslims were the sufferers
Uqba further propheted out that; Nubia was a poor land, and there was
nothing therein worth fighting for or to tempt by way of booty. This also
speaks the mind of the Muslim to raid non-Muslim lands not for spreading
Islam but to loot, plunder, rape. And when all this was done, to force
the victims to join the Gang of Bandits named the Muslim Ummah by embracing
Islam at the point of the sword.
When the Jihadis attacked Nubia, the Nubians had been receiving refugees
from Egypt and Syria. These refugees had forewarned the Nubian king about
the ruthlessness of the Jihadis. The Nubians realized that they would
be massacred in open warfare, and they decided not face the Muslims in
guerilla warfare. The Nubians turned the tactics of subterfuge and hit
and run tactics which was till then the trademark of the Muslims, against
the Muslims themselves. Thus it was with the Nubains that the tactics
of the Msulims came home to roost for the first time in early Islamic
history. The till then undefeated march of the Muslims was halted and
reversed in Nubia. This proved to the other (especially to the Byzantines)
that the Muslim were defeatable. It is to this victory that the Nubians
preserved their Christian heritage in large tracts of Nubia. The southern
parts of Sudan, Ethopia have remained overwhelmingly Christian to this
day. But later Muslim attacks from Hejaz (Saudi Arabia) into the coastal
areas of Nubia (East Africa) led to the forcible conversion of the people
of Somalia, Upper Nile (Northern Sudan) and Eritrea to Islam. It is these
converts that account for the recurring battles in Southern Sudan and
along the Ethiopian-Eritrean border between Muslims and Christians. The
people of Western Nubia also resisted Islam for a long time and they were
converted as late as the 17th century by the Mameluks. It is these people
who were not Arabized due to their late conversion and they inhabit what
is today called Darfur and are subject to attacks from the Janjueed who
are the Arabized Muslims of Northern Sudan.
Lessons from the Battle of Nubia
The lessons from this defeat of the till then invincible Muslims by the
agile and ruthless Nubians is that the sneaky tactics of the Muslim can
only be outmatched by being more sneaky yourself. The old English adage
"Everything is fair in love and War," holds greatest relevance
while battling the Muslims. And only when we in the Western world realize
this and go into an overreach with subterfuge against the Terrorists (all
of whom are Muslims), and the use our still prevailing (but fast closing)
edge of superior weapons against the enemy, can the Muslims finally be
defeated in the looming Third World War.
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