For some Abbasid apologists, especially throughout their struggle to overthrow the Umayyads, appeals to sunna ("custom") included the call for Muslims to remember the "Second Aqaba": how in 622 C.E. just before the hijra ("migration") to Medina, some seventy three men and two women swore an oath of allegiance to the Prophet that included the pledge to fight in his defense (the women were exempted from actual combat). The event is named for a hill outside Mina where it occurred one or two years after a handful of Muslims had sworn a similar oath - First Aqaba - which did not, however, include a pledge to fight. Thus, jihad came to be closely associated with hijra, a theme that played a key role, for example, in the Fulani jihad in Nigeria.
