The Letter to the Muqawqis, and Other Letters

Shaykh Yasir Qadhi explains:

❧EGYPT'S POLITE NON-ANSWER

Al-Muqawqis, a title, like Kisrā and Najāshī, rather than a name, borne by Jurayj ibn Mīnā, ruler of Egypt, received a letter from the Prophet ﷺ whose exact wording has not survived in any authentic report. He responded politely, without converting, sending back cloth, the mule that became known as Duldul, and two Coptic sisters, Māriyah and Shīrīn. Māriyah would go on to bear the Prophet ﷺ his son Ibrāhīm, becoming known as Umm Ibrāhīm. The Prophet ﷺ is reported to have remarked that this politeness, using the word khabīth for the Muqawqis, had preserved his kingdom for the moment, but that Allah would not let it last; Egypt indeed passed into Muslim hands within years of the Prophet's ﷺ death.

❧THE SMALLER LETTERS

The Prophet ﷺ also wrote to the rulers of what is now Oman through ʿAmr ibn al-ʿĀṣ, who embraced Islam, though two centuries later the region turned Ibāḍī and has remained so since. Scholars count over twenty further letters to Arabian tribes. Among them was a letter to Musaylimah al-Kadhdhāb and the tribe of Banū Ḥanīfah, who answered that they would accept Islam only if given a share of power. The Prophet ﷺ replied that the earth belongs to Allah alone, who grants it to whichever of His servants He wills, a refusal whose consequences would play out later in Musaylimah's own story.