Abu Sufyan Before Heraclius

Shaykh Yasir Qadhi explains:

❧AN AUTHENTIC HADITH, RETOLD

This narration, agreed upon by Bukhārī and Muslim, was covered in detail years earlier in this series; the shaykh revisits its outline. The Roman ruler of his era was Heraclius (r. 610–641 CE), a celebrated general credited with reversing near-total defeat at Persian hands, the very reversal foretold in Sūrat al-Rūm after the Sassanid emperor Khusrau Parvez had overrun Iraq, Syria, Damascus, and Jerusalem, and pushed into Egypt. Heraclius counterattacked and by 628 CE had besieged the Sassanid capital of Ctesiphon itself, forcing Khusrau to flee, the very year the Prophet ﷺ was alive to see the Qur'an's prediction fulfilled. Heraclius was also unusually learned in Christian theology, having tried and failed to reconcile the Monophysite and Dyophysite factions with a compromise creed that satisfied neither.

❧THE LETTER REACHES JERUSALEM

The Prophet ﷺ sent the letter via Diḥyah al-Kalbī to the governor of Buṣrā, a Roman-influenced Arab town south of Damascus where Meccan trade caravans regularly did business, to be forwarded to the Emperor. By coincidence, Heraclius happened to be in Jerusalem at the time, so the letter arrived quickly.

❧THE INTERROGATION

Abū Sufyān, then trading in Buṣrā and not yet a Muslim, was summoned along with a group of other Arabs to Jerusalem. Asked who was the Prophet's ﷺ closest kinsman present, Abū Sufyān, of Banū Umayyah, three generations removed from the Prophet's ﷺ own line of Banū Hāshim, stepped forward. Heraclius seated him in front, with his companions behind him out of sight, and instructed them to signal if he lied, a shrewd trap, since any one of them would have gladly exposed him. Abū Sufyān later admitted that only this fear of exposure kept him honest.

Heraclius then worked through a careful sequence: is the claimant of noble lineage? Has anyone claimed prophethood in this land before him? Were his ancestors kings? Do the noble or the humble follow him? Are his followers growing or shrinking? Do converts ever abandon him? Has he ever been known to lie or break a promise? What does he command? To each, Abū Sufyān answered truthfully, noble lineage, no prior claimant, no royal ancestry, followers drawn from the poor and growing in number, no apostates, no known falsehood, and a call to worship Allah alone, to pray, to speak truth, and to honor kinship ties.

❧THE VERDICT

Heraclius reasoned through each answer as a mark of true prophethood: no history of political ambition in the family, no precedent of false claims to imitate, the poor accepting truth before the rich as they always have, growing rather than dwindling followers, no apostates because true faith never truly leaves a heart it has entered, and a lifetime of honesty that made a lie about God unthinkable. He said that if this were all true, the claimant would soon stand where Heraclius himself now stood, adding that Rome's scriptures had foretold such a prophet, though not from among the Arabs.

❧THE LETTER ITSELF

Only then did Heraclius call for the letter to be read: the basmalah, then from Muḥammad, servant and messenger of Allah, to Heraclius, the Great One of Rome, accept Islam and be safe, and Allah will give you a double reward; but if you refuse, the sin of the al-Arīsiyyīn will fall upon you (a term the shaykh returns to later), closing again with the verse of Āl ʿImrān. An uproar followed in the royal court, and the Arabs were dismissed. Abū Sufyān told his companions that the matter of Ibn Abī Kabshah, a scornful nickname for the Prophet ﷺ, had grown so large that even the Roman Emperor feared him; by his own account, this was the first moment faith entered his heart, though his actual conversion would not come for years, at the conquest of Mecca, and even then only reluctantly.