The Event of the Elephant (Waqia-e-Feel)

In the same year Prophet Muhammad ﷺ was born, known as the "Year of the Elephant," an army led by Abraha, the Abyssinian governor of Yemen, marched toward Makkah intending to destroy the Kaaba. Abraha had built a grand cathedral in Sana'a and wanted the Arabs to make pilgrimage there instead — but the Arabs continued visiting the Kaaba, angering him.

Abraha's army included a large war elephant, unfamiliar and imposing to the Arabs of that time. As the army approached Makkah, the elephant is said to have refused to advance toward the Kaaba, kneeling down no matter how it was driven forward — yet moving freely in any other direction.

According to the account preserved in Surah Al-Feel (Chapter 105), Allah sent flocks of birds carrying small stones of baked clay, which struck the army and destroyed it, turning the soldiers "like eaten straw."

"Have you not considered, [O Muhammad], how your Lord dealt with the companions of the elephant? Did He not make their plan into misguidance? And He sent against them birds in flocks, striking them with stones of hard clay, and He made them like eaten straw." — Surah Al-Feel 105:1-5

This event is remembered as a sign of divine protection over the sacred house, and it marks a fixed point in the Arabian calendar used to date the birth of the Prophet ﷺ.