Name: al-Jawa
Address: al-Jawa, Arabia

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The Ridda Wars

In al-Baladhuri: when Abu Bakr succeeded, groups of the Arabs apostatized and withheld the alms, some saying 'we keep the prayer but will not pay the zakat', whereupon Abu Bakr said 'if they withheld from me a hobbling-cord — some say a she-goat kid — I would fight them', the 'iqal being a year's alms; Abdullah ibn Masud said the Muslims had stood after the Prophet at a station where they nearly perished had God not graced them with Abu Bakr: they had all agreed not to fight over a young she-camel or a weaned camel 'and to eat the Arab villages' yield and worship God until certainty came to us', but God resolved him to fight, and he accepted from them only the humiliating condition or the annihilating war — the first that they confess their slain are in the Fire and return what they took of Muslim property, the second that they leave their homes; in Tariq ibn Shihab's report he offered the Buzakha delegation the choice of the annihilating war or the humiliating peace: surrender of armour and mounts, return of what was taken, blood-money for the slain Muslims, their own slain in the Fire; Aisha said 'when the Prophet died there befell my father what would have crushed the firm mountains — hypocrisy reared its head in Medina and the Arabs apostatized'; Abu Bakr went out to al-Qassa directing the columns against the apostates, was attacked by Kharija ibn Hisn and Manzur ibn Zabban the Fazaris who were routed with Talha ibn Ubaydillah pursuing them to lower Thaniyyat Awsaja, then appointed Khalid ibn al-Walid over the army and Thabit ibn Qays over the Ansar, beginning with Tulayha ibn Khuwaylid at Buzakha, followed by the affairs of Yamama, Bahrain, Oman, Yemen, Hadramawt, Mecca, Tihama and Iraq. Al-Sallabi relates that the slaughter of many Qur'an memorizers at Yamama moved Umar ibn al-Khattab to press Abu Bakr to compile the Qur'an, fearing much of it would perish with the slain in every battlefield; Zayd ibn Thabit was charged with gathering it from leather, bones, palm fronds and men's breasts, until the closing passage of Surat al-Tawba was found only with Abu Khuzayma al-Ansari. In the Encyclopaedia of Islam article: The Ridda Wars were a series of battles against nomadic and settled tribes that began shortly before the Prophet's death and ran through Abu Bakr's caliphate. The early Sunni sources report that groups of Arabs withheld the alms, and that Abu Bakr resolved to fight them and sent out armies under Khalid ibn al-Walid. The Encyclopaedia of Islam article judges the name inexact in many cases, notes tribes led by claimants to prophethood such as Musaylima, Tulayha, Sajah, al-Aswad al-Ansi and Dhu al-Taj Lakit, and sees the wars as a prelude to the conquests that changed the centre's relation to the tribes.

al-Jawa

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The Ridda Wars