The Cloak of Muhammad () is a relic hidden inside Kirka Sharif in

Kandahar Kandahar is a city in Afghanistan, located in the south of the country on Arghandab River, at an elevation of . It is Afghanistan's second largest city, after Kabul, with a population of about 614,118 in 2015. It is the capital of Kandahar Pro ...

Afghanistan Afghanistan, officially the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, is a landlocked country located at the crossroads of Central Asia and South Asia. It is bordered by Pakistan to the Durand Line, east and south, Iran to the Afghanistan–Iran borde ...

. It is a

cloak A cloak is a type of loose garment worn over clothing, mostly but not always as outerwear for outdoor wear, which serves the same purpose as an overcoat and protects the wearer from the weather. It may form part of a uniform. People in many d ...

believed to have been worn by the

Islamic prophet Prophets in Islam () are individuals in Islam who are believed to spread God's message on Earth and serve as models of ideal human behaviour. Some prophets are categorized as messengers (; sing. , ), those who transmit divine revelation, mos ...

Muhammad Muhammad (8 June 632 CE) was an Arab religious and political leader and the founder of Islam. Muhammad in Islam, According to Islam, he was a prophet who was divinely inspired to preach and confirm the tawhid, monotheistic teachings of A ...

during the Night Journey in 621 AD. The cloak itself is locked away inside the mosque and is rarely seen. It has been guarded by the same family for over 250 years. Its guardians have traditionally only shown the cloak to recognized leaders of Afghanistan, although in times of great crisis such as natural disasters, it has been publicly displayed as a means of reassurance. The Mausoleum of Ahmad Shah Durrani is located adjacent to the Shrine of the Cloak.

History

The cloak was given to

Amir Emir (; ' (), also transliterated as amir, is a word of Arabic origin that can refer to a male monarch, aristocrat, holder of high-ranking military or political office, or other person possessing actual or ceremonial authority. The title has ...

Ahmad Shah Durrani Ahmad Shāh Durrānī (; ; – 4 June 1772), also known as Ahmad Shāh Abdālī (), was the first ruler and founder of the Durrani Empire. He is often regarded as the founder of modern Afghanistan. Throughout his reign, Ahmad Shah fought ov ...

(regarded as the founder of modern Afghanistan) by Amir Murad Beg of

Bukhara Bukhara ( ) is the List of cities in Uzbekistan, seventh-largest city in Uzbekistan by population, with 280,187 residents . It is the capital of Bukhara Region. People have inhabited the region around Bukhara for at least five millennia, and t ...

(in modern Uzbekistan) in 1768 in order to solidify a treaty between the two leaders. An alternate account states that when Ahmad Shah had traveled to Bukhara, he saw the cloak of

. He then decided to take the artifact with him to Kandahar, and asked whether he could "borrow" the cloak from its keepers. They, worrying that he might try to remove it from Bukhara, told him it could not be taken from the city. Ahmad Shah then is said to have pointed to a heavy

stela A stele ( ) or stela ( )The plural in English is sometimes stelai ( ) based on direct transliteration of the Greek, sometimes stelae or stelæ ( ) based on the inflection of Greek nouns in Latin, and sometimes anglicized to steles ( ) or stela ...

of stone firmly planted in the ground, saying that he would never take the cloak far from the stone. The keepers, gratified at his answer, handed him the cloak. Ahmad Shah then took the cloak, ordered the stone slab to be dug up, and carried them both back with him to Kandahar, where the stone now stands near his ''

mazar Mazar of Al-Mazar may refer to: *Mazar (mausoleum), Muslim mausoleum or shrine Places * Mazar (toponymy), a component of Arabic toponyms literally meaning shrine, grave, tomb, etc. ; Afghanistan * Mazar, Afghanistan, village in Balkh Province * ...

'' (tomb). In 1996, Mullah Muhammad Omar, the leader of the

Taliban , leader1_title = Supreme Leader of Afghanistan, Supreme leaders , leader1_name = {{indented plainlist, * Mullah Omar{{Natural Causes{{nbsp(1994–2013) * Akhtar Mansour{{Assassinated (2015–2016) * Hibatullah Akhundzada (2016–present) ...

, removed the cloak from the shrine and held it in front of a large crowd of his followers. This symbolic act is commonly considered a key point in the rise of the Taliban, and in the rise of Omar himself, associating Omar with both Ahmed Shah Durrani and the Islamic prophet

. Upon Omar's holding of the cloak, the crowd began to shout "''

Amir al-Mu'minin () or Commander of the Faithful is a Muslims, Muslim title designating the supreme leader of an Ummah, Islamic community. Name Although etymology, etymologically () is equivalent to English "commander", the wide variety of its historical an ...

''" (Commander of the Faithful), a title that

Ayman al-Zawahiri Ayman Mohammed Rabie al-Zawahiri (; 19 June 195131 July 2022) was an Egyptian-born pan-Islamism, pan-Islamist militant and physician who served as the second general emir of al-Qaeda from June 2011 until Killing of Ayman al-Zawahiri, his dea ...

, the leader of

al-Qaeda , image = Flag of Jihad.svg , caption = Jihadist flag, Flag used by various al-Qaeda factions , founder = Osama bin Laden{{Assassinated, Killing of Osama bin Laden , leaders = {{Plainlist, * Osama bin Lad ...

, occasionally used to refer to Omar. In a ''New York Times'' piece from late 2001, the then-keeper of the Shrine, Qari Shawali, confirmed that in 1996, he allowed Omar to view the cloak and remove it from the shrine. Shawali added that only two persons had looked at the cloak in his lifetime before Omar. The first person was

Mohammad Zahir Shah Mohammad Zāhir Shāh (15 October 1914 – 23 July 2007) was the last King of Afghanistan, reigning from 8 November 1933 until he was deposed on 17 July 1973. Ruling for 40 years, Zahir Shah was the longest-serving ruler of Afghanistan since t ...

, the last

King of Afghanistan The Emir of Afghanistan or also later the King of Afghanistan was the monarch and head of state of Afghanistan from the establishment of the Emirate of Afghanistan, Emirate in the 18th century until the monarchy was abolished in 1973. The title ...

, who twice opened the chest in which the cloak was kept but proceeded no further. The second person was Pir

Ahmed Gailani Pir (Sufism), Pir Sayyid Ahmed Gailani ( 1932– 21 January 2017), was the leader (Pir) of the Qadiriyyah Sufi order in Afghanistan, and the founder of the National Islamic Front of Afghanistan (''Mahaz-i-Milli Islami ye Afghanistan''), a party ...

, a political leader and one of Zahir's relatives. In 2012, Waheed Muzhda, an Afghan political analyst and one-time high-ranking official in the Taliban foreign ministry, corroborated that Omar held the cloak but denied a claim that he donned the cloak: "From what I know, from sources close to Omar, and from a chat with the keeper of the shrine here the cloak is kept Omar did not wear the cloak. With great respect, he held the cloak in front of the religious leaders gathered for allegiance." In June 2018, the cloak was last seen in public when Afghan President

Ashraf Ghani Mohammad Ashraf Ghani Ahmadzai (born 19 May 1949) is an Afghan former politician and economist who served as the president of Afghanistan from September 2014 until August 2021, when his government was 2021 Taliban offensive, overthrown by the Ta ...

opened the box of the cloak, and with attendees prayed for peace during a three-day Eid ceasefire in Afghanistan (from 15 to 17 June 2018).

References

{{Cite news , last=Kevin Sieff , date=2012-12-29 , title=A fight for Afghanistan's most famous artifact , newspaper=

The Washington Post ''The Washington Post'', locally known as ''The'' ''Post'' and, informally, ''WaPo'' or ''WP'', is an American daily newspaper published in Washington, D.C., the national capital. It is the most widely circulated newspaper in the Washington m ...

, url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/a-fight-for-afghanistans-most-famous-artifact/2012/12/29/ab2dc394-51cb-11e2-835b-02f92c0daa43_story_1.html , access-date=2012-12-30 , archive-date=2017-10-16 , archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20171016175340/https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/a-fight-for-afghanistans-most-famous-artifact/2012/12/29/ab2dc394-51cb-11e2-835b-02f92c0daa43_story_1.html , url-status=live Relics Possessions of Muhammad Muhammad of History of Kandahar Individual garments Islamic clothing

History

See also

References