Bab al-Fil (the Elephant Gate)

Bab al-Fil: a gate of the mosque of Kufa. al-Baladhuri gives an account and other sayings about the reason for its name.

The Muslims took an elephant at the conquest of al-Mada'in, and they wrote to Umar about it, and he ordered them to sell it. A man of the people of al-Hira bought it and took it about the villages. Umm Ayyub bint Amara ibn Uqba, the wife of al-Mughira ibn Shu'ba, wished to look at it. He stopped at the gate of the mosque, and she began to look at it, and she gave its owner something and sent him away. He had not taken a few steps before he fell dead, so the gate was called the Gate of the Elephant. ¹

It is said that the woman who looked was the wife of al-Walid ibn Uqba. It is said that a magician made people believe that he had brought an elephant out of the gate on a donkey, and al-Baladhuri counted that as false. It is said that the tub that is in the mosque was carried on an elephant and brought in through this gate. It is also said that an elephant belonging to one of the governors broke through the gate. al-Baladhuri holds that the first account is the most firmly established. ²