Aḥad, Aḥad
Against believers with clan protection, Quraysh used insult and pressure; against slaves and clients who had none, they used the whip, the sun, and the stone. Bilāl was dragged out by his master Umayyah ibn Khalaf into the noon heat of the valley, a boulder rolled onto his chest, to recant or die; he answered with one word, repeated: “Aḥad, Aḥad” — One, One. Abū Bakr bought him and freed him, as he freed six others tortured for their faith.12
The family of Yāsir — clients without protectors — were tortured in the open. The Prophet ﷺ, passing them and owning nothing with which to ransom them, said: “Patience, family of Yāsir; your appointed place is Paradise.” Sumayyah, mother of ʿAmmār, was murdered by Abū Jahl with a spear: an enslaved old woman, the first martyr of Islam. Khabbāb ibn al-Aratt, the blacksmith, was pressed onto the coals of his own forge. Years later he showed the scars on his back and recalled coming to the Prophet ﷺ as he lay in the shade of the Kaʿbah: “Will you not pray for help for us?” The answer: among those before you a man would be sawn in two and combed with iron combs sooner than leave his religion — “By God, this affair will be completed until a rider travels from Ṣanʿāʾ to Ḥaḍramawt fearing none but God… but you are in haste.”31
The Crossing
In the fifth year of the mission, the Prophet ﷺ told the defenceless among his followers of a land across the Red Sea “where a king rules in whose realm no one is wronged: a land of truth.” In Rajab of that year the first party slipped out — a dozen men and four women, among them ʿUthmān ibn ʿAffān and the Prophet's daughter Ruqayyah. A second, larger emigration followed, until some eighty-three men and their families were in Abyssinia under the protection of the Negus (al-Najāshī), the Christian king of Aksum.14
Jaʿfar Before the King
Quraysh sent two envoys — ʿAmr ibn al-ʿĀṣ and ʿAbdullāh ibn Abī Rabīʿah — with gifts for the Negus and his generals, asking for the fugitives' extradition. Summoned to answer, the emigrants' spokesman Jaʿfar ibn Abī Ṭālib delivered what stands as the first public summary of Islam: “O King, we were a people of ignorance — worshipping idols, eating carrion, committing outrages, severing kinship, wronging the neighbour, the strong among us devouring the weak — until God sent us a messenger from among ourselves whose lineage, truthfulness, trustworthiness, and chastity we knew. He called us to worship God alone… to truthful speech, the keeping of trusts, the ties of kinship… So our people turned on us and tortured us, to return us to the worship of idols.”4
Asked what their prophet said of Jesus, Jaʿfar recited from Sūrat Maryam — the annunciation to the Virgin, the child in the cradle. The Negus wept until his beard was wet, drew a line on the floor with his staff, and said: “What you have recited and what ʿĪsā brought issue from a single niche. Go — for by God, I will never surrender them.” The envoys' gifts were returned. The first hijrah had found asylum under a Christian throne, and the sīrah preserves that when the Negus died years later, the Prophet ﷺ prayed the funeral prayer for him in absentia.45
Two Conversions
In the sixth year, the balance inside Makkah shifted. Ḥamzah ibn ʿAbd al-Muṭṭalib — the Prophet's uncle, hunter and strongest man of Quraysh — returned from the chase to hear that Abū Jahl had abused his nephew; he strode into the assembly, struck Abū Jahl with his bow, and declared himself on his nephew's religion. Days later came ʿUmar ibn al-Khaṭṭāb, who had left his house with a sword to kill the Prophet ﷺ and was turned aside to his own sister's door, where Sūrah Ṭā Hā was being read; he read, and was overcome, and went to the house by Ṣafā to submit. With ʿUmar, the believers prayed at the Kaʿbah openly for the first time.16