The Poet of Quraysh: Abdullah ibn al-Zab'ari

Shaykh Yasir Qadhi explains:

ʿAbdullāh ibn az-Zabʿarī of Banū Sahm was the official poet of Quraysh, the man who versified against Islam before and after Badr and Uḥud, and the lifelong rival of Ḥassān ibn Thābit, whom the Prophet ﷺ had told to answer him "and Jibrīl is with you." At the Conquest, though his name was on no death-list, he fled uneasy to Najrān with his cousin. There Ḥassān's scathing poem reached him, mocking his cowardice, and, agreeing with it, he fell to brooding on the message of Islam itself.

Within days he resolved to return: "Why should I not go back to my own kin, my cousin who is the best of mankind?" As he approached the Kaʿbah the Prophet ﷺ told the Companions, "That is Ibn az-Zabʿarī, and I see upon him the light of faith." Before anything could be said, he gave the shahādah and praised Allāh: "I rode horses and camels and walked on foot to oppose you, and fled to Najrān to avoid you, yet Allāh willed good for me... how ignorant I was, worshipping a stone that does not know it is worshipped." The Prophet ﷺ told him Islam wipes away all that came before. He spent the rest of his life praising the Prophet ﷺ in verse as expiation, and was once gifted the Prophet's ﷺ own cloak, an honour rarely given.