The Return of Jafar, and the People of Two Hijrahs

Shaykh Yasir Qadhi explains:

❧TWO JOYS IN ONE DAY

On the very day the last of Khaybar fell, Jaʿfar ibn Abī Ṭālib arrived from Abyssinia with around fifty Muslim men and women. He had been gone over a decade, an older cousin, with a relationship to the Prophet ﷺ quite unlike young ʿAlī's, and deeply beloved to him. The Prophet ﷺ stood, kissed his forehead, and said he did not know which of the two made him happier: the conquest of Khaybar or the return of Jaʿfar.

Though the Abyssinian emigrants had not fought at Khaybar, they were all given shares of its spoils, Allah does not ignore the sacrifice of those who sacrificed. Theirs were hardships no other Muslims of that era knew: a foreign land, language, and civilization for more than ten years, including a civil war in which the Najāshī, whose nephew rose against him, kept a secret ship ready so the Muslims could flee if he were killed. Most of Abyssinia's details, the shaykh laments, were never preserved; only fragments remain.

❧THE TWO HIJRAHS

Shortly after the return, Asmāʾ bint ʿUmays, one of the Abyssinian emigrants, was visiting her old friend Ḥafṣah when ʿUmar ibn al-Khaṭṭāb entered and, learning who she was, teased her: the seafaring lady! We have more right to the Prophet ﷺ than you, for we emigrated to Medina with him. Asmāʾ snapped back with all the pent frustration of the exiles: no, by Allah, you were with him all these years, consoled in grief and fed in hunger, while we toiled in a strange land with no one; and she swore not to eat or drink until she had told the Prophet ﷺ exactly what ʿUmar said. She did just that, before everyone in the masjid.

The Prophet ﷺ ruled: he has no more right over me than you. Tell him, he and his companions made one hijrah, but you, the people of the ship, made two. Asmāʾ went back flaunting the verdict, and the news spread like wildfire; the Abyssinian returnees came to her house all day to hear it directly, and the narration says they were never happier than on that day.

All this happiness would soon be tempered, the death of Jaʿfar was not far away, a story for its own time.