This article is in PDF format.  It has a well documented research that prove Islam's claims.  The article is also found in HTML format at Wikiversity.org.

This article was taken from: http://www.arabnews.com/saudi-arabia/news/641556#:

Saudis retrace route of Abraha’s army that came to destroy Kaaba

A group of young Saudi history enthusiasts has retraced the path of the People of the Elephant who tried to destroy the Holy Kaaba centuries ago.
The Holy Qur’an, in a short chapter, briefly refers to the story of the army of elephants led by Abraha Al-Ashram, who was a governor of Yemen. God destroyed Abraha and his army that included 13 elephants, by sending flocks of birds that dropped small stones on them. 
“There never fell a stone on a soldier except it dissolved his flesh and burst it into pieces … Abraha Al-Ashram fled while his flesh was bursting into pieces and died on the way back to Yemen,” said the 14th century scholar Ibn Kathir, an authentic Qur’an commentator.
During their tiring journey across mountains and rough terrain, the young Saudi men took photographs of important landmarks, beginning from north of Najran, to the east of Asir, and then east of Baha.
Some of the most important historical sites along the way included inscriptions of elephants on rocks in the Al-Qahr Mountain, southeast of Tathlith; an old well in Hafaer, east of Asir; and a paved road near Kara in Aqeeq principality in the Baha region. 
Mohammed Al-Amry, head of the geology department at King Saud University, said he had seen the path of Abraha and his army in Tathlith and Baha. “The army had passed the Arabian shield region comprising rocks and there were writings in the Humairiya language on some mountains,” he said.
According to historical Islamic sources, Abraha, who was a Christian, had thought of building a church similar to the Kaaba in Sanaa. He wanted the Arabs to perform the pilgrimage in Sanaa instead of Makkah, with the intention of diverting trade and benefits to Yemen. He presented the idea to the then king of Ethiopia who agreed to it. 
Abraha built the church but the Arabs refused to come for pilgrimage in Sanaa. This infuriated him, prompting him to form an army to invade Makkah and demolish the Kaaba. He defeated all Arab armies on the way until he reached Makkah where he was attacked by the flocks of birds sent by the Almighty.

This article was taken from: http://archive.worldhistoria.com/ethiopian-attack-on-makkah_topic15825.html

This event is very famous and had happend in the same year as the birth of the Prophet Muhammed, Peace Be Upon Him (PBUH) (the year 571). Although the Prophet PBUH was not born during this evetn.

The begining of this event actually goes back further to the year 523. A Jew named Dhu Nawas campaigend against the Christian of Najran, with the aim of converting them to Judaism. Due to their refusal Dhu Nawas had the Christians thrown in a ditch and then set them on fire.

This is the reason for the second conquest of Yemen by Ethiopia (Abyssinia). The Roman Christian's helped the Ethiopian Christian state to go against the Arabs. They assebled a fleet of 70,000 warriors to help the Ethiopian's. Under the leadership of Eriat they succeded in the year 525.
Eriat was given rulership of Yemen untill he was assasinated by a fellow army leader, Abrahah. With the permision of the Ethiopian King, Abrahah was granted as the leader of Yemen.

It was Abrahah who aimed at destroying the Kaba.

At the approuch of this grand army the inhabitants of Makkah fled to the hills. The Ethiopian army was approuching from the direction of Taif.

Upon the army was grand elephants. When they came close birds flew over Abrahah's army and dropped rocks frim their beaks. The elephants began to run away in panic and many of the soldiers died.

For more details:

Al-Yaman 'Abrat-Tarikh pp.77, 83, 124, 130, 157, 161

Tarikh Ardil-Qur'an 1/133

Tarikhul-Arab Qablal-Islam 105-151

The Sealed Nector pp48-49

The early life of Muhammad (PBUH) p6-7

This article was taken from: https://ponderingislam.com/2015/07/22/abraha-the-year-of-the-elephant-and-the-location-of-mecca-in-tom-hollands-in-the-shadow-of-the-sword/

Abraha, the year of the elephant, and the location of Mecca in Tom Holland’s “In the Shadow of the Sword”

So I’ve finished reading Holland’s book on the origins of Islam and I have to say I am not very impressed. I’ve revised my goals a bit and I will no longer be doing a point-by-point refutation of his book since much (as Holland himself admits) is speculatory, far too broad to refute directly and simply does not require much work to see why he is wrong in his main ideas. The origins of Islamic law and its development is also covered in the book (though rather amateurishly), but that will be discussed in a separate post as it is far too big and too important not to have a post on its own.

The location of Mecca

One of the main arguments in Holland’s book which I would like to refute is his ideas on the ‘original’ location of Mecca. Holland believes that the current Mecca, located near Yathrib, South arabia, is not the original place of its existence. It was actually in Palestine, and subsequently there was a great conspiracy by the Ummayyads to move the location and hide all the proof of its previous place of standing.

Most of his supporting points are not new and have been found in older (often times outdated) works such as those of the late Patricia Crone. There is currently a growing library of early Islamic inscriptions that help us place the early Muslim community within the vicinity of Mecca[1], unfortunately however they cannot be used to prove that Mecca was inhabited by the early Muslims  (Isaiah 56:5: Muslim is the future believers' name.  Sons and daughters titles will be "no more")    as Holland does state that Muslims  (Isaiah 56:5: Muslim is the future believers' name.  Sons and daughters titles will be "no more")    did somehow end up in Medina, thus the inscriptions would be the result of existence of a Medinan Muslim community and not necessarily a Meccan one. My positive argument for the original location of Mecca being correctly identified by the Islamic tradition will thus be a little less direct, consisting of two parts:

1. Pre-islamic inscriptions indirectly identifying the location of Mecca (this post)

2. The absurdities of Holland’s argument. (next post)

Part 1: Pre-islamic inscriptions indirectly identifying the location of Mecca

‘Am al-Fil: The year in which the Yemenite Christian king Abraha is said to have tried to attack Mecca to destroy the Ka’ba, in an attempt to divert pilgrimage from the Meccan shrine to his own great cathedral in Yemen[2]. The name, meaning “Year of the Elephant”, refers to Abraha’s usage of war elephants in his army which he led towards the Quraysh at Mecca.

The story is alluded to in the Qur’an in Surah al-Fil and its continuation, Surah Quraysh:

1 Do you not see how your Lord dealt with the army of the elephant? 2 Did He not utterly confound their plans? 3 He sent ranks of birds against them, 4 pelting them with pellets of hard-baked clay: 5 He made them [like] cropped stubble.

1 [He did this] to make the Quraysh feel secure, 2 secure in their winter and summer journeys. 3 So let them worship the Lord of this House: 4 who provides them with food to ward off hunger, safety to ward off fear.

The story alluded to here is undoubtedly the events in the Year of the Elephant. Commentators are absolutely unanimous in this regard[3]. One may still doubt whether these Qur’anic passages really do allude to ‘Abraha’s march towards Mecca. However, there is non-Qur’anic pre-islamic poetry that reports the same story that Muslim exegetes provide in their explanation of these verses. For example, in the kitaab al-hayawaan by al-Jahiz, a poem by Abu Qays Sayfi praises God for His help on “the day of the elephant of the Abyssinians”[3], recalling that the elephant simply stopped dead in his tracks and would not advance despite being tortured. Then “God sent a wind bringing a shower of pebbles (ḥāṣib) from above”[4]. Rubin notes that the vocabulary of the poem is distinctly unqur’anic[5]. Infact, the poem has different themes to that of the Qur’anic account: The Qur’an, as with recounting other pre-islamic occurrences, spins it into a cautionary tale and rhetorical prose to convince the audience of the magnificence of God.

To scholars, this indicates that Abu Qays’ poetry is independent from the Qur’an. It is very likely that the poem is pre-islamic.

It is important to note that the same poet also identifies this incident with “Abu Yaksum”[6] – none other than Abraha himself. This is significant- there is already enough similarity between the pre-islamic poem and Surah al-fil to realize that they are talking about the same event (due to an elephant being involved and an army being wiped out by stones from the sky). Thus, it obviously follows that both versions of the story (Qur’anic and pre-islamic) are speaking about an attack on the Quraysh by the Yemenite king Abraha.

What I would like to drive home at this point is that now we have Arabic poetry originating decades after the death of Abraha, authored by and for the Arabs which were contemporary with the incident, if not from the following generation. The Quranic account is independent from the poem, providing an added level of attestation to the historical account; again, written for Arabs that would have probably been children of those who lived even as Abraha led a campaign against Mecca. The story is both early and multiply attested. If we ignore the miracle story, there is little reason for a historian to deny that the expedition occurred*.

Other supporting evidence can be found in South Arabian inscriptions depicting war elephants[7]:

The inscriptions are significant because Abraha’s army would be the only one in the area to parade war elephants[8].

From this discussion, we can infer that:

1. The Qur’an is reporting a pre-Islamic event that must have actually happened some time during Abraha’s reign, meaning that the generation before the Prophet’s own[9].

2. Abraha campaigned with war elephants in the South Arabian region.

After establishing these two points, it is now possible to see how Holland’s assertions do not coincide with the historical facts presented here.

Mecca in Palestine?

Holland places the ‘original’ location of Mecca in Mamre, Palestine. Palestine in the 6th century was situated in Byzantine land. The corollary? That Abraha must have attacked the Byzantine empire some time in the 6th century.

One only needs to be slightly familiar with 6th century byzantine and arabian history to know how this is plain and simply false. We can understand why the expedition of the elephant is absent from pre-islamic jahili written tradition (plainly due to the fact that the writing was comparatively rare in the first place), however an attack on the Palestine would have been recorded at least by Roman sources. Procopius, a byzantine historian living in Palestine during the reign of Abraha records his ascent to power over the Himyarites, as well some of his wars and political exploits during his reign[11]. Abraha’s supposed attack on Palestine goes unmentioned, however, his promise to Justinian to attack the Persians does not.

I believe in this case we can make a good argument from silence. Had the attack happened, Procopius would have written about it, if not some other roman historian.

Besides Procopius’s account, Abraha campaigning against the Byzantines simply seems unlikely. The latter is was a regional superpower sharing the same religion as that of Abraha, so unlike Islam’s conquest of Roman lands, there is no theological motive to challenge a natural alliance. This explains why Abraha aligned himself with the Byzantines against the Persians at one point[12].

On the other hand, an attack on a south arabian Mecca simply seems much more plausible. Inscriptions indicating Abraha’s political and military might over this area are well known, some of which have been reproduced in this article. There is also the Murayghan inscription, reporting of an expedition sent by Abraha towards Taraban, 100km north of Ta’if[13], which is in the vicinity of the traditional location of Mecca.

Conclusion

Tom Holland’s proposal that Mecca was originally located at Mamre, Palestine cannot be correct because it contradicts known facts surrounding the expedition of the elephant. As there is good evidence for the expedition, it would entail that the Himyarite king marched against the Byzantines, which contradicts what we see in Roman historical records and also goes against common sense.

The next post in this series will insha’allah expose some of the dubious methods with which Holland draws his conclusions. I actually do believe that this next post will provide a stronger argument, as it draws from common objections (and not those of an amateur blogger, ie. me) against Crone’s (and therefore Holland’s) theories on early Islam. I did want to do something “different” though, and as far as I am aware the argument presented in this blog post is a novel one.

Bibliography

[1] A very useful web page collating these inscriptions is www.islamic-awareness.org/History/Islam/Inscriptions/

[2] For an overview of the traditional story, see “The Message of the Qur’an”. Muhammad Asad. See intro to Surah al Fil. Other reasons are proposed for the motives of the campaign, one of which is that some Arabs went and defiled the cathedral in Yemen which incited ‘Abraha’s anger. 

[3] See entry for Abraha. Rubin, Uri. Encyclopaedia of Islam, 3rd ed. 

[4] ibid.

[5] ibid. “These and other verses that al-Jāḥiẓ considers genuinely pre-Islamic (al-Jāḥiẓ, Kitāb al-Ḥayawān, 7:197–9) are indeed free of Qurʾānic vocabulary and style—even the description of the divine punishment lacks Qurʾānic phrases”

[6] ibid. It must be noted that the name is not Qur’anic, meaning that the poet must have had non-Qur’anic sources. This adds to the likelyhood of the poem being of Jahili origin.

* Scholars such as Rubin, Conrad and Robin have all argued for or have assumed the historicity of the campaign.

[7] Les Compagnons de l’Éléphant (Aṣḥāb al-Fīl ). Christian Robin. Published in Les origines du Coran, le Coran des origines. 2015. p47. I have roughly translated from french and edited in the captions.

[8] ibid.

[9] That of Abd Al-Muttalib- indeed, he is present in the traditional story of the expedition.

[10] See Brill’s Encyclopedia of Islam. Abraha marched against Persia

[11] Procopius, Histories of the Wars, Vol 1 and 2 accessable here: http://www.gutenberg.org/files/16764/16764-h/16764-h.htm

[12] ibid

[13] F.E Peters. Muhammad and the Origins of Islam. p88

This article was taken from: http://www.emirates247.com/news/region/saudi-refuses-4-million-for-sacred-stone-2012-11-11-1.482567:

Note:  I have an issue with the title of this article.  Islam has no sacred stones.  It is actually the Bible that has Holy Stones that get anointed with oil.

Saudi refuses $4 million for sacred stone
By Staff
Published Sunday, November 11, 2012

A Saudi man on a hunting trip in the rugged mountains near the border with Yemen stumbled across a little dark stone, which he instantly recognized as that mentioned in the holy Koran. A year later, he was offered $four million for the stone but he refused.

Saleh Musfer Al Gamdi said the stone, which carries drawings of birds and elephants, weighs 131 gm, exactly the same number of words in the Koran verse that mentioned the stone-- “Surat Al Fil (elephant).”

According to that verse, God the Almighty sent Ababil birds to throw Sejil stones (pebbles of hell) to destroy an army led by Yemen’s warlord Abraha just before the advent of Islam to knock down Kaaba in Makkah, now the Moslems’ holiest shrine.

Gamdi said he found the hard black-grayish stone in the southern Jarb valley, previously known as the Green Wadi, where Abraha and his soldiers and elephants stayed for a period of time before heading for Makkah.

He said experts estimated that the stone dates back to nearly 1,442 years, adding that he found it just a day after dreaming of his father and grandfather.

“A year after I found the stone, I asked an Egyptian friend whose relatives work in the archeology field…they contacted me and asked me to send them pictures of that stone,” Gamdi said, quoted by the Saudi Arabic language daily Sabq.

“After a series of messages and phone calls, they told me they would buy the stone for $four million but I refused to sell it….a while later, the tourism department in Baha (southern Saudi Arabia) asked me to hand the stone over but I again refused.”

The story of Abraha begins when he feels envy of the town of Makkah in Saudi Arabia because Kaaba (House) was visited by many Arabs who wanted to make the pilgrimage every year before Islam. He has a great desire to destroy and divert Arab worshippers to Yemen, which has a large temple built by Abraha.

Before the offensive on Mecca, he first sent a messenger to inform them of his aims and desires. The messenger was suggested for the people of Mecca to perform their pilgrimage in Yemen only. If not, then the Kaaba will be destroyed.

Because they were disobedient, finally Abraha was really mad and ordered all troops to be getting ready to attack Mecca and destroy the Kaaba.

Abraha's army had complete war equipment, armour, and the elephants that will be used to knock down kaaba. Abraha told the messenger that the purpose of attack is not intended to fight, but just wanted to destroy the Kaaba.

At that time Mecca residents, led by Abdul Muttalib could not do anything to stop Abraha. There was no choice but to surrender and give up.

Some time before the arrival of Abraha’s army, Abdul Muttalib instructed his people to shelter and evacuate immediately behind the hill near Mecca.

Abraha was convinced that he will be able to destroy the Kaaba very easily. But what happens next? God's help arrived according to the Koran. These birds threw many, many stones of baked clay at the elephants and the people, which led to their defeat and destruction before they manage to knock down Kaaba.

Here are some of my favorite Stunning Numerical and Scientific Miracles in the Glorious Quran that are listed in the main sections, below:

1-  The root for message and all of its derivatives, such as messenger and others occurs 513 times throughout the Glorious Quran.  The Prophets' and Messengers', peace be upon them, actual names (Muhammad, Moses, Noah, Abraham, Lot etc....) were also all combined mentioned 513 times in the Glorious Quran.  The detailed breakdown of all of this is thoroughly listed here.

Coincidence?  See 1,000s of examples! [1]. (zip file).

Quran's Stunning Numerical & Scientific Miracles.

Stunning Prophecies [2] [3]

2-  The Great Miracle.  Allah Almighty in the Holy Quran called the Number 19 Miracle "One of the Mighty Ones (Miracles)" (74:30-37) [1] [2].  See the 100s of Noble Verses that clearly testify to this Great Miracle.  Also, did you know that Allah Almighty Said in Surat Nuh (that's Noble Chapter Nuh (Noah)) that Prophet Noah lived for 950 years among his people. 

Yet, all Praise and Glory are due to Allah Almighty Alone, the entire Noble Surah is exactly written in 950 Letters [1] [2]!  You can thoroughly see this in the scanned images that thoroughly verify every single Noble Letter, in the links.  Click on the links to see the many other Numerical Miracles in the Holy Quran.  Also, see the Numerical Miracles section along with all of the other great sections.  Also, 1,000s of examples in zip & PDF (fonts) files all demonstrated in this article.

  
3-  19 X 115 = 2185 Number 19 and BASMALA Miracle.  The total numerical value of Noble Verses 74:30-37 themselves, which are the heart of the Number 19 Miracle, has a stunning Miracle in it.  The value of these Noble Verses matches the multiplication of the BASMALA's number of letters (19 Letters) and their total numerical values (115): 19 X 115 = 2185.  The Basmala, which full text in Arabic means "In the Name of Allah The Most Beneficent, The Most Merciful" is the Key to the Glorious Quran.  It is recited first before reading the Holy Quran, and it is also obligatory upon every Muslim to start with the Basmala before starting any task.  Again, 1,000s of examples in zip & PDF (fonts) files all demonstrated in this article.
  

4-  The Glorious Quran has 114 Chapters. The sum of those Chapters is 6555 (1+2+...+114 = 6555). There are also 6236 Noble Verses in the Glorious Quran. Now, if you add each Chapter's number with the number of its Verses, then you get a list of numbers. So 1 (first Chapter) + 7 (# of its Verses) = 8.  Do this for all Chapters.

1-  The sum of the odd numbers from the list = 6555.
2-  The sum of the even numbers from the list = 6236.

See the XLS file for 100% confirmation.  Also, see the ample STUNNING Numerical Miracles in the Glorious Quran, with 1,000s of examples! [1] (zip file)..  See also the ample Textual Miracles [2] in the Glorious Quran, where Noble Words are spelled in certain ways depending on their certain historical and geographical context and timing in the Noble Verse.

5-  Please also checkout the many hundreds (1,000s) of Great Numerical Miracles, and the many tens (10s) of other Great Scientific Miracles: