The One-Hadith Companions of the Delegations

Shaykh Yasir Qadhi explains:

One of the most interesting things about the delegations is how many standard aḥādīth of fiqh and ʿaqīdah come from Companions who are not famous at all, one-time Companions, the delegates. They came to study, they asked good questions, and what they carried back to their people became the standard evidence. They are still Companions and still honoured, but they are not to be compared with the men of Badr or of Ḥudaybiyyah who lived with him ﷺ; theirs was a single visit.

❧The one explicit hadith on the awrah

One of them came with a delegation from Yemen: Muʿāwiyah ibn Ḥaydah. He asked what may be shown of the ʿawrah and what must be covered, and from whom. There is really only one ḥadīth that is explicit about the ʿawrah, and it is his, narrated by a man who saw the Prophet ﷺ once in his life.

The answer was that you cover it from everyone but your spouse. Then he asked: and if I am entirely alone, with nobody there, must I still cover? And the reply: اللَّهُ أَحَقُّ أَنْ يُسْتَحْيَا مِنْهُ, Allah has more right that you feel shy before Him. Do not walk about uncovered even alone in your house.

❧Those who came only for a du'a

Many came for nothing but the duʿāʾ of the Prophet ﷺ, which is a beautiful reason to travel that far. From the tribe of Banū Kulf, al-Ḥakam ibn Ḥazn, another Companion from whom we have this narration and nothing else: we were about nine men of our tribe, and we entered upon him and said, جِئْنَاكَ يَا رَسُولَ اللَّهِ, we have come to you so that you may pray for us for every good.

He made duʿāʾ for them, he says, and looked after them, and was hospitable, and fed them; and they stayed some days and prayed one Jumuʿah with him. He saw him giving the khuṭbah leaning on a staff or a bow, his Sunnah, and the custom of the age, that a man giving a sermon holds a staff for dignity. And think of what that means in the Year of Delegations: every Jumuʿah there are complete strangers in the masjid hearing one khuṭbah, once, before going home to their people.

Of that sermon he remembered one sentence, and it is corroborated in many other narrations, its root being in al-Bukhārī: O people, do what you can, and know that you will never be able to do everything you have been commanded, وَلَٰكِنْ سَدِّدُوا وَقَارِبُوا. You will not be perfect; you will fall short. So saddidū, aim true and make up here what is missing there; and qāribū, come as close to the mark as you can. If you cannot manage the hundred, do not throw it all away and do nothing, do the ninety, and perhaps Allah forgives the ten and accepts the effort.

❧"The most hated man, and then the most beloved"

And a beautiful one to close with: the delegation led by ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn Abī ʿAqīl, another Companion of whom this single ḥadīth is all we know. He said: I was one of those sent by our tribe, and when we asked permission to enter upon him, there was no one on earth more hateful to us than the man we had come to see. And when we left, there was no one on earth more beloved to us than the man we were leaving.

That reversal is understandable. Some came believing they were being humiliated, that the tribe must surrender its freedom and its idols and take a new faith, angry and hurt, treating him ﷺ as a conqueror they wanted nothing to do with. And then they met him, and after a few days he was the most beloved of people to them.

In the same account, one of their young men said: yā Rasūlallāh, why do you not ask your Lord for a kingdom like the kingdom of Sulaymān? And he ﷺ laughed and said: perhaps your companion has been given something better than the kingdom of Sulaymān. Allah gave every prophet one request that would be granted; some asked for something of this world, and some asked for punishment upon their people, and as for me, I have kept mine between myself and my Lord: it shall be my intercession for my Ummah on the Day of Judgement.