Najashi: The Just King, Arian Christianity, and the Minority Model

When the Prophet صلى الله عليه وسلم described the Najashi to the Sahābah, he said: "There is a just king there who does not oppress. A land of truth."

Just. Not Muslim. Not a follower of Islām. Not someone who agreed with the Prophet صلى الله عليه وسلم. A just king. And what made him just? That he did not interfere in the religious practice of his subjects. He allowed people to worship as they believed.

This is a point that the speaker draws out explicitly: allowing freedom of worship is what qualifies a ruler as just. And if that quality is praiseworthy in a Christian king, praised by the Prophet صلى الله عليه وسلم himself, it follows naturally that the Islamic state is required to extend the same protection. And it does. Islamic Sharīʿah guarantees non-Muslims the right to practice their religion in their own spaces, even under a Muslim government. Ibn al-Qayyim and Ibn Taymiyyah both held the view that this protection extends to any religion, not only Judaism and Christianity, including paganism. When the Muslims conquered Persia and the Persians were fire-worshipping Zoroastrians (Majūs, not Ahl al-Kitāb), the companions by unanimous consensus extended to them the protections of the Dhimmah. The Mughal rulers of India applied this to Hindu subjects.

❧The Abyssinian emigration as a model

The Muslims who emigrated to Abyssinia were a minority community in a non-Muslim land with a non-Muslim government. They were not plotting to overthrow the Najashi. They were not refusing to obey his laws. They were not planning to establish an Islamic state in Abyssinia. They were living as a protected minority, worshipping Allah, awaiting Allah's permission to return. They stayed for fourteen years, seven of those after the Hijra, after the Islamic state in Madīnah was fully functioning.

The model is coherent and clear: if a land gives you freedom to worship Allah, you may live there as law-abiding subjects of that land. You are not required to leave. You are not in sin. Your presence is legitimate.

❧The Najashi

His title was Najashi (Arabic) or Negus (English), a title, not a name, like Caesar or Khusraw. His actual name was Ashama (أَصْحَمَة).

When the Muslim delegation, led by Jaʿfar ibn Abī Ṭālib, came before him and explained Islām, Ashama is reported to have said: "This comes from the same well as what Jesus Christ came from." He recognized it instantly.

Why such immediate recognition?

Here the speaker presents a theory that he finds credible and supported by the Hadith tradition: the Council of Nicaea (321 CE), convened by the Emperor Constantine, imposed the Nicene Creed, the doctrine of the Trinity, as official Christianity. The main opponent at that council was a bishop named Arius, who believed Jesus Christ was a created being, not co-equal with God. Arius was expelled and fled southward. His influence, the so-called Arian tradition, may have persisted in certain pockets of East Africa, which is precisely where Abyssinia sits.

If Ashama was heir to a form of pre-Nicene, Arian-influenced Christianity, one that affirmed monotheism, revered Jesus as a prophet, and did not accept the Trinity, then the message Jaʿfar brought him would have been familiar. Not foreign. He would recognize it because it was close to what he already held.

This theory is supported by what Salmān al-Fārisī رضي الله عنه narrated about his long search for truth: he went from teacher to teacher, each saying "I don't know of anyone left on our religion except one person, go to him." Until the final teacher told him: "I don't know of anyone left on our version of Christianity." That version, the one disappearing, was the one closest to true Tawḥīd. Pockets of it survived. Abyssinia may have been one.

❧What Ashama believed

On his deathbed, Ashama is reported to have said the Shahādah. The Prophet صلى الله عليه وسلم learned of his death by revelation and prayed the funeral prayer (Ṣalāt al-Ghāʾib) for him in Madīnah, the only report of the Prophet صلى الله عليه وسلم doing this for someone not present. His grave remains a known location in modern Abyssinia (Ethiopia) to this day.

Allah says in Sūrat al-Māʾidah:

وَلَتَجِدَنَّ أَقْرَبَهُم مَّوَدَّةً لِّلَّذِينَ آمَنُوا الَّذِينَ قَالُوا إِنَّا نَصَارَىٰ

"And you will find the nearest of them in affection to the believers those who say: 'We are Christians.'" (al-Māʾidah 5:82)

The Najashi was the living example.