Malik said, "I only
know that he said, 'Is this done in the Haram of the Messenger of
Allah, may Allah bless him and grant him peace?' "
When it left Bilal, he raised his voice and said, 'Would that I knew
whether I will spend a night at the valley of Makka with the idhkhir
herb and jalil herb around me. Will I go one day to the waters of
Majinna? Will the mountains of Shama and Tafil appear to me?' " '
A'isha continued, "I went to the Messenger of Allah, may Allah
bless him and grant him peace, and informed him. He said, 'O Allah!
Make us love Madina as much as we love Makka or even more. Make it
sound and bless us in our sa and mudd. Remove its fever and put it in
al-Juhfa.' "
Malik said that
Ibn Shihab said, ''Umar ibn al-Khattab searched for information about
that until he was absolutely convinced that the Messenger of Allah,
may Allah bless him and grant him peace, had said, 'Two deens shall
not co-exist in the Arabian Peninsula,' and he therefore expelled the
jews from Khaybar."
Malik said, ''Umar ibn al-Khattab expelled the jews from Najran
(a jewish settlement in the Yemen) and Fadak (a jewish settlement
thirty miles from Madina). When the jews of Khaybar left, they did not
take any fruit or land. The jews of Fadak took half the fruit and half
the land, because the Messenger of Allah, may Allah bless him and
grant him peace, had made a settlement with them for that. So Umar
entrusted to them the value in gold, silver, camels, ropes and saddle
bags of half the fruit and half the land, and handed the value over to
them and expelled them."
Then he said, 'Summon the Ansar to
me.' They were summoned and he asked them for advice. They acted as
the Muhajirun had and disagreed as they had disagreed. He said, 'Leave
me.' "Then he said, 'Summon to me whoever is here of the aged men of
Quraysh from the Muhajirun of the conquest.' He summoned them and not
one of them differed. They said, 'We think that you should withdraw
the people and not send them towards the plague.' Umar called out to
the people, 'I am leaving by camel in the morning,' so they set out.
Abu Ubayda said, 'Is it flight from the decree of Allah?' Umar said,
'Better that someone other than you had said it, Abu Ubayda. Yes. We
flee from the decree of Allah to the decree of Allah. What would you
think if these camels had gone down into a valley which had two
slopes, one of them fertile, and the other barren. If you pastured in
the fertile part, wouldn't you pasture them by the decree of Allah? If
you pastured them in the barren part, wouldn't you pasture them by the
decree of Allah?'
''Abd ar-Rahman ibn Awf arrived and he had
been off doing something and he said, 'I have some knowledge of this.
I heard the Messenger of Allah, may Allah bless him and grant him
peace, say, "If you hear about it in a land, do not go forward to it.
If it comes upon a land and you are in it, then do not depart in
flight from it." ' Umar praised Allah and then set off."
Malik said that Abu'n-Nadr said, "That is, do not depart
with no other intention but flight."
Malik said,
"He meant to lengthen and preserve their lives because of the severity
of the plague in ash-Sham ."