Harb alBasous ‘The Great Pre-Islamic War’ | Mufti Abu Layth

there is the great war known as harbaugh now this [Laughter] this is a drama in and of itself [Laughter] right let's uh if you want drama you see there's so much to say about this but okay let me give you a quick snapshot first and i might give some details a snapshot this was a war that lasted for 40 years

is from the ayamal arab 40 years right and it's named al har harval basus and besos if you think well what is pursues versus is the name of a lady and no it's not a romantic kind of like a like troy not that kind of war um for some reason right so it's not one of those what it is it's actually over a camel there you go you wanted romance so and it's amazing that the the events

that transpire in this story because it just begins with it's not actually over a camel it's over this kind of rivalry and this ego and there's this there's this king by the name of khuli and this is actually in the arabian peninsula and he's from arabia and uh which is from this tribe yes so the point is he's from this tribe he becomes the king but he is quite ruthless and he does all these kind of wars and people don't like him and but you know

some do and he has this brother that they called the asylum and and this is another thing how he's known as mahal and and he's the first person to write lengthy olds these kind of arabic qasidas these long poems first person to do it was him he's known as zeer salim they call him zeer because he's just it comes from zero nissa because he's just love women and the term those of you that have heard it is he was just an absolute playboy and just just spent his time in booze and women that's it always drunk

always with women and that was just his his thing and he was quite he was very talented as in he had a lot of talent he was very brave he was in fact the stories of his brother trying to have him killed off collab because he thinks he has been hitting on his wife whose name is jaleela and uh he hadn't i mean whether he had or not i don't know but um so he tries to come up with all these things that oh i need this i need you to we need the milk of a lioness to cure this and we need this and there's all these kind of epics where he goes out and he actually gets it done and he's

meant to get killed but he keeps coming back this huge but yet once he comes back and does his duty he'll just be drunk with alcohol and just surrounded by women and as far as the good life goes and so what happens is kuleb um he asks his wife this jalila who's meant to be one of the most beautiful women in the time uh who has some issues with him she he asks her once that who is the most who's the top dawn of the arabs he's like don't say my name straight away i'll let you take a breath or two

before you say so she comes out with her brother's name just us so that's his brother-in-law now so naturally is it hurts the ego man this one so he just let it be he let it slide i let this one slide man so then what happens is after whatever some while um jaleela is trying she's saying this provocatively by the way because she and her brother just us they don't like him they don't like this guy kulib and he's the king but they

don't like him and whilst they they have this kind of bickering and gossiping and you know backbiting kind of sessions going on what the aunt comes to stay with with her brother and the aunt's name is basus so this is versus she turns up and you know like a good old aunt she comes to add all the masala that was missing she goes ah that kulev needs to be you know blah blah blah you know why you need to push this button push that button so what happens is a while later jaleela um ends up having a conversation and she

provokes collab again she says oh yeah yeah but my just us my brother he's just like on another level so he's had enough so what he does is when he leaves the home he sees that basus the aunt the aunt that's visiting she's there and and she's brought with her a camel and the camel's got a um a facility in arabic we call it a a baby camel i'm not sure what the technical term is so it's got this uh this uh this infant camel with it and the infant camel is just kind of going around on the fields so what he does is he takes out his

arrow and he just shoots it and he and he says well he thinks he thinks what are you going to do about it so he leaves it he goes obviously people are triggered but they just they choose to ignore and he is quite ruthless kulib so what happens is he comes back to them and provokes them he says hey so he says so what's happening with the says what so what's with the dead camel so they know that he's trying to provoke him so and they're very witty so they say well oh yeah we're grateful now check this for perspective they say we're actually grateful

um because you've actually speared up the milk of the mother for us so hey more milk for us perspective huh perspective so he thinks he so he says he says achar so more milk for you so what he does is he the the her camel versus camel he shoots it where the other is and it kind of ruins cause the arrow the spear whatever it is it goes through and it damages the other so it's it's useless

it's either going to die or even if it doesn't it can't give milk so at this stage their tribe the these people they they're all ultimately related but here they're known as the bakery um they they don't know what to do so they're trying to keep a cool mind just us is saying look let it be forget it we don't want to fight him we don't want to do this we don't want to do that and the source is like nah you know she's she's really adding the masala she's saying oh my god what kind of a useless nephew are you only if only there were real men here ha ha if only

and so she starts saying all this poetry you know back then the aunts when they would kind of whine and moan they would do it in poetry so she just say like a a 50 line poem wrap our way through it so eventually there's some other altercations happen and chassas kills kaleb he kills the king and it's amazing in this story you had zeer salim who is a just not a playboy he's like somebody who's he's

very talented but he's he's just withering away in luxuries of life and just indulgent extremely indulgent and this hits him so much that people say that if only there was somebody that would take avenge the death of khalip and kalei before he dies he uh apparently kind of writes on some rock that do not kind of compromise with them and so zeer salin turns into this ruthless warrior i mean he was already a warrior i mentioned the stories that they used to send him to do all this

and he wages this relentless campaign of bloodshed i mean he's from the targeting the the tribe against the bakkeryn relentless and this goes on no matter how many people try to intervene there's a very famous arab known as al-harith ibn albert who's also related to the bhakaryan but he he's one of the major don like they say one of the most kind of uh heroes of ancient arabs and so is this the asylum is one of them as well but

harith is meant to be this kind of huge legend who's older than zil salim but he he kind of keeps neutral and he doesn't pick a side and in fact you know this is where that famous statement comes because remember when i mentioned that khaled kills the camel of besos so jason initially had said look we don't want to kill we don't want to war we don't want to fight him but what i'll do is i'll kill his camel which is called allah which doesn't happen and he ends up eventually just killing him and it triggers this war but when haris ibn abad this this kind of other hero this super

mega kind of warrior of that tribe is asked by zev salim are you with us or are you against us and his famous statement which till today is used in arabic he said that he says this war he said that the camel like i don't have a single camel in in this war naka is a female camel and jamal is a male camel because basus's camel was a naka that was killed and jason was supposed to kill that jamal so he says look i don't have a camel in this matter

and he says i'm just going to keep neutral and he does up until eventually he's even silent because the asylum is on this rampage and it goes on for 40 years bloodshed and bloodshed and nobody and the amount of um offers and they ask harith this this other warrior that i mentioned to mediate and he tries because he's this huge figure in ancient arabia and he says to him look take and this is interesting because one of the things he says to him is don't the arab say

he says the arabs that he says the arabs have said that a soul for a soul he says look we'll give you the person responsible we'll give you one person you just you can have him what is this you've thousands have been killed orphans upon orphans have been left and widows and and it's going on for years like let's say this is 10 years into this battle 10 whole years like imagine going back 10 years in your own lifetime where you were 10 years forward imagine 20 years back 20 and you're only halfway

and they when are said to him that look haven't the arab said that a soul for a soul will give you the person will give you a person that's responsible these are just innocent people you're just killing and he said he said the arabs never said this he said this is what the jews have said this ain't the law of the arabs now it's interesting you see because this war goes on for 40 years and eventually everybody is aged

and people have died in the in on mars and people have and everybody's tired and right in the very i mean near the end joins in as well because his son boujeed gets killed and he although he tries to keep calm they insult him because he thinks that now that you've killed my son you're going to call it quits and when they tell him that he killed your son if they say salim just slit his throat and he says may allah have mercy on my son that he at least did sula between these two tribes he kind of did he got brought them together and they say no they say do you know what he commented

he said this is for bish he said this is for the shoelace of kulep like basically that's the part that you've wiped out the shoelace and this as you can imagine it obviously he lost he lost the plot uh at this point hadith who was an old man but he was still a super warrior he enters the fight as well and it's an and it goes on and people are massacred and it goes on for years and eventually even just us is killed right at the end and it's this is this is an interesting plot twist that his own the

collab son his wife at the time was pregnant she she gives birth to a boy who grows up with the uncle just thinking that's his father only later on in life to realize this guy murdered my father so he makes a plot with zerlim to assassinate um his own father jason and thereby bringing eventually after 40 years this war it finally begins to simmer and quietens and then just dies a death and right at the very end you see when you and zev salim himself he uh he's known as mahal as well that's his kind of he has a a a

name he goes by a title and he then just goes off and there's different stories uh some say he's just kind of sent off to some kind of remote place and he has two slaves and and they and they execute him they've had enough of him so these two slaves decide to execute him and and they write this um and he says to them he knows they're gonna execute him so he says you know what he says okay but you gotta give this poem back there's a poem i want you to just say this and it's a very simple line he just says

he says so now this it doesn't really make any sense it just means who will tell the people the two tribes about muhammad may god praise you and so they say all right fine and they go back and they they kill him and they tell this is salim the the one who went on this ruthless rampage for 40 years and and then they tell his family oh he died a natural death we buried him and he said they say he added poem

and the poem was and his niece kuleib's daughter she's like one of these oracles in ancient arabia so she catches out and says that aha that's wrong she says do you know that's an incomplete poem and she completes it and she says

who will tell the the the people that mahal hill um has ended or remains dead or has come to become dead lying like laid out in in the desert

that was may god bless you that don't let these two slaves go until they are executed so she is this kind of oracle anyway an interesting story and those who are into arabic but my point was that you had this countless relentless war going on killing of people and nobody would just stop because they he would say no now this was the backdrop and these were the figures that that create the landscape of arabia following after a few generations in which islam arises

so at that time it then instates that jewish law the mosaic law that and in the torah allah says that we have written an enough sabbin that enough is within with by enough that a soul for a soul and allah says that the person who has been um if the person's been killed wrongly then his his family have they have certain rights and but they are not allowed to transgress but you now all of a sudden this starts to make so much more

sense that like you understood it before anyway but now it fits in to the greater landscape so i i got distracted sharing that stuff got distracted sharing that story but it's it's good you know it's uh these things are known as the history of the arabs and it's about the wars but they they are interesting because they give you a backdrop to what was going on and in the cl the climate in which islam then arises