Wa'il ibn Hujr

Wāʾil ibn Ḥujr came from Ḥaḍramawt in Yemen, one of the few parts of Arabia organised into small kingdoms rather than tribes, perhaps a remnant of the age of the Queen of Sheba, and his grandfather had been one of those kings, so he was of royal blood.

Three days before he reached Madinah in 9 AH the Prophet ﷺ announced his coming: there shall come to you Wāʾil ibn Ḥujr, one of the noblemen of Yemen, coming to embrace Islam without any pressure put upon him, رَاغِبًا فِي الْإِسْلَام, so that the Companions would honour him. When he arrived the Prophet ﷺ honoured him as he is hardly recorded to have honoured anyone else: he brought him up onto the minbar beside him, and seated him on his own ridāʾ, the Arab custom of laying down one's cloak for a guest. He complained that his family had taken his right from him, the throne, and was told: I will give you something better than that.

He was given the governorship of a district of Yemen, and the young Muʿāwiyah ibn Abī Sufyān was sent to escort him there, the journey on which Wāʾil, still in his kingly habits, refused him both a place on his camel and the loan of his sandals. Some forty years later he came as a delegate before Muʿāwiyah the caliph, who reminded him of that day. In the civil war he took the side of ʿAlī ibn Abī Ṭālib and fought at Ṣiffīn, as the people of Yemen largely did.