The Prophet Abraham was born about 2000 years before Christ, in the Sumerian city-state of Ur, which is located in present-day Iraq. He lived for more than 175 years. Ur was the capital city and the centre of Mesopotamia.
Those were the times when polytheism was the predominant thought. Whatever appeared great to human observation was considered either as God or was attributed as something divine. This culture was prevalent everywhere, from individual homes to political fi elds. The old world order was established on these false assumptions, known in religious terms as polytheism and in rational language as superstition.
The negative fall-out of these assumptions was that nature became a subject of holiness and worship. All the prophets, including Prophet Abraham and Prophet Muhammad, came with the sole mission of conveying the message of the worship of the one God to humankind. As far as nature was concerned instead of making it an object of worship one should make it a subject of contemplation and explore ways of harnessing it for our real benefit.
Instead of making Nature an object of worship one should make it a subject of contemplation and explore ways of harnessing it for man’s benefit.
Prophet Abraham started his mission with this same message in ancient Iraq. At that time, his father enjoyed the position of a priest in society. Hence, Prophet Abraham began his mission from his own house, as a result of which he was soon homeless. After this, he continued to convey the message of worship of the one Creator to his people in various ways. But his people also turned against him and his message.
Another serious matter of this age was that kingdoms flourished based on divinity of the rulers, and this was linked to the worship of nature. Such superstitious beliefs were a means used by rulers to maintain their hold and their domination of the people. Hence, they used all their powers to put down any movement that they felt was against these superstitious and false beliefs.
This was the case with King Nimrod of ancient Iraq, who was a contemporary of Prophet Abraham. Nimrod had established his kingship claiming to be an incarnation of the Sun God. Prophet Abraham called on Nimrod to the worship of the One God. Nimrod rejected this call and instead resorted to violence against Abraham. Despite his best eff orts, Prophet Abraham was forced to leave his homeland. At this time, there were only two people with him. One was his wife Sarah and the other was his nephew, Prophet Lot.
Prophet Abraham then married Hajira (Hagar). He settled his nephew Lot in the land of Sodom, where he started his mission of conveying to humankind the message of God. He settled his first wife, Sarah, in Palestine, and, along with Hajira, went through different lands finally reaching Makkah. These journeys were undertaken by Abraham with the guidance of God through the Angel Gabriel (Sahih Bukhari).
For the mission of conveying God’s message, such individuals were required who would be uncorrupted of any cultural conditioning.
Prophet Abraham left his wife Hajira and his infant son Ismael in this desert land with a bag of dates and a pouch full of water. His wife Hajira went behind him, seeking an explanation on why he was leaving them alone in this place. When he did not answer she herself asked if it was the commandment of God. He replied in the affirmative. Then, Hajira said, “If it is God’s will, then surely He will not let this go fruitless.”
Prophet Abraham had to do this as the people of those times were so conditioned in their culture that they were unable to accept the message of truth which now appeared alien to them. They refuted all attempts to change their beliefs and system of life so much so that it became obvious that their false beliefs and cultures would remain for centuries. Prophet Abraham had settled his family in the barren desert of Arabia because this uninhabited place, being far from urban settlements, was ideally suited for the development of a new and pure generation that would be uncorrupted by the influences of city life and culture.
Prophet Abraham then dreamt that he was sacrificing his son. This was an injunction from God that he should dedicate his son to a divine mission; one such mission which would begin from the parched deserts of Arabia. For the new mission of conveying God’s message, no other place was suitable as wherever there were people, they were under the influence of superstition and false beliefs and were unable to think different to their cultural conditioning. At that time, there was not a single house that in the world of God that had been made for the remembrance of God. For such a House of God also, this very place in the desert of Arabia was the most suitable. Here, Prophet Abraham, with the help of his son, Ismael, constructed a house dedicated to God which is known as the Kabah or the House of God.
The eff orts of Prophets Abraham and Ismael culminated some 2500 years later in a new generation that is referred to in the Quran as ‘qair-e-ummah’ (3:110). In the days of Prophet Abraham, his followers numbered just a handful, but by this time a team had been created that would reflect the supplication of the Prophet, ‘...make of our descendants a nation that will submit to you....’ (THE QURAN 2:128).
The Islamic scholar-historian Philip. K. Hitti, referred to them in his book, History of the Arabs (1937), as a ‘nursery of heroes’. English scholar and orientalist, David Samuel Margoliouth has described them as a ‘nation of heroes’. This kind of acknowledgement was nothing but acceptance of an established fact that was well recorded in history. Quranic words are a prediction about the companions of the Prophet, which no one knew about at the time of revelation of these verses.
It was in this generation that Muhammad-bin-Abdullah was born in 570 A.D. God chose him to be a prophet in 610 A.D., and when he breathed his last, in 623 A.D., his companions numbered over 125,000. This was the team that was the culmination of a historical process that had started 2500 years before. Through the generations of Prophet Abraham and Ismael, a group of precious individuals were selected who would devote their lives to God and who for the first time in history would take the message of the Oneness of God towards an ideological revolution.
The pilgrimage of Haj is an annual reminder of this great mission that was originated by Prophet Abraham.
