Urwa ibn Mas'ud al-Thaqafi

ʿUrwah ibn Masʿūd al-Thaqafī was a senior leader of the tribe of Thaqīf, based in al-Ṭā'if, Makkah's sister city. Present in Makkah when the Prophet ﷺ arrived at al-Ḥudaybiyyah for ʿUmrah (6 AH), ʿUrwah, though not himself Qurashī, argued for his own standing among Quraysh by recounting his history of loyal service to them before volunteering as their official negotiator with the Prophet ﷺ.

The Prophet ﷺ explained his peaceful intentions, but ʿUrwah accused him of severing ties of kinship, introducing a strange new religion, and marching on the sanctuary with an army of unfamiliar tribesmen. The Prophet ﷺ answered each charge directly. ʿUrwah then argued from tribal loyalty alone, warning the Prophet ﷺ that his own "medley" of followers, mostly non-Qurashī, would abandon him the instant fighting began. This provoked an uncharacteristically vulgar curse from Abū Bakr, whom ʿUrwah recognized and chose not to answer in kind, since he still owed Abū Bakr an unpaid debt of gratitude for an earlier loan. When ʿUrwah repeatedly grasped at the Prophet's ﷺ beard in a customary gesture of familiarity, his own nephew al-Mughīrah ibn Shuʿbah, now a bodyguard among the Companions, struck his hand away with the hilt of a sword and warned he would lose the hand if he tried again.

ʿUrwah returned to Quraysh transformed. Having witnessed the Companions' reverence for the Prophet ﷺ, competing to catch his spittle and the water of his ablutions, never looking directly at his face out of awe, he told Quraysh he had visited the courts of the Byzantine emperor, the Persian emperor, and the Negus of Abyssinia and had never seen any king shown such devotion. He warned Quraysh they could not hope to defeat such a following and urged them to let the Prophet ﷺ complete his pilgrimage. Quraysh, embarrassed, dismissed his advice as they had Budayl's and al-Ḥulays's. ʿUrwah embraced Islam years later, not long before his martyrdom at the hands of his own people in al-Ṭā'if.