"_O God, defend Thy neighbouring folk even as a man his gear[130] defendeth! Let not their Cross and guileful plans defeat the plans Thyself intendeth! But if Thou make it so, 'tis well: according to Thy will it endeth._"[131] [Sidenote: Rout of the Abyssinians.] Next morning, when Abraha prepared to enter Mecca, his elephant knelt down and would not budge, though they beat its head with an axe and thrust sharp stakes into its flanks; but when they turned it in the direction of Yemen, it rose up and trotted with alacrity. Then God sent from the sea a flock of birds like swallows every one of which carried three stones as large as a chick-pea or a lentil, one in its bill and one in each claw, and all who were struck by those stones perished.[132] The rest fled in disorder, dropping down as they ran or wherever they halted to quench their thirst. Abraha himself was smitten with a plague so that his limbs rotted off piecemeal.[133] These details are founded on the 105th chapter of the Koran, entitled 'The Súra of the Elephant,' which may be freely rendered as follows:-- "Hast not thou seen the people of the Elephant, how dealt with them the Lord? Did not He make their plot to end in ruin abhorred?-- When He sent against them birds, horde on horde, And stones of baked clay upon them poured, And made them as leaves of corn devoured." The part played by ‘Abdu ’l-Muṭṭalib in the story is, of course, a pious fiction designed to glorify the Holy City and to claim for the Prophet's family fifty years before Islam a predominance which they did not obtain until long afterwards; but equally of course the legend reflects Muḥammadan belief, and may be studied with advantage as a characteristic specimen of its class. "When God repulsed the Abyssinians from Mecca and smote them with His vengeance, the Arabs held the Quraysh in high respect and said, 'They are God's people: God hath fought for them and hath defended them against their enemy;' and made poems on this matter."[134] The following verses, according to Ibn Isḥáq, are by Abu ’l-Ṣalt b. Abí Rabí‘a of Thaqíf; others more reasonably ascribe them to his son Umayya, a well-known poet and monotheist (Ḥaníf) contemporary with Muḥammad:-- [Sidenote: Verses by Umayya b. Abi ’l-Ṣalt.]