What are Elephants doing in the deserts of Mecca?

Talk about 'an elephant in the room', Paul from London has introduced a real historical anachronism by suggesting that the story of the elephants of King Abraha of Himyar (Yemen today) attacking Mecca in Surah 105 not only doesn't make sense historically, but was borrowed from a real account which took place much earlier up on Jerusalem 1,000 miles further north, and hundreds of years earlier. According to the explanations in the Standard Islamic Narrative (SIN) of Surah 105, the king of Himyar in the south marched hundreds of elephants north to Mecca to attack it and conquer it in around 570 AD. They were stopped, according to SIN because Allah sent birds with stones to drop stones on them, and this forced them to retreat. Though Paul doesn't dispute that god can do miracles, he nonetheless points out a number of historical and theological problems with this story: 1) Why would a Christian King from an Abrahamic faith want to destroy Mecca? 2) Where did he get his elephants from, since African elephants as everyone knows cannot be trained? 3) How did hundreds of elephants cross the barren desert from Himyar to Mecca, 500 miles, across land where there is no water and no vegetation to accommodate such large beasts? 4) Why would Allah, a monotheist god back a polytheist people (in Mecca) and save them from a monotheist king? Paul believes this story did take place, but much further north, and many hundreds of years earlier. According to 2 Maccabees 11:14; 13:2, 15: 14:12; 15:20-21 we are told that the Seleucids attacked Jerusalem with Asian Elephants in 164 BC, and the Lord helped destroy the elephants and cause the Maccabees to win the battle. This is the source for the story we find in the Qur'an in Surah 105, but that battle did happen and real Asian elephants, which can be trained, were used, and were defeated by Yahweh, not Allah. Paul got his ideas from a book written by Daniel Beck, entitled, "Maccabees Not Mecca: The Biblical subtext of Surat al-Fil" (Surah 105). Daniel Beck also notes in his book that the Persian Sassanians used elephants as well in the 7th century, and had them pictured on their coins, so that the Muslims of the 8th and 9th centuries would have been aware of them. He suggests that the Qur'an includes this story to embolden the Muslims not to be fearful of elephants, because Allah will support them. Paul concludes by suggesting that we have yet another example of the Qur'an claiming an event, this time with elephants, taking place in and around Mecca, a place which makes no sense for elephants, but borrowed a very historical event which actually occurred much further north, in fact over 1,000 miles away in Jerusalem, and much earlier than in 570 AD, a good 734 years earlier. © Pfander Centre for Apologetics - US, 2021 (54,880) Music: 'Reaching the Sky', by Alexander Nakarada, from filmmusic-io