Three leaders of Quraysh, Abu Sufyan ibn Harb, Abu Jahal ibn Hisham and al-Akhnas ibn Shurayq, each went out alone one night to listen secretly outside the Prophet ﷺ's house. He was praying at night and reciting the Qur'an. None of them knew that the others were there, and they listened until dawn. On the way home they met on the road and blamed one another, saying they must not come back. The same thing happened on the second night, and again on the third. On the third morning they made a firm promise never to return. Later that morning, al-Akhnas went to Abu Sufyan and asked him privately what he thought of what he had heard. Abu Sufyan said he had understood some of it but not all of it. Al-Akhnas then asked Abu Jahal the same question. Abu Jahal said that his clan had always competed with the Prophet ﷺ's clan for honour. Now that they claimed a prophet who received revelation from heaven, there was no way to compete with them, and he swore he would never believe in him.
After the Prophet ﷺ left Makkah for Ta'if, he could no longer safely return. By walking out of Makkah, he had seemed to accept the expulsion that Abu Lahab had imposed on him. His companion Zayd ibn Harithah RA asked him how they would enter Makkah now. The Prophet ﷺ replied that Allah would make a way out for them. The Prophet ﷺ then sent messages to a few leaders of the Quraysh, asking for their protection (jiwar). The first was al-Akhnas ibn Shurayq, who replied that his people were in a weak position and could not protect him. Next he asked Suhayl ibn Amr. Suhayl replied that his clan, Banu Amir ibn Lu'ayy, had never protected anyone from Banu Ka'b ibn Lu'ayy, and he did not want to set a precedent. Finally he asked Mut'im ibn Adi, the chief of Banu Nawfal ibn Abd Manaf. Mut'im agreed at once. He told his four sons to arm themselves and bring the Prophet ﷺ straight back to him. They rode out fully armed and escorted the Prophet ﷺ into Makkah. Mut'im waited for him at the Ka'bah and told him to perform tawaf, and the Prophet ﷺ circled the Ka'bah with the armed guards beside him. When he finished, Mut'im stood up and announced to the people of Makkah that he had given Muhammad ﷺ his protection. Abu Sufyan ibn Harb stood and asked whether Mut'im had become his follower or was only giving protection. Mut'im said he was not a follower and was only giving protection. Abu Sufyan replied that in that case the Quraysh would accept it.
In Shawwal, a few weeks after the deaths of Khadijah RA and Abu Talib, the Prophet ﷺ lost his last protection in Makkah. His uncle Abu Lahab had briefly offered to protect him, then withdrew the offer. For the first time, the Prophet ﷺ began looking for another city where the message could take root. He chose Ta'if, the nearest major city to Makkah. To avoid attracting attention, he and Zayd ibn Harithah RA made the journey on foot. Ta'if was ruled jointly by three brothers of the tribe of Thaqif: Abd Yalil, Mas'ud and Habib, the sons of Amr. The Prophet ﷺ met them privately and invited them to Islam. Each of them rejected him with mockery. He asked them at least not to tell the Quraysh about his visit. According to the more authentic reports, he did not leave at once. He stayed about a week, preaching to the ordinary people in Ta'if's marketplace. No one accepted, though one person showed some interest. When the leaders heard of this, they grew alarmed. They sent a mob to stone the Prophet ﷺ and Zayd and drive them out of the city. The Prophet ﷺ bled until his sandals were soaked with blood. Zayd tried to shield him and was injured from head to toe. The mob kept pelting them until they reached Qarn al-Manazil, also called Qarn al-Tha'alib, outside the city.
Al-Isra wal-Mi'raj was a single night with two parts. The first part, al-isra, was the night journey from al-Masjid al-Haram in Makkah to al-Masjid al-Aqsa in Bayt al-Maqdis. The second part, al-mi'raj, was the ascent from there up through the seven heavens. It came after the Year of Sorrow and the stoning at Ta'if, the lowest point of the Prophet ﷺ's life. The scholars see it as the ease that Allah promises after every hardship. It was a gift given to him alone, and the rest of us are asked only to believe in it. Allah refers to it twice in the Qur'an. In the opening verse of Surah al-Isra, He calls the Prophet ﷺ "His servant", which is the highest title in the Qur'an. In Surah al-Najm, He says that the heart did not lie about what it saw. Ibn Ishaq and most early writers place the journey a year before the Hijrah. One report says that Khadija RA died before the prayer was made obligatory. If so, the journey cannot have happened before the last years in Makkah. No Companion tells us the month, and the Companions themselves did not think it important. Yet more of them narrate this one night than the rest of the Makkan period put together. That is also why storytellers padded it with legends, which the scholars had to sift out. It is also why the exact order of some scenes cannot be recovered. The Prophet ﷺ said that he was lying in the Hijr beside the Ka'bah. Another authentic report says that the roof of his house was opened. Ibn Hajar joins the two reports. He explains that Jibril AS came to the house first and then led him to the Hijr. There Jibril opened the Prophet ﷺ's chest. He washed his heart in a golden basin filled with Zamzam water, or in another wording with faith, and then closed it again. This was the second time his chest was opened, after the first time in his childhood. This time it was to strengthen him, so that he could see what no one else could have seen and still keep his mind. Then Jibril brought al-Buraq. It was a white animal, bigger than a donkey and smaller than a mule, and each of its strides reached as far as its eye could see. When it shied away, Jibril scolded it. He told it that no rider more honoured by Allah had ever mounted it. On the way, the Prophet ﷺ passed the grave of Musa AS and saw him standing in prayer. In that age, under Roman rule, the site of the Temple in Bayt al-Maqdis lay in ruins and was used as a rubbish dump. Yet the Prophet ﷺ found the sanctuary standing as it had once been. He tied al-Buraq to the ring that the prophets used, went inside and prayed two rak'at. There he found the prophets gathered with him. Musa was tall, strong and brown-skinned, like a man of the Shanu'ah tribe. Isa AS was of middle height and reddish in complexion, as if he had just come out of a bath. Of Ibrahim AS, the Prophet ﷺ said, "I could not see anyone more closely resembling Ibrahim AS than myself." When the call to prayer was given, he was put in front of them all as their imam. He was the leader of the leaders of every nation. He later said of himself, without boasting, that he will be the master of the children of Adam on the Day of Judgment. Then Jibril held out two vessels, one of milk and one of wine, and told him to choose for his community. The reports differ on whether this happened here or in the heavens. He chose the milk. Jibril told him that he had chosen the fitrah, the pure thing that nourishes, over the corrupted thing that corrupts. Jibril then rose with him to the gate of the lowest heaven and asked for it to be opened. A voice asked who was there, and Jibril gave his name. The voice asked whether anyone was with him, and Jibril said it was Muhammad ﷺ. The voice asked whether he had been sent for, and Jibril said yes. The gate opened. The same exchange took place at each of the seven heavens. In the first heaven stood Adam AS. He greeted the Prophet ﷺ as a righteous son and a righteous prophet. The souls of Adam's descendants were on his right and on his left. He smiled when he looked at those on one side and wept when he looked at those on the other. In the second heaven were Yahya AS and Isa. In the third was Yusuf AS, who had been given half of all beauty. In the fourth was Idris AS, and in the fifth was Harun AS. In the sixth was Musa. In the seventh was Ibrahim, sitting with his back against al-Bayt al-Ma'mur, the House in the heavens. Later reports place this House directly above the Ka'bah. Every day seventy thousand angels enter it, never to return. Each of these prophets greeted him as a brother and a prophet. Only Adam and Ibrahim called him son. After he had passed, Musa wept. Musa explained that he wept because a young man sent after him would bring more of his people into Paradise than Musa had. At some point on this night, the Prophet ﷺ sat with Ibrahim, Musa and Isa while they spoke about the Hour. Only Isa knew anything about it. He knew that he would return and kill the Dajjal. He knew that he would see Gog and Magog break out, and see them die because of his prayer. After that, he said, the Hour would be as near as the birth of a child to a woman in labour. Ibrahim sent his greetings to this community. He told them that Paradise is fertile soil waiting to be planted. Its seeds are the words subhan Allah, alhamdulillah, la ilaha illa Allah and Allahu akbar. The Prophet ﷺ also met Malik, the keeper of Hell, who greeted him first. A report not found in the main collections adds that Malik never smiled. It says that if he had smiled for anyone, it would have been for the Prophet ﷺ. Above the seventh heaven stood Sidrat al-Muntaha, the Lote Tree of the Utmost Boundary. Its fruits were like the great jars of Hajar, and its leaves were like elephants' ears. Its trunk was in the sixth heaven and its crown at the end of the seventh. It marks the place where everything that rises from the earth comes to an end, and where everything that comes down begins. The Qur'an says it was covered with what covered it. He saw colours he could not name, changing as he looked, and butterflies made of gold. At the foot of the Tree ran four rivers. Two were hidden, and these are the rivers of Paradise. Two could be seen, and these are the Nile and the Euphrates. Here he saw Jibril in the form in which Allah created him. Ibn Mas'ud RA reports that Jibril had six hundred wings. This was one of only two times that the Prophet ﷺ saw him like this. A later report adds that pearls and coral fell from his feathers. Some scholars count these three things, the Tree, the House and the angel, among the greatest signs of his Lord that the Qur'an says he saw. Then he was raised higher, alone. He reached a place where he could hear the scratching of the Pen that writes what is to happen. There Allah spoke to him. What passed between them is not recorded, and the scholars believe the silence is deliberate. Three things came out of it. The first was the closing verses of Surah al-Baqarah, which Ali RA described as coming from a treasure beneath the Throne. The second was a promise that anyone from his community who died without associating anything with Allah would be forgiven. The third was the command to pray fifty times a day. Whether he saw Allah was debated from the very first generation. Ibn Abbas RA said that he did. Aisha RA said that whoever claims this has lied against Allah, because eyes cannot grasp Him. Abu Dharr RA asked the Prophet ﷺ himself. He answered, "Light. How could I see Him?" On another occasion he described Allah's veil as light. He said that if it were lifted, it would burn away everything that His face reached. On the way down, Musa asked him what his Lord had commanded for his community. Musa told him to go back and ask for less. He said that he had tested the Children of Israel, and they had not been able to bear it. The Prophet ﷺ looked at Jibril, who nodded, and so he went back. He went up and down again and again, and each time the number fell by five or ten prayers. In the end he came down with five, and he could not bring himself to ask again. He said, "I have gone back to my Lord until I am ashamed. I am content." Then a voice called out. It said that Allah's command was settled and that He had lightened the burden on His servants. There would be five prayers, and they would be counted as fifty. He was then shown Paradise, with its tents of hollowed pearl on soil of musk. He was also shown the punishments of the Fire. Most of these come in a report that Ibn Ishaq gives from Abu Sa'id al-Khudri RA. He saw men with lips like camels' lips, swallowing coals, because they had devoured the wealth of orphans. Others were tearing their own faces with copper nails, because they had spoken ill of people behind their backs. Others left good meat and ate rotten meat instead, because they had committed adultery. Others were swollen and trampled, because they had taken usury. Others cut their own tongues with scissors of fire, because they had preached what they did not practise. He also saw the Dajjal, who had one eye like a swollen grape. One further report was not found in its fuller form in the collections checked. In it, the Prophet ﷺ noticed a beautiful fragrance and asked what it was. Jibril told him about the woman who dressed the hair of Pharaoh's daughter. She dropped a comb and let the word "bismillah" slip out. She refused to call Pharaoh her lord. Then her nursing baby spoke and told her that the pain of this world was nothing compared with the next. After that, she went into the cauldron with her children. He rode al-Buraq back to Makkah. On the road he passed three caravans of the Quraysh, and he drank from one of them. He lay down again in the Haram before dawn. In his own words, he woke up worried about how he would tell his people. By one report, it was Abu Jahl who found him first and called the Quraysh together to hear it. They asked him to describe Bayt al-Maqdis, a city he had never seen. Al-Bukhari reports that the city rose up before his eyes above the house of Aqil, so he could answer every question. Ibn Ishaq reports that the caravans arrived when he said they would. Abu Jahl is said to have called it sorcery. Someone told Abu Bakr RA the story before the Prophet ﷺ could tell him himself. Abu Bakr said that if the Prophet ﷺ had said it, then it was true. He added that he already believed him in something stranger still, that revelation came to him from the heavens. From that day he was called al-Siddiq. Most scholars hold that the journey was made while he was awake, in his body. They argue that a dream of Jerusalem would have been no miracle, and the Quraysh would not have mocked a dream. He also would not have needed a mount, or drunk on the way. Ibn Ishaq, however, reports that Aisha RA said his body stayed where it was. He also reports that Mu'awiyah RA called it a true vision. Ibn Ishaq himself holds that it was true either way. Some scholars see the journey, which begins and ends in Makkah, as the first hint that the qibla would turn back from Jerusalem to the Ka'bah after the Hijrah.
In his youth, al-Mughira ibn Shu'ba of the tribe of Thaqif fell into bad company. He joined a band of men who robbed travellers on the highways, killing innocent people and stealing their goods. Once, the tribe of some of their victims declared war on Thaqif. Thaqif had to pay a great deal of blood money to calm the situation. After this, Mughira and his companions broke up and fled, since they could no longer go back to Thaqif. Mughira later heard of Islam and accepted it, and he made his way to Madinah.
In the 6th year of the Hijrah, the Prophet ﷺ had a dream. He saw himself doing tawaf around the Ka'bah in ihram, with his head shaved, completing the full rites of an Umrah. He understood the dream as Allah's command to go to Makkah. He announced his plan to the Muhajirun, the Ansar and the tribes around Madinah. Around 1,400 people set out with him. Most of them were Muhajirun who had not seen Makkah for six years. The Bedouin tribes around Madinah mostly refused to come, preferring to stay with their wealth and families. The Qur'an later exposed this hesitation as an excuse rather than a genuine reason (Qur'an 48:11-12). He set out in Dhu al-Qa'dah. This was one of the sacred months, in which fighting was traditionally forbidden even before Islam, in the Jahiliyyah. Travelling in this month was a deliberate signal that he came in peace. At the miqat of Dhu al-Hulayfah, he prayed two rak'ahs and entered ihram. He also dedicated seventy sacrificial camels, garlanded to mark them as offerings. Even pagan Arabs respected such animals as a sign of piety, as events would later prove. From there, he sent a single scout ahead to see how the Quraysh would react. The scout was Busr ibn Sufyan al-Khuza'i. He came from Khuza'a, a neutral tribe, and the Quraysh did not know him. At Asfan, roughly halfway to Makkah, Busr came back with his report. He said that the Quraysh had armed for war and brought their women with them, as they had at Uhud. They had also sent Khalid ibn al-Walid to block the road at Ghumaym. The Prophet ﷺ was grieved that his own people would rather fight than simply let him pass. He said, "Woe to the Quraysh, war has consumed them." He vowed that he would keep fighting with whatever Allah had sent him "until Allah grants victory or this neck of mine is cut off". At the same time, he made it clear that he did not want war or bloodshed. He asked the sahaba for their advice. Abu Bakr RA advised them to stick to their original purpose. They had come to visit the House of Allah, he said, and should not fight anyone unless they were attacked. The Prophet ﷺ agreed. He set aside his own first inclination, which had been to strike first at the tribes that were backing the Quraysh. Because Khalid was blocking the main road, one of the sahaba guided the army along another route. It ran through a valley of thorns and volcanic rock, and their feet were left bleeding. The Prophet ﷺ compared this passage to the gate that the Israelites had been commanded to enter humbly, in return for forgiveness (Qur'an 2:58). He promised that Allah would forgive everyone who passed through it, except for one man. That man had spent the whole way distracted by a camel he had lost. He replied that finding his camel mattered more to him than forgiveness. His answer showed that he was a hypocrite, marching in a caravan that was otherwise entirely sincere. As night fell, the army came out of the valley and reached the plain of Hudaybiyyah. There, the Prophet ﷺ's camel, Qaswa', suddenly knelt down and would not get up. The sahaba complained that she had turned stubborn. The Prophet ﷺ told them that this was not in her nature. "The One who stopped the Elephant has also stopped her," he said. He made camp where she had stopped. The well at the camp had almost run dry. The Prophet ﷺ rinsed his mouth with its water and returned the water to the well. After a while, the well gave enough water for the whole camp and their animals to drink their fill. This is reported by al-Bara' RA in al-Bukhari. Another report in al-Bukhari says that he sent an arrow down into the well. The Prophet ﷺ expected the terms to be hard. He told the sahaba in advance that he would accept any condition the Quraysh proposed, as long as it did not compromise the sanctity of Allah's symbols. Quraysh scouts soon found the camp, and Khalid's force pulled back toward Makkah. At one point, eighty armed men from Makkah tried to make a surprise raid on the camp from the hills of Tan'im. Ibn Ishaq's report gives their number as forty or fifty. Muslim scouts spotted them first, and they were surrounded and captured. Not a drop of blood was spilled on either side. According to Qur'an 48:24, it was Allah who held back the hands of both sides. Afterwards the Prophet ﷺ forgave all of them and sent them home. The negotiations began with Budayl ibn Warqa' of Khuza'a, a neutral tribe that was sympathetic to the Muslims. Budayl carried the Prophet ﷺ's message back to the Quraysh. The message was that he had come only to honour the House of Allah. He was willing to agree a truce with the Quraysh, and otherwise he was ready to fight. The more hot-headed Quraysh refused even to hear the message. The Quraysh as a whole still would not move. They did not want the Arabs to say that Muhammad ﷺ had got the better of them. Next, Urwah ibn Mas'ud al-Thaqafi volunteered to go. He was a leader of Thaqif with close ties to the Quraysh. He met the Prophet ﷺ in person and accused him of breaking family ties and threatening the sanctity of the Haram. As he spoke, Urwah kept taking hold of the Prophet ﷺ's beard, a customary gesture between equals. Each time, al-Mughira ibn Shu'ba RA, who was guarding the Prophet ﷺ, struck his hand away with the hilt of his sword. Al-Mughira was Urwah's own grand-nephew. Urwah then mocked the loyalty of the Prophet ﷺ's followers, calling them a rootless "hodgepodge". Abu Bakr RA answered him with a curse so sharp that Urwah said he would have replied in kind, if he had not owed Abu Bakr a personal favour. Urwah went back to the Quraysh visibly shaken. He had watched the sahaba compete to catch the Prophet ﷺ's spit and the water he washed with, and lower their voices in his presence. He told the Quraysh that he had visited the courts of Caesar, Kisra and the Najashi. He had never seen a king honoured the way this man was honoured by his own people. He urged the Quraysh to accept the Prophet ﷺ's offer. The Prophet ﷺ then sent Khirash ibn Umayyah of Khuza'a to the Quraysh. As a gesture of goodwill, he sent him riding one of his own well-known camels. The Quraysh responded by hamstringing the camel. They were about to kill Khirash when the Ahabish protected him and let him go (Ibn Ishaq). The Quraysh's own next envoy was al-Hulays ibn Alqama al-Kinani. He came from a tribe that held sacrificial animals sacred. The Prophet ﷺ knew this, so he had the sahaba parade their garlanded camels and sheep in front of him. Al-Hulays never even entered the Muslim camp, because the sight alone was enough for him. He went back to the Quraysh and declared that it was forbidden to keep pilgrims and their offerings away from the House of Allah. The Quraysh mocked him as an ignorant Bedouin. In response, he swore that his own tribal confederation, the Ahabish, would no longer support them. The neutral envoys had now all been tried, so the Prophet ﷺ decided to send a Muslim of standing. Umar ibn al-Khattab RA was famous for his fearlessness, but he asked to be excused. He was not afraid for himself. His hostility toward the Quraysh was well known, and he had no kin in Makkah to protect him. He was therefore likely to be killed before any negotiation could take place. Umar RA suggested Uthman ibn Affan RA instead. Uthman was an Umayyad, related to Abu Sufyan, and this gave him a standing the Quraysh would respect. Uthman entered Makkah under the protection of his cousin Aban ibn Sa'id. He met Abu Sufyan and the leaders of the Quraysh and delivered his message. They told Uthman that he himself could go round the Ka'bah. He refused to do so before the Prophet ﷺ had done it, and so they held him (Ibn Ishaq). Uthman was away longer than expected, and a rumour spread through the camp that he had been killed. The Prophet ﷺ was not willing to leave this unanswered. Beneath a tree at Hudaybiyyah, he called the sahaba to make a fresh pledge of allegiance. In it they committed themselves to fight the Quraysh rather than retreat. The Qur'an later honoured this oath as the moment when "Allah's Hand was over their hands" (Qur'an 48:10). It also recorded Allah's pleasure with those who made it (Qur'an 48:18). Every man present made the pledge except one hypocrite, who hid behind his camel. Uthman was away in Makkah, so the Prophet ﷺ pledged on his behalf. He raised his right hand and said, "This is the hand of Uthman." Then he struck it on his other hand and said, "This is for Uthman" (al-Bukhari). News of the pledge reached Makkah. It seems to have pushed the Quraysh to negotiate seriously at last. Uthman came back to the camp. It is related that the sahaba asked him whether he had managed to do tawaf while he was in the city. He told them that he would never do it before the Prophet ﷺ, even if he had stayed in Makkah for a year. The Quraysh first sent Mikraz ibn Hafs, but he offered nothing workable. Then they sent their most capable negotiator, Suhayl ibn Amr. Suhayl was a senior speaker of the Quraysh. After Badr he had been held as a prisoner in the home of one of the sahaba. Years earlier, Umar RA had wanted to silence him, but the Prophet ﷺ refused to allow it. He told Umar that a day might come when Suhayl would say something that pleased him. When the Prophet ﷺ saw Suhayl approaching, he said to the sahaba, "Suhayl has come; things have been made easy for you." He was reading a good omen in the meaning of Suhayl's name. Suhayl came with a grievance of his own. One of his sons, Abdullah, had already gone over to Madinah years earlier. He had slipped away from the Quraysh's own ranks at Badr. His younger son, Abu Jandal RA, had become a Muslim. Suhayl had kept him in chains and tortured him, and he was still a prisoner back in Makkah. The Prophet ﷺ called for Ali ibn Abi Talib RA to write the treaty. Ali began with "In the name of Allah, the Most Compassionate, the Most Merciful." Suhayl objected that he did not recognise "al-Rahman". He insisted on the old pagan formula, "Bismika Allahumma", instead. The Prophet ﷺ agreed, rather than let the wording block the treaty. Ali then wrote, "This is what Muhammad ﷺ, the Messenger of Allah ﷺ, has agreed with Suhayl ibn Amr." Suhayl objected again. He said that if the Quraysh had believed in that title, they would never have opposed him in the first place. He demanded "Muhammad ibn Abdillah" instead. The Prophet ﷺ told him, "I am the Messenger of Allah ﷺ even if you deny it." Even so, he agreed to the change. Ali RA refused to strike out the words "Messenger of Allah ﷺ" with his own hand. The Prophet ﷺ could not write, so he asked Ali RA to point to the words, and he erased them himself. Suhayl then set out his central condition. Any man of the Quraysh who came over to the Muslims would be sent back, even if he came as a Muslim. But no Muslim would ever be handed over in the other direction. The sahaba objected loudly. Most of them had fled Makkah themselves to find exactly this protection. Reversing it now would shut the door on every future refugee. Before the clause had even been fully written, Abu Jandal RA broke free of his chains. He stumbled into the camp crying out for help, with the marks of torture visible on his body. Suhayl pointed to him as the first person the clause would apply to. The Prophet ﷺ pointed out that the treaty had not yet been written, and asked Suhayl to let him keep Abu Jandal. Suhayl refused outright. Mikraz ibn Hafs said, "We allow you to keep him," but Suhayl would not give way (al-Bukhari). Other reports say that Mikraz took Abu Jandal under his protection so that he would not be tortured again. The Prophet ﷺ told Abu Jandal to be patient, because Allah would make a way out for him. Umar RA was standing near Abu Jandal. Rather than see him sent back, Umar gestured toward his own sword. But Suhayl was still Abu Jandal's father, and Abu Jandal did not take the sword. He was led back to Makkah in chains. After that, the remaining terms were agreed. There would be no Umrah that year, only the next year. There would be a ten-year truce, with no fighting on either side. Both sides were free to make alliances with other tribes, and those tribes would be bound by the same terms. And any Muslim who went back over to the Quraysh would not be returned, unlike in the other direction. Ibn Ishaq names the witnesses as Abu Bakr RA, Umar RA, Abd al-Rahman ibn Awf RA, Abdullah ibn Suhayl RA, Sa'd ibn Abi Waqqas RA, Mahmud ibn Maslamah RA and Mikraz, who was then still a polytheist. Ali RA was the one who wrote the document. As Suhayl left, satisfied, Umar RA confronted the Prophet ﷺ directly. He was voicing what many of the sahaba felt. He asked whether the Prophet ﷺ was not the Messenger of Allah ﷺ. He asked whether the Muslims were not on the truth and their enemies on falsehood. If so, he asked, how could they accept such humiliating terms? The Prophet ﷺ replied, "I am the Messenger of Allah ﷺ, and I will not disobey Allah, and He will help me." Umar RA then asked whether the Prophet ﷺ had not told them that they would go round the House of Allah. The Prophet ﷺ said, "Indeed, I told you. But did I say we will do it this year?" Umar RA admitted that he had not. The Prophet ﷺ told him, "You will do it next year." Umar RA was still not satisfied, so he put the same questions to Abu Bakr RA. Abu Bakr rebuked him sharply. He told Umar to hold fast to the Prophet ﷺ's stirrup rather than question him. Umar RA later said that, because of what he had said that day, he kept on giving charity, fasting, praying and freeing slaves (Ibn Ishaq). It is also reported that, when he was khalifa, he admitted that no other leader could have made him accept such a condition. Once the treaty was written, the Prophet ﷺ told the sahaba to get up, slaughter their sacrificial animals and shave their heads. He said it three times, but not a single person moved. They were too crushed by what had just happened (al-Bukhari). The Prophet ﷺ went back to his tent. He told Umm Salama RA that he had given them a command and no one had obeyed. She advised him to go out and shave his own head first, without saying another word. Once they saw him do it, she said, they would follow. He did exactly that. The sahaba were freed from their paralysis and rushed to shave each other's heads. He made du'a for those who had shaved their heads rather than only trimming their hair. He repeated this du'a three times. On the fourth time, he finally included those who had only trimmed. The sacrificial animals were slaughtered there. Among them was a camel that had belonged to Abu Jahal and had been captured at Badr. It had a silver ring in its nose, and the sight of it enraged the polytheists (Ibn Ishaq). On the march home, Umar RA was still troubled by what had passed between him and the Prophet ﷺ. He rode up hoping to make peace. His greetings went unanswered, and he feared the worst. Then a rider came to call him back. He found the Prophet ﷺ's face lit up with joy as he recited Surah al-Fath, which had been revealed on the way back. It begins, "Indeed, We have granted you a clear triumph" (Qur'an 48:1). Umar RA asked in disbelief whether this really counted as a triumph. The Prophet ﷺ confirmed that it did. Umar RA is said to have ridden the whole length of the column, announcing the victory. The Prophet ﷺ said that this surah was dearer to him than everything the sun shines upon (al-Bukhari). Not long after the return to Madinah, the treaty faced its first real test. Abu Basir was a convert from Thaqif, allied to Banu Zuhrah, and he fled to Madinah. The Prophet ﷺ did not turn him away when he arrived. But then two men of the Quraysh came to invoke the treaty's return clause. The Prophet ﷺ honoured the treaty and sent Abu Basir back with them. On the road, Abu Basir killed one of his two escorts with the man's own sword. The other escort fled back to Madinah in terror. Then Abu Basir himself came back. He insisted that the Prophet ﷺ had fulfilled his obligation, and that it was Allah who had set him free. The Prophet ﷺ did not directly help him any further. Instead, he remarked to the people near him, "What a great warrior he is. If only he had someone else to help him." Abu Basir understood the hint. He left and set up camp at al-'Is, by the sea, on the road the Quraysh used to travel to Syria (Ibn Ishaq). Abu Jandal RA heard where Abu Basir had gone. He escaped from Makkah a second time and joined him. Word spread among the Muslims of Makkah who were still being persecuted. Eventually some seventy to eighty of them gathered there. They supported themselves by raiding Quraysh caravans. Under the treaty, the Muslims had no authority to stop them, and no obligation to. In time, the raids became so costly that the Quraysh themselves appealed to the Prophet ﷺ. Invoking their ties of kinship, they asked him to take the whole band into Madinah and put an end to the raids. He did so. A later report, though, says that Abu Basir died before he reached the city. Another test came with Umm Kulthum bint Uqbah. She was the daughter of Uqbah ibn Abi Mu'ayt, the man who had once thrown animal entrails on the Prophet ﷺ in Makkah. She became a Muslim and fled to Madinah. The treaty's return clause spoke only of men. Allah revealed Qur'an 60:10, which exempted believing women from the clause entirely. So she stayed in Madinah. She is reported to have later married Zayd ibn Harithah RA. One night during the march home, everyone was exhausted. The Prophet ﷺ asked Bilal RA to stay awake and wake the camp for Fajr. Bilal fell asleep too, and the whole camp, including the Prophet ﷺ, slept past sunrise. Sahih Muslim places a night like this on the return from Khaybar instead. The Prophet ﷺ did not pray on the spot. He moved the camp on and led the late prayer at a new place, saying that Shaytan had a hand in that particular ground.
Soon after the Muslims returned from Hudaybiyyah, a man named Abu Basir left Makkah and came to Madinah. He was of Thaqif, an ally of Banu Zuhrah, and he was the first person to make hijrah after the treaty was signed. One clause of the treaty said that any man who came to the Muslims from Makkah had to be returned. The Prophet ﷺ did not send Abu Basir away on his own initiative. But after two or three days, two men of the Quraysh came from Makkah to take him back. The Prophet ﷺ called Abu Basir and said to him, "These two men have come to take you, and you came knowing the treaty that we signed, and I will not be treacherous. So return to your people." Abu Basir asked whether he was really being sent back after Allah had saved him. He was told that Allah would make a way out for him. On the road, Abu Basir chatted with the two men and praised one man's sword. He asked to see it, and the man handed it over. Abu Basir killed him with it. The second man ran all the way back to Madinah and begged the Prophet ﷺ for protection. Abu Basir arrived soon after. He told the Prophet ﷺ that he had fulfilled his duty under the treaty, but Allah had let him escape. The Prophet ﷺ did not answer him directly. Abu Basir understood that the treaty did not allow him to stay in Madinah, and he left. He could not go back to Makkah either. So he set up a small camp on his own near what is now Jeddah, and sent word of where he was. Abu Jandal ibn Suhayl RA, another Muslim who had been sent back to Makkah under the treaty, heard about it. He escaped again and joined him. News then spread among the Muslims still trapped in Makkah, and others came. First there were 10, then 15, then 60, and eventually about 80 people at the camp.
The Battle of Tabuk has two names, and the sahaba used both. The first is Ghazwa Tabuk, because the Muslim army was saved at Tabuk. On the march the sahaba had run out of water. Mu'adh ibn Jabal RA reports that the Prophet ﷺ told them they would reach the spring of Tabuk the next day, at the hottest part of the day. He warned them not to touch its water until he arrived. Two men touched it before he came, and they were rebuked. The Prophet ﷺ then washed his hands and face in what water remained, and the water gushed out until the whole army drank from it. The army is traditionally reported as 20,000 men, though figures like this in the sources were often inflated. The second name is Jaysh al-Usrah, the Army of Difficulty. Imam al-Bukhari records this name alongside Ghazwa Tabuk in his own chapter heading. The army earned the name because this campaign was harsher than any other. Managing so large an army strained food, water and supplies. The march took place in the hottest part of the year, with temperatures around 110°F. It was also the longest distance any army led by the Prophet ﷺ ever marched, roughly 650 km northwest of Madinah. Finally, it fell during Madinah's August harvest. This was a farming society with no idea of a steady salary, so leaving meant giving up the year's main income. The expedition took place in the month of Rajab, 9 AH, exactly six months after the Siege of Ta'if. It was the Prophet ﷺ's final ghazwa, or military campaign. After it he made his Farewell Hajj and fell ill, and from there the seerah moves toward his death and the khilafa. No swords actually clashed at Tabuk. The difficulty was the march itself. Every able-bodied man was called to take part, even men from as far away as Makkah. The most famous story of the expedition, however, is not about the march. It is about the people who missed it. Ka'b ibn Malik RA was one of the earliest Ansari converts, from Banu Salama, and he had taken part in the Bay'at al-Aqaba. He owned two camels and was healthier and wealthier than he had ever been. Even so, he kept putting off his preparations day after day, until the army had gone too far to catch. Ka'b was not alone. Apart from the hypocrites and those with a genuine excuse, the whole city had marched. When the Prophet ﷺ returned, more than eighty of the men who had stayed behind came to him, swore oaths and offered excuses. He accepted what they said at face value and left their true intentions to Allah. Qur'an 9:43 later mildly rebuked him for this. Only three men refused to lie and told the Prophet ﷺ the plain truth. They were Ka'b, Murara ibn al-Rabi' al-Amri RA and Hilal ibn Umayyah al-Waqifi RA. Murara and Hilal were both veterans of Badr. The Prophet ﷺ forbade the whole community to speak to the three of them. For fifty nights everyone shunned them. In Ka'b's case, this included his own cousin Abu Qatada RA. During this time the King of Ghassan sent Ka'b a letter to lure him away. Ka'b burned it, seeing it as a test. Forty days in, the three men were also ordered to separate from their wives. On the fiftieth morning, Ka'b was praying Fajr on his rooftop. A man of the Aslam tribe climbed Jabal Sal', the mountain you can see as you leave the Masjid al-Nabawi. He called out that Allah had accepted their repentance. His voice reached Ka'b before a horseman who had been sent to bring the news in person. Ka'b gave that horseman the only clothes he owned. He then had to borrow a garment from a neighbour so that he could go to the Prophet ﷺ. The repentance of Ka'b and his two companions was announced across Madinah. It was the occasion for Qur'an 9:117-119, which speaks of Allah turning in mercy to "the three who were left behind." Of all the Muhajirun, only Talha ibn Ubaydillah RA stood up to congratulate Ka'b. From that day on, Ka'b resolved never again to knowingly tell a lie. Before the army set out, the Prophet ﷺ called for donations from the minbar, and the sahaba raced to give. Umar ibn al-Khattab RA thought he could finally outdo Abu Bakr RA. He brought half his wealth and told the Prophet ﷺ that he had left an equal amount for his family. This is narrated in Sunan al-Tirmidhi. Then Abu Bakr RA brought everything he owned. He said he had left his family only "Allah and His Messenger ﷺ." Umar admitted that he could never compete with him again. Abd al-Rahman ibn Awf RA had arrived in Madinah with nothing but the clothes on his back. Now he gave 200 uqiyas of grain. Uthman ibn Affan RA gave on two occasions that are remembered. The first was during the Prophet ﷺ's khutbah. Uthman pledged a hundred camels, then raised it to two hundred, and finally to three hundred with everything they carried. At that, the Prophet ﷺ came down from the minbar and declared, "Uthman has no sin after what he has done today." The second came when one of Uthman's trading caravans returned from Syria around the same time. He sold the whole caravan for roughly a thousand gold coins and poured the coins out before the Prophet ﷺ. The Prophet ﷺ said, "Whatever Uthman does after today, it will not harm him." Years later, when the neo-Kharijites turned against Uthman, Ibn Abbas RA reminded them of this promise in his defence. The hypocrites, by contrast, gave nothing and mocked those who did. A poor Ansari man had earned two handfuls of dates by drawing water all night, and he brought one of them. Two hypocrites jeered at him. They said that Allah had no need of so little, and that the man needed it more than anyone. This prompted Qur'an 9:79. Other hypocrites made excuses to avoid marching at all. Al-Jad ibn Qays asked to be let off, claiming he feared he would lose self-control around Roman women. The Prophet ﷺ simply turned away from him, and Qur'an 9:49 is tied to this. Qur'an 9:81-82 and 9:42 rebuke the wider group of hypocrites for rejoicing at staying behind and for finding the journey too far. On the other side were the Bakka'un, "the Criers." They were roughly seven men, including relatives of Abu Ayyub al-Ansari and Irbad ibn Sariya RA. They wanted to march but had no mount. When the Prophet ﷺ told them so, they wept (Qur'an 9:92). Later, at Tabuk, the Prophet ﷺ told the sahaba that sincere companions like these, back in Madinah, shared fully in the army's reward. Ulba ibn Zayd RA had no wealth to give. Instead, he pledged to defend the Prophet ﷺ with his own honour against the hypocrites' taunts. The Prophet ﷺ accepted this as charity. Wathila ibn al-Asqa' RA also had no money and no mount. Every day he went to the marketplace and offered his future share of the ghanima, the spoils of war, to anyone who would take him along. In the end, an elder of the Ansar agreed to share a camel and meals with him. Later, Wathila tried to hand over the very camels he had won as booty in payment, but the elder refused to accept them. Two other companions also put off their preparations, as Ka'b ibn Malik RA had, and nearly missed the expedition. But they recovered themselves at the last moment. Abu Khaythama al-Ansari RA delayed just as Ka'b did. Then he came home and found that his wife had prepared a shaded, watered rug and food for him. He rebuked himself for enjoying comfort while the Prophet ﷺ endured the heat, and he rushed out alone to catch up. The Prophet ﷺ spotted a lone rider in the distance and said, "Let it be Abu Khaythama." When he arrived, the Prophet ﷺ asked him why he had been delayed. Once he heard the story, he gently rebuked him, saying, "Woe to you, Abu Khaythama!" Abu Dharr al-Ghifari RA fell behind because his camel was unfit to travel. So he loaded its burden onto his own back and walked the whole distance alone. The Prophet ﷺ saw a solitary figure approaching on foot and said, "Let it be Abu Dharr!" Then he remarked, "May Allah have mercy upon Abu Dharr. He is walking by himself, he will die by himself, and he will be resurrected by himself." Years later, this was fulfilled almost exactly when Abu Dharr died alone in the desert. Ibn Sa'd places his death in the khilafa of Ali ibn Abi Talib RA. His exile and death have their own separate event. The hypocrites also organised opposition during this same period. This included building Masjid al-Dirar as a rival headquarters. That story is treated as its own event (see Masjid al-Dirar), because it unfolded on a separate track at the same time as the march. Before leaving Madinah, the Prophet ﷺ put Muhammad ibn Maslamah RA in charge of the city's affairs. He always appointed someone to run the city whenever he left it. He told Ali ibn Abi Talib RA to stay behind and take charge of his household, the Mother of the Believers and the Ahl al-Bayt, since the journey would take more than a month. The munafiqun, the hypocrites, mocked Ali RA for staying behind and called him unfit to fight. Ali RA was well known for his bravery, but the taunt stung him. He armed himself and caught up with the army to protest. The Prophet ﷺ reassured him with what is known as the hadith of manzila. He said, "Are you not content to be with me like Harun was with Musa, except that there is no prophet after me?" Ali RA was left in charge only of the Prophet ﷺ's family, not of Madinah itself. Madinah was Muhammad ibn Maslamah RA's responsibility. Sunni scholars point to this detail against the Shia reading of the hadith, which takes it as evidence of a designated political succession. The army left by way of Thaniyat al-Wada'. This is the hill north of the Haram where Madinan families traditionally gathered to say farewell to travellers. There the Prophet ﷺ paused to organise the army into battalions by tribe, each with its own leader and flag. It was the largest army ever assembled under him. He had no military training, yet this organisation showed his skill. On the march, the sahaba began falling asleep on their mounts after Fajr, and their camels scattered. Mu'adh ibn Jabal RA found himself riding alone, close to the Prophet ﷺ. He took the chance to ask him privately what deed would gain him Jannah. This conversation is preserved at length in Musnad Imam Ahmad (see the Sayings & Actions below). The army camped at Tabuk for twenty days, and the Prophet ﷺ prayed qasr, the shortened prayer of a traveller, throughout. Later fiqh discussions cite this when asking how long a traveller (musafir) praying qasr may stay in one place. The morning after they arrived, he ﷺ also delivered a khutbah, which Uqba ibn Amir al-Juhani RA preserved (see the separate Khutbah at Tabuk event). During the twenty days at Tabuk, the Prophet ﷺ also sent Khalid ibn al-Walid RA to Dawmat al-Jandal. There Khalid captured Ukaydir ibn Abd al-Malik, the Kindah chieftain. Through treaties, he sealed the whole northern frontier against Rome (see the separate Dawmat al-Jandal expedition). Over the twenty days at Tabuk, the Prophet ﷺ gave many short khutbahs and khatirahs, or brief talks. Several of them are preserved in the books of hadith and seerah. In one, he ﷺ said that Allah had given him five things granted to no prophet before him. First, he ﷺ was sent to all of mankind, not to one people alone. Second, Allah made him victorious through the awe his enemies felt a month's journey away. Third, ghanima was made lawful for him ﷺ, though it had not been for earlier nations. Fourth, the whole earth was made a place of purification and prayer, so his ﷺ ummah could pray anywhere, not only in a house of worship. Fifth, he ﷺ had saved his own personal request to Allah for the Day of Judgment, and he promised it to whoever testifies la ilaha illallah. This is understood as the Great Intercession. In another talk, narrated by Awf ibn Malik RA, he ﷺ foretold six signs before the Day of Judgment. The last of them are a truce and then a betrayal by the Bani al-Asfar, the Romans. The stay also saw repeated miracles in which food and water increased when supplies ran low. These were reported four or five times on this expedition alone. There was also a karamah, in which a companion who was lost in the dark found his way back to camp by the light of his own glowing fingers. One Fajr, the Prophet ﷺ was delayed while performing wudu, so Abd al-Rahman ibn Awf RA led the salah. Al-Mughira ibn Shu'ba RA helped the Prophet ﷺ with his wudu and narrated what happened. His account includes the Prophet ﷺ's instruction to leave his khuff, his leather socks, on rather than take them off for washing. The Prophet ﷺ then prayed the rak'ah he had missed behind Abd al-Rahman. It was the only time in his life ﷺ that he prayed a full rak'ah led by a companion. During these days the companion Abdullah Dhu al-Bijadayn RA also died, and the Prophet ﷺ buried him with his own hands (see the separate event on his death and burial). The hadith literature also dates several fiqh rulings to Tabuk. One is that washing each limb once in wudu is enough when water is scarce. Another is that the Prophet ﷺ prayed with a sutrah roughly the size of a camel's saddle. A third is that he ﷺ combined salahs only while actually on the move, and not once he had settled, even briefly. He had done the same at the Conquest of Makkah the year before. At Tabuk he still prayed qasr for the whole twenty days, but he did not combine. The last is that the skin of a dead animal becomes pure, and so usable, once it is tanned. On the return march, the army passed through al-Hijr. These are the rock-carved dwellings of the ancient people of Thamud and of Prophet Saleh AS (see the separate event on passing by al-Hijr). At one point the animals grew too weak to carry the army. The Prophet ﷺ made a du'a over them, and they were strengthened. Decades later, at the Muslim conquest of Cyprus in 28 AH, the companion Fudala RA recognised that this du'a had been fulfilled. When water ran short, the Prophet ﷺ prayed for rain. After a night of rain, he gave a khutbah. In it he contrasted the believers, who credited the rain to Allah, with the hypocrites, who credited it to a star. Then the Prophet ﷺ's own camel went missing. A hypocrite mocked him ﷺ, saying that he claimed revelation from heaven yet did not know where his own camel was. The Prophet ﷺ then announced, through revelation, exactly where the camel was, and it was found there. A companion who learned who had made the mocking remark expelled the man from his unit. Elsewhere on the march, some hypocrites mocked the Prophet ﷺ's prophecies that Rome and Persia would be conquered. They were exposed when Qur'an 9:64-66 was revealed. The verses quoted the mocker's excuse before he could even finish giving it (see the separate event on the munafiqun's mockery). Separately, a group of some fourteen or fifteen hypocrites made a sudden, unplanned attempt to throw the Prophet ﷺ off a cliff at night. His own evasive action foiled them. Ammar ibn Yasir RA and Hudhayfah ibn al-Yaman RA were watching, but did not realise what was happening (see the separate event on the assassination attempt). The army finally returned to Madinah after some fifty to sixty days away. The city's women and children came out to greet it at Thaniyat al-Wada'. Among them was the companion al-Sa'ib RA, who was then a child. This welcome is popularly linked to the Hijrah, but Sh. Yasir Qadhi and others hold that it belongs here instead (see the separate event on the return to Madinah). Also on the return march, one of the munafiqs was reported to have said that if Islam were true, it would mean that they themselves were more misguided than donkeys. He then swore under oath that he had never said it. Allah exposed the lie in Surat al-Tawba (Qur'an 9:74). Other hypocrites, who had stayed behind, told one another, "Do not march forth in the heat." The same surah replied that the Fire of Hell is far hotter (Qur'an 9:81-82). There is also a popular story that is widely repeated as the reason Qur'an 9:75-77 was revealed. In it, a named sahabi begs the Prophet ﷺ for wealth and promises to become generous. Once Allah grants him riches, he turns stingy. Later he repents, but his charity is refused. Sh. Yasir Qadhi rejects this story as unreliable. Its chain is weak, and it also has the Prophet ﷺ refusing the charity of a man who had repented. That contradicts the Qur'an's own teaching that Allah accepts repentance. The verses instead describe the hypocrites in general. Some of them vowed to give charity if they were made wealthy, then grew stingy once Allah provided for them.
After the Battle of Hunayn, the Prophet ﷺ left the spoils of war (ghanima) and the prisoners under guard at Ji'ranah. He then marched on Ta'if, where the defeated tribe of Thaqif had taken refuge behind the city's massive walls. Scholars of seerah usually treat Hunayn and Ta'if together, because they happened back to back against the same enemy. They were still two separate incidents, since Hunayn was a battle while Ta'if was a siege. The Muslims arrived in the last week of Shawwal, 8 AH. Ta'if was a green, well-watered city in the mountains, quite unlike the barren valley of Makkah. It had no Ka'bah, but its people had made it strong in other ways. Thaqif had surrounded it with massive walls. On top of the walls they had built devices for pouring burning oil and shooting arrows down on attackers. They had also stored enough supplies for nearly a year, because they expected a long siege. The Prophet ﷺ had foreseen this. While he was still in Makkah, even before Hunayn, he sent a few Companions to the tribe of Jurash, among them Urwah ibn Mas'ud and Ghaylan ibn Salama. Their task was to learn methods of siege warfare that the Muslims had never used before. They learned to build a catapult and a battering ram, and to form a testudo, in which soldiers advance toward a wall under a roof of large shields. They came back with this knowledge before the army reached Ta'if, and so for the first time Muslims built and used a catapult. The Muslims first camped near the city, but they were showered with arrows. The Prophet ﷺ moved them to another site, which later became the location of the first mosque in Ta'if. On one occasion the Muslims used the testudo to approach the walls. Burning oil poured from above still got through and burned many of them. When they ran out from under the shields, a fresh volley of arrows killed a number of them. The battering rams did not work, and the catapults did some damage but could not break open the gates. The Prophet ﷺ suggested leaving Ta'if for now and coming back another time. Some of the Companions did not want to go. They had just won at Makkah and Hunayn, and they did not want to leave when victory seemed so close. When the Prophet ﷺ saw that they wanted to stay, he let them stay. The city still held. After another deadly volley of arrows the Companions lost heart, and when the Prophet ﷺ told them a second time that they should move on, they quietly agreed. Before they left, the Companions asked him to make du'a (supplication) against Thaqif. Instead he prayed that Allah would guide them. The army then returned to Ji'ranah, where the spoils were waiting.
During their negotiations with the Prophet ﷺ, the Thaqif accepted that their idol al-Lat would be destroyed, but asked not to be the ones to do it. Al-Lat was the second most prestigious idol of the pagan Arabs after Hubal. The Prophet ﷺ sent al-Mughira ibn Shu'ba RA, who was their own kinsman, together with Abu Sufyan ibn Harb RA, to destroy it. The whole tribe gathered anxiously, with the women crying and the elders wailing. Mughira first played a prank on them. He struck the idol, cried out, and fell on his face as if al-Lat had struck him down. The crowd rejoiced, thinking their idol had defended itself. Then Mughira jumped up and mocked them for believing it. The idol's caretaker warned that the earth would swallow anyone who reached its base. Mughira carried on and demolished al-Lat completely, down to the ground. The Prophet ﷺ then sent word to Uthman ibn Abi al-As RA to build a mosque where the idol had stood. The treasures kept in its sanctuary were taken to the Bayt al-Mal, the public treasury, and the Prophet ﷺ distributed them to the poor and needy.
When the siege of Ta'if was lifted, the Prophet ﷺ told his Companions to leave the Thaqif alone. He said, "Let them be, they will come to us." Less than a year later, they came. By then they were the last pagan tribe in the Hejaz. What brought them was fear as much as faith. Urwah ibn Mas'ud had been the greatest of their chiefs. The Qur'an pairs him with al-Walid ibn al-Mughira as one of the two great men of the two cities. Urwah had embraced Islam on the road home from the siege, and gone back to call his people to it. But they shot him from the dark as he gave the adhan from his roof. His blood was on their hands, and they knew what that meant. Ibn Ishaq records the long argument that followed. No chief would go to Madinah alone to answer for the killing. In the end they agreed that all six or seven of them would go together, with their followers. They set out in Ramadan of the ninth year. Their kinsman al-Mughira ibn Shu'ba met them outside the city. He ran towards the mosque to tell the Prophet ﷺ. On the way, Abu Bakr stopped him. He begged Mughira, by Allah, to let him be the one to carry the good news. Every Companion wanted to be the man who made the Prophet ﷺ happy. Mughira went back to the delegation. He taught them how to greet the Prophet ﷺ and what to call him. They ignored all of it. They greeted him in the way of the days of ignorance before Islam, and called him by his name. There was no faith in them yet. The Prophet ﷺ overlooked every discourtesy. He had a tent put up for them inside the mosque, and treated them as honoured guests. By Arab custom, the two leaders would not meet until talks had been held through a go-between. Theirs was Khalid ibn Sa'id ibn al-As, a distant cousin of the Prophet ﷺ. The delegates were so afraid because of what they had done that they would not touch the food until Khalid had eaten first. Through him the bargaining went on for ten days. They asked whether they could have a treaty at all. They were told they could, if they became Muslims. They had heard that riba, the taking of interest, was forbidden, and all their wealth came from riba. The answer was that they would keep their principal. They asked whether they could keep zina, sex outside marriage, since they were merchants and often away from home. They were told that Allah had forbidden it. They asked whether they could at least keep wine. Ta'if was a city of vineyards and cold nights. Again they were told that Allah had forbidden it. The delegates talked it over among themselves. None of them could go home and tell Ta'if that riba, zina and wine were all gone. But if they went home without an agreement and another army came, they would be finished within a month. Then one of them pointed out that the people around this man had given up all three. If they could do it, he said, so could the Thaqif. Next came the question of al-Lat, their idol. It was the second greatest idol in Arabia after Hubal, and it was to be destroyed. They asked for it to be left for three years. Then they asked for two years, then one, and then fewer and fewer months. Every time the answer was no. Then they said they could not be the ones to destroy it. The Prophet ﷺ said, "You don't have to. We will take charge of that." Then they turned to the prayer. They asked to be excused from bowing, because of the cold. The Prophet ﷺ said, "There is no good in any religion that has no salah in it." They asked to be excused from wudu, because Ta'if gets very cold, and again the answer was no. Finally they asked to be excused from zakat and jihad. This time the Prophet ﷺ said, "Okay, you are forgiven from zakat and jihad." But a few days later, when they were leaving, he said, "They shall give zakat and they shall go for jihad." In time they did both. Scholars differ on what this means. Some say the Prophet ﷺ knew that faith would enter their hearts and lead them to both, so this was special to him. Others take it as a precedent for a Muslim leader to accept imperfect conditions from new Muslims for a time. Around the tenth day they became Muslims. They fasted the last five days of Ramadan with him. They were very anxious to get it right. When Bilal brought them their suhur, they said the sun had already risen. He told them the Prophet ﷺ was still eating. When he brought their iftar, they said the sun had not yet set. He told them he had come only after the Prophet ﷺ had broken his own fast. The youngest of them was Uthman ibn Abi al-As. He had believed before the rest of them. He spent the fortnight away from the elders' tent, learning the Qur'an from the Prophet ﷺ and the religion from Abu Bakr. When they left, Abu Bakr proposed him as their leader, and the Prophet ﷺ appointed him. They went home and told Ta'if that it must accept Islam. Mughira and Abu Sufyan were sent to break al-Lat. At the first blow, Mughira pretended to drop dead, to show the people how foolish they were. A mosque was built where the idol had stood. Wahshi, the man who had killed Hamzah, had fled to Ta'if before the conquest of Makkah. He became a Muslim at about the same time.
Urwah ibn Mas'ud al-Thaqafi was one of the most respected leaders of the tribe of Thaqif in Ta'if. Some time after the Conquest of Makkah, he embraced Islam at the hands of the Prophet ﷺ. He wanted to go back and call his own people to Islam. The Prophet ﷺ warned him, "I am scared for you," fearing how his tribe would treat him. Urwah was sure of his standing. He said that his people respected him so much that if they found him asleep, they would not even wake him. He insisted, and the Prophet ﷺ let him go. When Urwah began preaching Islam in Ta'if, his own people answered him with vile abuse. He went home saddened. The next morning at Fajr he climbed onto his roof, gave the adhan and began to pray. Someone who saw him took a bow and shot him with an arrow. He fell and died a martyr. As he lay dying, his family asked whether they should seek revenge or blood money. Urwah told them not to. He said this martyrdom was a gift with which Allah had honoured him. He asked to be buried with the Muslims who had been martyred at Hunayn rather than in his family's graveyard, and that was done.