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I don't wish to appear before God
thinking that I am fit to be in Abu Bakr's place.
All praise be to God as He has stated His attributes.
All peace and blessings be upon Muhammad, His true messenger.
May God bestow His mercy on Abu Bakr Al-Siddiq
who has discharged his trust,
counselled his nation well
and departed with no blame being attached to him by anyone.
He has made it difficult for us to follow his suit.
For, whenever we competed in good things,
we found him always in the lead.
How could anyone emulate him?
To God belongs what He has taken, and to Him belongs what He gives.
Muslim people, I am only one of you.
Had it not been for the fact that I did not wish
to disobey the order of the Prophet's successor,
I would not have assumed my position.
My Lord, I am hard, so please moderate my hardness,
and I am weak, so give me strength.
God is testing you by me and testing me by you.
He has willed that I live after my two companions have gone.
I hear that people have expressed fear of my hardness.
They said that I was too hard on them
when the Prophet and Abu Bakr were living among us.
They wondered how I will be when the authority is totally mine.
Whoever said this is correct.
But I was with God's Messenger as a servant.
He was peerless in softness and compassion.
He was as God said of him
"compassionate and merciful to the believers".
I was with him like a drawn sword,
he might use or put in its sheathe as he wished.
Then Abu Bakr assumed the leadership of the Muslims.
He was undeniably soft and generous.
I was his servant and help, mixing my hardness with his softness,
so as to be like a drawn sword
which he could use as he wished or put in its sheathe.
Now I am entrusted with your affairs.
You should know that my hardness has been doubled,
but it will only be against those who are unjust and aggressive.
As for those who are good, religious and rightful,
I will be with them softer than they are with each other.
I shall not leave anyone who is unjust to another,
or trying to encroach on the rights of another,
until I have placed his face on the ground, so as to submit to justice.
After that, I place my own face on the ground
for the people who are law abiding and perpetrating no injustice.
I will outline to you certain commitments to which you can bind me.
I pledge that I shall take nothing of your dues,
from all sources God has given you except by what is right.
I also pledge to increase your dues and provisions, God willing.
I shall attend to your vulnerable points,
and will never expose you to grave dangers.
If you are away with the armies,
I shall be the father of your children and dependents.
As far as the state treasury is concerned, my position is that of an orphan's guardian:
if I have enough of my own, I take nothing;
and if I am poor I take only what is reasonable.
You, servants of God, fear God,
and help me with your affairs by looking after yourselves.
Help me against myself,
by enjoining me to do what is right and forbidding me what is wrong,
and by giving me honest advice regarding your affairs.
O' people, listen to me and understand what I am saying.
Al-Muthanna! Rise, please.
This is your brother, Al-Muthanna Ibn Harithah Al-Shaibani
whose great achievements in Iraq are well known to you.
Muslims there are now weaker and small in number.
They fear that the Persians will try to take back what they hold of Iraq.
Before Abu Bakr died,
he urged me that before the lapse of one morning or one evening after his death,
I must call on people to join Al-Muthanna.
So hasten to earn God's pleasure in this matter.
Hasten to join this campaign of jihad.
How come that no one has come forward?
Facing the Persians is the thing they dislike most,
as they are aware of their strength.
Most fighters are now in Syria.
No matter how many of these present join Al-Muthanna,
they know that the number will not be sufficient
to achieve the desired results in fighting the Persians.
Although they know that Al-Muthanna has been fighting hard and achieving results,
they do not know him as well as they know Khalid Ibn Al-Waleed.
Al-Muthanna belongs to neither Al-Muhajireen nor Al-Ansar.
He did not have any long association with God's Messenger.
They fear that no one can replace Khalid in Iraq.
Are they not aware that it is God who brings things about?
It is neither Ibn Al-Waleed or Ibn Al-Khattab.
Be patient with them, and review the matter with them again.
I think they have gone back to think carefully about what they have heard from you.
Do not start your term by forcing people.
Let them come forward willingly, for God's sake.
May God preserve you as a wise adviser, Abu Al-Hasan.
From Umar Ibn Al-Khattab to Abu Ubaidah Ibn Amir Ibn Al-Jarrah.
I praise God almighty.
This is to inform you that Abu Bakr Al-Siddiq, God's Messenger's successor,
has passed away.
To God we all belong and to Him we shall all return.
God has willed that I succeed him.
I am appointing you in charge of the Muslim community in Syria.
Therefore, consider the war against the Byzantines
after due consultation with those who are with you.
Let me make clear that I am not replacing Khalid Ibn Al-Waleed
for any misbehaviour or treachery.
Let him be your right hand man in whatever you determine,
for you cannot do without him.
Be sure not to expose the Muslims to grave danger.
God is testing you by me and testing me by you.
Peace be to you.
Come along, Saad.
Now that God has placed me in this position,
I would like you to know that I shall not shoulder it on my own.
I shall make you my partners,
so that you will be part of my argument in front of God.
I will say to Him: I have consulted you as I have been commanded.
God's Messenger (peace be upon him) was with us,
receiving divine revelations that cannot be faulted,
yet God commanded him to consult his companions.
If God has ordered His messenger,
supported by divine revelations as he was, to conduct consultation,
how about us when none of us has the same support as God's Messenger had?
We are ordinary people who may be right or wrong.
When a man insists on following his own view, errs and is beset by problems,
he and the Muslim community will be in a weaker position.
But if the community takes a decision and later discovers that it is wrong,
it will be easy for it to go back on it.
None will bear the blame for it.
The community and its leader will be stronger.
Any decision taken without consultation is devoid of goodness.
An individual's decision is like a single thread that is easily cut.
Two views are like two intertwined threads,
while three are like a rope that is hard to undo.
This is how I begin my reign.
It is your right and a duty of mine and yours.
Do not conceal the truth when you know it.
I begin by the issue of Al-Muthanna.
I have been calling on people to come forward for the last three days
after Abu Bakr's death, but I have no response.
Advise me on my next step.
You heard Abu Al-Hasan's view earlier.
The people are worried that there will not be enough of them
to make much difference in fighting the Persians.
Abu Bakr had prevented seeking the help of those Arabs who deserted Islam.
They are numerous and include some of the great Arab fighters,
such as Tulaihah Al-Asadi and Amr Ibn Ma'dikarib.
Yet they have clearly repented
and are eager to be included in the Muslim community and its armies.
If people here know that they will provide numbers,
they may be encouraged and will give you a better response.
Indeed. God has willed that this religion starts with the Arabs.
It will not be fulfilled unless the Arabs are united.
It is time that those who were among the apostates
and have repented should be included among the Muslim community,
so that the Arabs will be like one man in delivering God's message
and in destroying the tyranny of Persia and Byzantium.
The people are near to boredom, Abu Sulaiman,
as we have been waiting long. Perhaps Abu Bakr is eager for our news.
A cat's patience, Abu Abdullah;
a cat's patience and a lion's leap, God willing.
You perhaps know that we have sent scouts
to discover how the enemy will be marshalled,
so that our plan will take that into account.
The Byzantines are fighting in an order that is different from what we have known.
Therefore, we need to marshal our troops in a new pattern.
I have been thinking about this,
and we will hit on the right pattern, God willing.
Be patient and optimistic.
Tomorrow will not be far away.
How are you this morning, Abu Sufyan?
I am impatient to fight the Byzantines.
I look around me in the Muslim army and in this area of Syria.
We used to come here with the trade of Quraysh,
feeling hardly safe.
We used to give presents to their chiefs and sing their praises
They looked on us as rough Bedouins:
the most noble among us is hardly equal to their lowest.
Then when we went back to our people,
we boasted of our qualities,
with some of us extolling the praises of their tribes to the extreme.
We continued to prevent people listening to God's Messenger
and eventually fought against him; yet he continued to call on us to follow the truth.
He said: follow me so as to be one community
You will then inherit the kingdoms of Persia and Byzantium.
We said: how can we be compared to them?
Here we are today: the Byzantines are apprehensive of fighting us
while we are eager to fight them.
It is only yesterday, yet how widely apart.
Abu Sufyan has certainly expressed what I feel.
And my feelings.
Sometimes I feel I am in a dream.
Could all this have happened in a few years of my life?
I am now with the Muslim army in Syria,
and Abu Sulaiman is our commander.
Not long ago, I was with Safwan and Abu Yazeed
getting extremely hostile on the day of the conquest of Makkah.
We faced Abu Sulaiman with our arms.
Were it not for the grace of God, we would have been killed unbelievers on that day,
and by Khalid's sword under whose command we are fighting today.
This should make you more confident
that God will grant us victory, so that Syria will soon fall to us.
We know that much of what God's Messenger told us has taken place already.
God is certain to bring about the rest.
Al-Muthanna, you better return to your soldiers in Iraq
and await Abu Ubaid to come with the reinforcements he can gather.
As you say, Ameer Al-Mu'mineen.
What did you say? Ameer Al-Mu'mineen?
You shall stop it, or else...
No, by God. He shall not stop it; nor shall we.
We were discussing this
and it is awkward to address you as the successor to the successor to the Prophet.
You are our prince, or ameer, and we are the believers, or Al-Mu'mineen.
So, you are Ameer Al-Mu'mineen
Please accept what we have all agreed upon.
Do you know why I have brought you all here now?
Some of you may be thinking:
our father is now Ameer Al-Mu'mineen and we are his children.
So, when any of us goes about his business,
people should give him priority.
I want you to know that your father used to tend his father's camels
and that his father used to ill-treat him and beat him up.
Your father used to collect firewood for his aunts
and they would give him a handful of dates or raisins.
Our clan, Adiy, were not of any distinction in Quraysh.
They were well below other clans such as Abd Manaf, Makhzoom, Sahm and Jumah.
God has elevated us by Islam and by submission to Him alone.
People look at you just as a bird looks at meat:
if you come to grab it, they will grab with you,
and if you refrain, they refrain.
If I issue an order prohibiting something,
then you must be the first to refrain from it.
By God, if any one of you is brought to me,
having done what I have ordered people to refrain from,
I will double his punishment because of his relation to me.
I want you to say:
we wish that our father has not assumed the rule of the Muslim community
so that we would be like the rest of them.
Do you understand what I have said?
- Yes - Yes
It looks to be closer.
Nothing is worse than war except waiting for it to begin.
My brother, Salamah!
What we went through together is much more than two full brothers go through.
We were never apart, through good times and bad ones.
We are like two branches of one tree.
Then we became brothers in Islam,
and we went through much together for it.
Gone are the days when my leg was tied to yours when our people ill-treated us.
Now we are in this land, and our cousin Khalid is the commander,
and our nephew Ikrimah is a commander under him.
Both were among the people who ill-treated us then.
All praise be to God for bringing us all together here.
I hope I will be a martyr for God's cause.
If this happens, I would like you to be the one who buries me.
I hope for the same thing.
If it happens and God keeps you safe, be the one to bury me.
You also take charge of my final affairs.
What good is there in life after you, Salamah?
I pray to God who has made us two very close brothers in this life
to bring us together in heaven.
- Amen - Amen
The Byzantines have positioned themselves in an open place
with a narrow way of escape.
Their only way is facing us.
They have placed themselves between the river and the lake to the west
where their right wing is,
and the valley to the east where their left wing is.
They have no way out to their left where the valley is beyond them.
It is up to us to block it against them if we need to
or to leave it free to let them flee, as is more suitable to us.
Expect the best; rarely does a besieged force achieve any good.
True. It is the first sign of their failure, God willing.
They did not choose this place out of ignorance of war tactics,
but out of fear that their soldiers might flee.
Therefore, they wanted to make it difficult for them to flee
so that they are forced to stay and fight.
This represents half their defeat, God willing.
Al-Yarmuk 28, Jumada Al-Akher, 13 AH.
Muslim fighters, the Byzantines are moving towards you in their arrogance.
This is one of the Days of God,
which foretells of other days to come.
If we persevere and manage to force them on the retreat to the valley,
we shall continue to force their retreat
until all the gates of the whole of Syria are open to us.
Pledge yourselves to God that you will fight to achieve either victory or martyrdom.
The true promise is close to fulfilment.
Believers! Strive for God's cause and He will help you
and strengthen your resolve.
God's promise is true.
You, Muslims, persevere; for perseverance saves you from disbelief,
earns you God's pleasure and spares you disgrace.
Do not leave your positions, nor start the fight.
Remain silent, except that you continue to glorify yourselves in your hearts and minds.
Await my orders, God willing.
- Peace be upon you. - Peace be upon you.
To God we all belong; and to Him we shall all return.
All power operates with God's will.
You see our situation. Keep this to yourself.
Let no one hear of it other than myself.
Muslim fighters! Lower your gaze
Do not be intimidated by their numbers.
If you stand firm in your attack you will see them flying in all directions.
Muslim women!
If it all goes in our favour, stay where you are.
If you see any Muslim running away, stone him.
How numerous the Byzantines are! How few the Muslims!
No. How few the Byzantines are! How numerous the Muslims.
Armies are numerous in victory, small in defeat. Numbers are irrelevant.
- God is Supreme. - God is Supreme.
God is Supreme.
- God is Supreme. - God is Supreme.
I fought against God's Messenger in every battle.
Would I flee today? Who pledges to fight till death?
- I do, my nephew. - And so do I, my nephew.
God is Supreme.
Where is the dignity of Islam, the honour of mothers and wives?
May God blacken the face of anyone who flees without protecting his wife or daughter.
Don't retreat! Come back!
God is Supreme.
Come back, you cowards!
You are not our husbands if you do not protect us.
Order the centre to start fighting.
Let Ikrimah move towards the right wing,
while Abu Ubaidah and Al-Qa'qa' repel the Byzantine centre.
God is Supreme.
Be patient, servants of God; God supports those who are patient.
Don't let them flee!
God is Supreme.
- God is Supreme. - God is Supreme.
Khalid's instructions are that if you see the Byzantines about to flee,
give them room to do so.
- Retreat! - Retreat!