The Preacher of the Fairs
Barred from his own city's assemblies, the Prophet ﷺ carried the message to the tribes at the pilgrimage seasons and the fairs of ʿUkāẓ, Majannah, and Dhū'l-Majāz — walking the encampments to say: “Say lā ilāha illa'Llāh and you will succeed” — with Abū Lahab often trailing him to shout him down. Kindah, Banū Ḥanīfah, Banū ʿĀmir: the refusals were sometimes polite, sometimes brutal, once nakedly political — Banū ʿĀmir asked to inherit the rule after him, and were told the matter belonged to God.12
Six Men of Khazraj
In the pilgrimage season of the eleventh year, at the defile called ʿAqabah near Minā, he came upon six men of the tribe of Khazraj from Yathrib — an oasis exhausted by generations of civil war between its tribes of Aws and Khazraj, and home to Jewish clans who had long spoken of a prophet soon to appear. Hearing him, the six said to one another: “By God, this is the prophet the Jews threatened us with — let no one reach him before us!” They believed, and carried Islam home, saying: perhaps God will unite our people by him — “and no house of the Anṣār remained without mention of the Messenger of God.”13
The Two Pledges
The next season, twelve men met him at the same defile and swore the First Pledge of ʿAqabah: to associate nothing with God, not to steal, not to commit adultery, not to kill their children, not to slander, and not to disobey him in what was right. He sent back with them Muṣʿab ibn ʿUmayr — a young man raised in luxury who had left everything for Islam — as the first envoy and teacher of Islam. Within a year, through Muṣʿab's patient work, the chiefs Usayd ibn Ḥuḍayr and Saʿd ibn Muʿādh had submitted, and with them virtually all their clan.14
In the pilgrimage of 622 came the Second Pledge: seventy-three men and two women of Yathrib met the Prophet ﷺ secretly at ʿAqabah in the dead of night, his uncle al-ʿAbbās — still a pagan — attending to see his nephew's protection formally assumed. This was a pledge of war: to shelter and defend him as they defended their own wives and children. As-ʿAbbās ibn ʿUbādah asked leave to fall on the pilgrims of Makkah with swords in the morning; the Prophet ﷺ answered: “We have not been commanded to that.” Twelve deputies — nuqabāʾ — were appointed over the new community, and one of the Anṣār asked: “And what is for us, O Messenger of God, if we fulfil this?” He said: “Paradise.” They said: “Stretch out your hand.”135
The Door Opens
Quraysh got wind of the meeting by morning and its meaning was lost on no one: the preacher they had contained for a decade now had a fortified city, sixty miles of lava field away, athwart their caravan road to Syria. The believers began slipping north in small parties — ʿUmar, characteristically, is said to have left openly. Within two months, Makkah held few Muslims but the Prophet ﷺ himself, Abū Bakr — who had bought two camels and kept them in readiness — ʿAlī, and the detained and the ill. The Prophet ﷺ waited only for permission.12