Abdullah ibn Urayqit

A Bedouin guide from a tribe outside of the Quraysh, hired by Abū Bakr to lead the Prophet ﷺ and him on the secret Hijrah route from Makkah to Madinah. He was not a Muslim at the time, he was a pagan (mushrik), but was known as an honest and trustworthy man who knew the desert routes that few others traveled.

His role was to meet the Prophet ﷺ and Abū Bakr on the morning after the third night in the Cave of Thawr and lead them not via the main road to Madinah (which would have been watched) but via a circuitous route that went south and west toward the coast, near what is now Jeddah, and then north toward Madinah along a coastal path. This route, now called Ṭarīq al-Hijrah (the Highway of Hijrah), is effectively the same path as the modern highway connecting Makkah to Madinah.

He also wrote the amān (safe conduct document) for Surāqah ibn Mālik at the Prophet ﷺ's direction, a remarkable scene: a pagan scribe writing a document of protection for another pagan, at the command of the Prophet ﷺ, on a desert road.

Ibn Ḥajar al-ʿAsqalānī, the great hadith scholar, wrote that he searched the biographical dictionaries (kutub al-rijāl) for any information about ʿAbdullāh ibn Urayqiṭ after the Hijrah and found nothing. Whether he accepted Islam is unknown.