Page 211 - The Prophet Muhammad (saas)

What the Prophet (saas) Said of the Future

In short, everyone expected Byzantium to disappear completely.
Yet, at just that moment, the news was revealed in the verse that

Byzantium would emerge victorious again within nine years. Such a vic-
tory looked so totally impossible that Arab idolaters believed that this
victory, revealed in the Qur'an, could never happen.

Yet, it was certainly true, just like everything else in the Qur'an.
About seven years after the revelation of the first verses of Surat ar-Rum,
in December 627 A.D., there was a major battle between Byzantium and
the Persian Empire not far from the ruins of Nineveh. The Byzantine

army defeated the Persians. A few months later, the Persians had to sign
a treaty handing back to Byzantium all of its territories they had occu-
pied. 209 The "victory of the Romans," revealed to the Prophet (saas) by
Allah in the Qur'an, had miraculously come about.

Another miracle in these verses consists in the reporting of facts
about a part of the world that nobody at the time could possibly identify.

In verse 3 of Surat ar-Rum, it is said that the Romans had been de-
feated in "the lowest place on Earth." The Arabic for that is "Adna al Ard,"

and is translated in some texts as meaning "a land nearby." Yet, that does
not accurately reflect the original meaning. The Arabic word "adna"
means "the lowest," and comes from the word "deni," which means "low."
"Ard" means the "earth." "Adna al Ard" therefore means the lowest place
on earth.

The battle between the Byzantine Empire and the Persians really
did take place at the lowest point on earth. That was the basin of Lake

Lut, where present-day Syria, Palestine and Jordan meet. It is also known
that the area around the lake is 395 metres below sea-level, making it the
lowest point on earth. As the verse reveals, the Romans were defeated at
"the lowest place on earth."

The important point here is that the altitude of Lake Lut has only
been been established by measurements taken in the modern age. Before

that, it was not possible for anyone to know that the lake was the lowest
point on earth. Yet the region is described as such in the Qur'an. That is
one of the proofs that the Qur'an is the divine word, and that the Prophet
Muhammad (saas) is the prophet of Allah.

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