The Year of the Elephant (Arabic: عام الفيل, ˤĀmu l-Fīl) is the name in Islamic history for the year approximately equating to 570 AD. According to Islamic tradition, it was in this year that Muhammad was born. The name is derived from an event said to have occurred at Mecca: Abraha, the Christian ruler of Yemen, which was subject to the Aksumite Empire of Ethiopia, marched upon the Kaaba with a large army, which included one or more elephants, intending to demolish it. However, the elephant is said to have stopped at the boundary around Mecca, and refused to enter. The year came to be known as the Year of the Elephant, beginning a trend for reckoning the years in the Arabian Peninsula used until it was replaced with the Islamic calendar during the rule of Umar.
Recent discoveries in southern Arabia suggest that Year of the Elephant may have been 569 or 568, as the Sassanid Empire overthrew the Axumite- and Byzantine-affiliated regimes in Yemen around 570. However, historians today believe that this event occurred at least a decade prior to the birth of Muhammad.
The year is also recorded as that of the birth of Ammar ibn Yasir.
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Famous quotes containing the words year and/or elephant:
“It’s enough for you to do it once for a few men to remember you. But if you do it year after year, then many people remember you and they tell it to their children, and their children and grandchildren remember and, if it concerns books, they can read them. And if it’s good enough, it will last as long as there are human beings.”
—Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961)
“Even the elephant carries but a small trunk on his journeys. The perfection of traveling is to travel without baggage.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)