Kisrā Tears His Letter

The next letter was sent to Kisrā, the Persian emperor, and this letter was sent with ʿAbdullāh ibn Ḥudhāfah. According to one narration, the letter was read in front of Kisrā: In the name of Allah, the Merciful, the Beneficent. From Muḥammad, the Messenger of Allah, to Kisrā the Persian, the great one of the Persians. Peace be upon him who follows right guidance, believes in Allah and His Messenger, and declares that there is no deity but Allah, the only God, who has no partners, and that Muḥammad is His servant and messenger. I wish to convey to you Allah's call, for I am Allah's messenger to all mankind, sent with the task of warning all those who are alive that doom will befall the unbelievers. If you submit to Allah, you will be safe; if you refuse, you shall bear the responsibility for the Magians.

Kisrā was angry. He said: how dare he write this sort of letter to me, when he is my slave! And then he ordered his governor of Yemen to send two able-bodied men to arrest Muḥammad (peace be upon him). Look at the arrogance and the pride, and look at how they used to view the Arabs — as their slaves, since they were not people with a great kingdom like theirs. So he sent this letter to Bādhān, who was the Persian ruler of Yemen — Yemen at the time had been invaded by the Persians. So Bādhān sent two men, one of them named Bābawayh and the other Khurkhusrah, to arrest Muḥammad (peace be upon him). They did not march forth in an army; they just went alone. The reputation they had was sufficient; they did not need to show force and go out with soldiers. Just the two of them travelled alone.

When they reached al-Ṭāʾif, they asked: where is Muḥammad? They were told: he is in Madīnah. And the people of al-Ṭāʾif and Quraysh were very happy; they said: that is it; this is the end of the Muslims. These two men came to Madīnah and delivered their instructions to Muḥammad (peace be upon him). They said: Khosrow, the king of kings, has written to Bādhān, the king of Yemen, commanding him to send us to take you to him. If you comply, Bādhān will write to the king of kings interceding on your behalf, and this will spare you a great deal of trouble. If you reject his order — you know how powerful he is — he is sure to destroy you and your people, as well as your country.

The Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him) answered them and said: who ordered you to shave your beards? They had their beards shaven — and the Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him) disliked that — and they had long moustaches. So the Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him) told them: who ordered you to shave your beards? They said: our lord. The Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him) said: but my Lord has commanded me to wear a beard and to trim my moustache. And then he told them to wait until the next day. This particular narration is a narration from the sīrah; it is not a narration from the hadith.

The next day, when they came, the Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him) told them: my Lord has killed your lord this night. They said: do you realise what you are saying? Your arrest has been ordered for something much more trivial than this. Do you still wish us to write this down and inform King Bādhān of what you have just said? The Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him) said: yes; tell him also on my behalf that my religion and my kingdom will replace that of Kisrā and will sweep all before it; tell him also that if he accepts Islam, I will give him what he has now under his authority, and will make him ruler of the area he now governs. And then he gave them a gift and ordered them to leave — whenever a delegation was received, the tradition was to give them something as a gift, as was just seen before.

They told the Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him): what you are saying is very dangerous; to claim that Kisrā has been killed is very dangerous; we have instructions to arrest you for something less, and this crime is very grave. Do you know the consequences of what you say? The Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him) told them: yes; go, and also tell him this: that my kingdom will take over his. They went back to Bādhān, and Bādhān said: these words are not the words of a king; these are the words of a prophet. But let us wait and see; let us wait until some news reaches us about Kisrā. A while later — because it takes a long time for a message to be dispatched — they received information that Kisrā had been killed, on the exact night the Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him) had said. Bādhān became Muslim; he knew this was a miracle from Allah, and that this was the Messenger of Allah; so he became Muslim, and that was the beginning of the spread of Islam in Yemen.

The new Kisrā — this Kisrā who was now ruling was the one who had killed his father — sent a letter to Bādhān telling him: I killed my father because of what he did to our noblemen, and I want you to stop doing anything regarding the prophet my father sent you a letter to arrest. When Kisrā received the letter of the Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him), what had he done? He tore it apart. The Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him) said: mazzaqa Allāhu mulkah — Allah will tear apart his kingdom (see al-Bukhārī 64). And that is what happened: the Muslims conquered the entire kingdom of the Persian Empire, the empire of Kisrā.