In the Court of al-Najāshī

He said: let us take gifts for al-Najāshī. And the thing al-Najāshī loved most was hide, leather. So his people gathered all they could of the best hide they could find, and they took a boat and went to al-Najāshī in Abyssinia. They went to visit al-Najāshī, and whom did they find coming out of the court of al-Najāshī? ʿAmr ibn Umayyah al-Ḍamrī, who had been sent by the Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him) to perform the marriage of the Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him) to the daughter of Abū Sufyān, Umm Ḥabībah, and also to call the Muhājirūn of Abyssinia to go back to Madīnah. So ʿAmr ibn al-ʿĀṣ saw him coming out of the court of al-Najāshī, the palace of al-Najāshī.

ʿAmr ibn al-ʿĀṣ entered — obviously he entered alone; the rest of his companions had to wait for him — and he made sujūd to the king, as was the tradition. He was very well received, and al-Najāshī told him: welcome, my friend; have you brought me any gifts from your land? He said: yes, I have. O king, I have brought you some hide. And then he presented the king with the pieces of hide he had brought. The king was very happy and pleased with it, and right then and there he distributed some of it to his patriarchs, and the rest he ordered to be registered and recorded, and then deposited and kept in a safe place.

And then ʿAmr ibn al-ʿĀṣ got carried away. He saw how good the reception was and how happy the king was with the gift, so he told the king: O king, I have seen a man come out of your palace who is the messenger of our enemy, the man who has killed the noble among us; will you hand him over to me so that we can kill him? And al-Najāshī immediately hit ʿAmr ibn al-ʿĀṣ in the face. And ʿAmr ibn al-ʿĀṣ said: I thought my nose was broken, and blood started flowing from my nostrils, and I was covering it with my clothes, and I wished that the earth would swallow me, because of the embarrassment I felt and the fear I felt of the king.

And then ʿAmr ibn al-ʿĀṣ said: O king, if I had known that you disliked what I said, I would not have said it. And then the king, al-Najāshī, said: you are asking me, O ʿAmr, to hand over to you the messenger of the man who receives al-Nāmūs al-Akbar? Al-Nāmūs al-Akbar is Jibrīl (peace be upon him). O ʿAmr, you are asking me to hand over to you the messenger of the man who receives al-Nāmūs al-Akbar, so that you may kill him? ʿAmr ibn al-ʿĀṣ said: right then and there I had a change of heart, and I told myself: the Arabs and the non-Arabs recognise the truth, and I do not. And that is when my heart changed.

Subḥān Allāh — look at how Allah (subḥānahu wa taʿālā) guided ʿAmr ibn al-ʿĀṣ. He lived alongside the Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him) for thirteen years in Makkah, and he knew him very well, and he did not become Muslim then; and he becomes a Muslim in the court of al-Najāshī, in a foreign land, at that particular moment. ʿAmr ibn al-ʿĀṣ said: I told al-Najāshī: a-tashhadu bi-dhālik? — is that your witness, your testimony? And al-Najāshī said: naʿam, ashhadu bihi ʿinda Allāh — I testify to it before Allah. And then he said: yā ʿAmr, aṭiʿnī wa-ttabiʿhu, fa-wa-llāhi innahu la-ʿalā al-ḥaqq, wa la-yaẓharanna ʿalā man khālafahu kamā ẓahara Mūsā ʿalā Firʿawna wa junūdih — O ʿAmr, listen to me and follow him, for by Allah he is upon the truth, and he will prevail against all who oppose him, just as Mūsā prevailed against Firʿawn and his soldiers.

And al-Najāshī, in this faraway land — this is his testimony about the Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him). Al-Najāshī was a man of truth; he was a man who understood religion; he was a man who understood history; he was a man who understood the lives of the prophets. And he is giving daʿwah to ʿAmr ibn al-ʿĀṣ. ʿAmr ibn al-ʿĀṣ, who knew about the Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him), and knew about Islam, and knew about the Muslims, was receiving daʿwah from al-Najāshī. The way daʿwah works defies our logic; therefore we should not have any fixed beliefs about it. And one can see amazing things throughout the daʿwah of the Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him): Abū Ṭālib does not become Muslim, while Abū Dharr al-Ghifārī becomes Muslim; Abū Lahab, the uncle of the Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him), does not become Muslim, and Salmān al-Fārisī comes all the way from Persia and becomes Muslim. It defies all rules. Hidāyah, guidance, is something that belongs to Allah:

You do not guide those whom you want; it is Allah who guides whom He wills. ʿAmr ibn al-ʿĀṣ said: at that moment I gave him bayʿah, to become Muslim. And then al-Najāshī took my pledge to follow and obey the Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him), and to become Muslim. Subḥān Allāh — ʿAmr ibn al-ʿĀṣ came with one intention and was going back with another. He came for one objective, and now he was going back a completely different human being. Subḥān Allāh: wa mā yaʿlamu junūda rabbika illā huwa — and none knows the soldiers of your Lord except Him (74:31). Al-Najāshī was a soldier of Allah, and through him came ʿAmr ibn al-ʿĀṣ, this great man — one can read the history of ʿAmr ibn al-ʿĀṣ and see what he did for Islam. His daʿwah, his acceptance of Islam, came through al-Najāshī. He was such a great enemy of Islam, and now he became a Muslim.

And al-Najāshī then ordered some new clothes to be brought for me, because my clothes were soaked in blood. And then I came out, and when my companions saw me wearing new clothes, they were quite happy, and they felt that things were going well. Before I went in, I had told them that I was going to try to convince al-Najāshī to hand over to me ʿAmr ibn al-ʿĀṣ^* so that I could kill him, and that this would gain a good reputation for us with Quraysh. So now they asked him: what did he do? He said: well, I did not feel it was good to propose this to him at our first meeting, but I will do it next time. They said: that is a good idea.

ʿAmr ibn al-ʿĀṣ said: I said I was going off for some business I had — and he did not tell them what his plans were. ʿAmr ibn al-ʿĀṣ left; he took a boat and went towards Madīnah. He just left them without a word. These men whom he had brought out with the intention of fleeing from Muḥammad (peace be upon him) — as soon as he arrived, he left them in Abyssinia and went to Muḥammad (peace be upon him). Hidāyah is a strange thing.