The News From Qubāʾ

Salmān said, "I knew that this was it." Salmān said, "The Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him) was sent, and he spent years in Makkah, and I had no idea about it, because I was busy in the toils of slavery." A slave is busy with work and doesn't have an idea of what's going on around him in the world. So Salmān said, "I had no idea that the Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him) was already preaching the message." So Salmān said: one day I was working on top of a palm tree, and my master was sitting under the palm tree. He said, one of his cousins came to him, and he was angry — you could see the anger on his face — and he said, "May God damn the children of Qaylah." Children of Qaylah is a name that was given to al-Aws and al-Khazraj — the Jews used to call al-Aws and al-Khazraj "Banū Qaylah." He said, "May God damn them, they have assembled in Qubāʾ in support of a man who came from Makkah who claims to be a prophet."

Salmān said, "When I heard that, a chill went down my spine, and I started to tremble," and he was almost going to fall down from the palm tree and land on his master. Salmān had been waiting for this moment for years. He had given up his life, he had left his family, left his homeland, and come into foreign lands, different language, different culture, different people. In those days, it wasn't easy to travel and go among people who are foreign — it's not like today, when you can have interpreters and translators and access to people who would speak your language; in those days, it was very difficult. So Salmān had had to leave Persia, and then he went to al-Shām, and then he went to Turkey and Iraq, and now he was in the land of the Arabs, which is a very secluded area — the land of the Arabs is surrounded by deserts, it doesn't have contact with the outside world; the Persians were away from it, the Romans were away from it, it was a very secluded land, very difficult, very harsh. And Salmān was living alone as a slave — imagine the feelings of homesickness that such a person would have, sold as a slave, living in a foreign land, and now he had heard the news he had been waiting for for years.

He said, "I came running down the street, and I went to the man, and I was questioning him — I was asking him questions." He said my master grabbed me and punched me in my face and told me it's none of your business, go back to work. Salmān said, later on that evening, I prepared some food, and I travelled to Qubāʾ, because Qubāʾ is outside Madīnah — Qubāʾ is on the outskirts of Madīnah, and that's where the Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him) first arrived, and he built Masjid Qubāʾ; but it was considered — now it's pretty much in the district of Madīnah, but in those days it was considered an independent village. Salmān said: I took some food with me, and I went to visit the Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him) at night. He said: I came in, and I told Muḥammad (peace be upon him), "I heard that you are a very good man, and that you have companions who are strangers and needy, so I have brought you this food as charity, and I think that you are the one who deserves it most." And I handed it to him. He said, "The Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him) received the food from me, and then he told his companions to go ahead and eat, but he didn't join in with them." Sign number one: he doesn't eat charity.