page_title: Yaʽfūr
section_title: Political and religious legacy of Yaʽfūr
hierarchical_section_title: Yaʽfūr / Political and religious legacy of Yaʽfūr
caption_attribution_description: Bileam und der Engel (4. Mose = Numeri 22-24)
context_page_description: Yaʽfūr was a donkey used as a mount by the Islamic prophet Muhammad, who was said to have often ridden it without harness. There are many tales of this donkey but the most common would be that the donkey is recorded to have been a gift from the Byzantine governor of Egypt some time between 628 and 632 AD. According to an Islamic tradition, it had the power of speech and told Muhammad that it was the last of a line of donkeys ridden by prophets and was a descendant of the donkey ridden by Jesus in his triumphal entry into Jerusalem, which was also called Yaʽfūr. The tradition holds that Yaʽfūr committed suicide in despair after Muhammad died by throwing itself into a well, though these accounts are held to be unreliable in hadith studies. In the centuries after Muhammad's death, the donkey's name and symbolism was repeatedly adopted by Islamic religious figures and rulers.
context_section_description: Followers of Shia Islam believed that the Mahdi, the prophesied redeemer of Islam, would make his appearance in the company of Yaʽfūr the donkey and Duldul the mule. In one uprising, a grey mule representing Duldul was paraded with a chair on its back for the Mahdi. In the lands where Sunni Islam was practised, Yaʽfūr was repeatedly invoked in political and religious events for centuries after Muhammad's death. A "false prophet" active in Yemen in the 7th century usurped one of Muhammad's own epithets, calling himself (or being called) the Sahib al-Himar, the "Master of the Ass". Likewise the 8th century Umayyad caliph Marwan II was nicknamed al-Himar, "the Ass". The early Fatimid Caliphate was nearly overthrown in the 10th century by the rebel Abu Yazid, known as the "Man on the Donkey", while in Morocco the 12th century founder of the Almohad movement, Ibn Tumart, insisted on riding a donkey.
  In the wider context, the story of Muhammad's donkey can be seen in the light of such animals being seen as religiously significant in the Near and Middle East for thousands of years. Donkeys and asses were held by the ancient Israelites to have a special connection with the spirit world. This is illustrated in the story of Balaam and the angel in the Book of Numbers, in which the prophet's donkey sees an otherwise invisible angel and miraculously gains the power of speech. Samson, too, draws on the mystical power of the donkey by using an ass's jawbone – symbolic of the power of the donkey's voice – to slay a thousand Philistines, while asses and donkeys were integral to the stories of Jesus and David. 
  A traditional connection between prophets and donkeys also existed in pre-Islamic Arabia, where seers (known as kahins) were often associated with asses. Muhammad's arrival was said to have been prophesied by a Jew who spoke of "a man neither short nor tall, wrapped in a cloak, and riding an ass." The evil anti-Messiah al-Dajjal is also expected to appear on a giant white donkey, while Muhammad himself is widely reported to have warned of the infernal nature of a donkey's voice: "When you hear the bray of an ass, seek refuge with God from the devil."
caption: Balaam meets an angel, which only his donkey can see
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