{"collection":"Islam","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/browse/isl/pro/eja02.htm","path":"isl/pro/eja02.htm","source_url":"https://sacred-texts.com/isl/pro/eja02.htm","text":"Sacred Texts\u00a0\nIslam\u00a0\nIndex\u00a0\nPrevious\u00a0\nNext\u00a0\nOwners of The Ditch\nGod said: (Self-)destroyed were the owners of the ditch, Of the fuel-fed\nfire, When they sat by it, And were themselves the witnesses of what they\ndid to the believers, They had naught against them save that they believed\nin Allah, the Mighty, the Owner of Praise..etc(Al-Buruj:4-8). In interpretations\nand narrations that are trusted, it is that God sent a prophet from Abyssinia\u00a0\nto call the people to the faith of God and to work with His laws and regulations\naccording to the laws of the Messiah, Jesus the son of Mary with what was\nthere in the Gospel, and some of the people were pagans and some of them\nwere jews, so this holy prophet started to call the people towards god,\nand he showed many miracles and so lot of people followed him and believed\nin him, and the king was a jew and most of the people were jews, so they\nmet with him (the prophet) and fought against him (the prophet) and so\nmany of his followers were killed and some others were captured, and then\nthey made ditches for them into the ground and filled them with woods and\nsat the fire in them, and on the edges they put some witnesses to see how\nit's going to be and how the king's orders shall be done, and then they\nsaid to the people: whoever was along with the religion of the king and\nwas a jew let him be away, and whoever followed this man let him drop himself\ninto the fire and if anyone denied then push him by force, and so on until\nthe number of those who were killed by the sword and fire reached twenty\nthousand. They say that then came a woman carrying a baby that was two\nmonths old only and she got scared of the fire and then the baby said to\nher: go ahead and don't be afraid and so she went into the fire with the\nbaby. In another narration it is said that the baby was two months old\nand the woman wanted to throw herself into the fire but she had mercy upon\nher child and then God made him speak and he said to her: O mother, throw\nyourself and I into the fire for this is not so much for God.\nThey say about the interpretation of \"(Self-)destroyed were the owners\nof the ditch\", that it was because of the king of Abyssinia and it was\n\u00d0a Nus, the last one to be a king from Himyar, and he turned to judaism\nand all of Himyar turned to judaism, and he was told that in Najr\u00e2n\nin Yemen there were some people that still believe in christianity and\ntheir chief was `Abdullah ben Y\u00e2ss, and they insisted that the king\nshould march to them with his armies and make them get into judaism, and\nso he did and when he reached Najr\u00e2n he gathered all the christians\nand he threatened them and warned them to leave christianity but they denied\nto do so and they chose to be killed instead of changing their religion\nand so he made ditches for them and sat the fire in them, and so some of\nthem were thrown to the fire and some were killed by sword, and the numbers\nof the dead reached something around twenty one thousand men.\nIn a narration, the prince of belivers (PUH) was asked about the magii\n[fire worshippers] and their rules, and he answered: they were people that\nhad a book, and once they had a king that got drunk one day and made an\naffair with his sister and his mother and when he got sober he regretted\nthat, and he said to the people: this is allowed (by religion), and they\ndenied that, so he started to kill them and made the ditches and threw\nthem into them..etc. We say: we don't mind that many stories about this\nmatter are available and the narration is true, because it is like a rule\nthat runs among the wrong kings and they take from each other (the deeds),\nand Quran points out to the all because the reason for all of them is one\nand God sees His servants and He is the Knower.\n\u00a0\n\u00a0\nNext: The Prophet Jerjees (Georgeous) (PUH)","title":"The Prophets, Their Lives and Their Stories: `Uzair (Ezra) Iramy\u00e2' (Jeremiah): Owners of The Ditch","type":"page"}