The Delegation of Abd al-Qays and al-Ashajj

Shaykh Yasir Qadhi explains:

We begin with one of the earliest delegations of all, that of the tribe of ʿAbd al-Qays. They lived in what was then called al-Baḥrayn, and when the Sīrah says Baḥrayn it does not mean the island; it means the mainland beside it, what we now call the Eastern Province, Dammām and Ẓahrān and that whole coast. Many of the tribes there were Christian, some pagan.

ʿAbd al-Qays sent two delegations: the first in the fifth year of the Hijrah, reckoned perhaps the first delegation ever to come, and the second in the Year of Delegations itself. They are said to be the first tribe outside the Ḥijāz to accept Islam voluntarily, no army ever came to them, which remains a point of pride for them. And consider what the first delegation means: in the fifth year, a tribe on the border of the Persian empire knows the details of Islam although no envoy, no Companion, has ever reached them. The message travelled by itself, they were interested, and they sent a party of converts. The tribe as a whole would convert in the ninth year.

❧The best people of the East

It is mentioned in Ibn Isḥāq and the books of Sīrah that the Prophet ﷺ said in a khuṭbah that a delegation would arrive very shortly, and that they were the best people of the East, and from Madinah, the Eastern Province is the East. They would have been exactly that, since there were no Muslims further east than they. A day or two later ʿUmar ibn al-Khaṭṭāb was in the marketplace, saw the delegates arrive, and leapt up to embrace them and tell them the good news: the Prophet ﷺ said such and such about you. They all rushed off to meet him, all but the youngest of them.

❧Al-hilm wa-l-anah

That youngest man was known as al-Ashajj, not a name, but a nickname meaning the one with the wound, from a scar on his head; his actual name is uncertain, perhaps ʿAbdullāh ibn ʿAwf. While the others hurried forward in their excitement, he stayed behind, bathed, put on good clothes and perfume, and only then went in.

The Prophet ﷺ said to him: إِنَّ فِيكَ لَخَصْلَتَيْنِ يُحِبُّهُمَا اللَّهُ وَرَسُولُهُ, in you are two qualities that Allah and His Messenger love. He asked which, and was told: الْحِلْمُ وَالْأَنَاةُ. Al-ḥilm is forbearance, control of one's temper; al-anāh is not acting in haste, thinking a thing through before doing it, and the two belong together, for the cool-tempered man is not the one who acts rashly.

Then came his question, and it is the question of an intelligent man: these two qualities, did I refine them in myself, or did Allah create me upon them, جَبَلَنِي اللَّهُ عَلَيْهِمَا? The Prophet ﷺ answered: بَلْ جُبِلْتَ عَلَيْهِمَا, rather, you were created upon them. And al-Ashajj's reply: الْحَمْدُ لِلَّهِ الَّذِي جَبَلَنِي, praise be to Allah, who created me upon qualities that He loves. You can tell this is a man who will go far.

Anyone with children knows the truth in that answer. The tarbiyah is the same for all of them, and one is quick-tempered and one is calm, and you know it from infancy. Part of it is within your control and part of it is not, and what is not, the Prophet ﷺ says Allah placed in you.

❧Something to carry home

Then they said: yā Rasūlallāh, between us and you lies the tribe of Muḍar, and they are pagans and at war with us, so we can only reach you in the sacred months, which shows something of the wisdom in those months, when the whole land is at peace and fighting is forbidden. That meant a year at least before they could come again. So: tell us something that will bring us into Paradise and that we can teach our people when we return. An intelligent tribe, asking the right question.

The ḥadīth is agreed upon, al-Bukhārī and Muslim. He ﷺ answered: I command you to have īmān in Allah, and do you know what īmān in Allah is? That you testify to the shahādah, establish the prayer, fast Ramaḍān and pay the zakāh. He stopped there, without mentioning Ḥajj, because it is the fifth year and there is as yet no Ḥajj.

That is also why the ḥadīth is a theological one: he asked وَهَلْ تَدْرِي مَا الْإِيمَانُ, do you know what īmān is, and then defined it with precisely the list that the ḥadīth of Jibrīl gives as the definition of Islam. What then is īmān, what is Islam, and what is the relation between them? That is a question for the ʿaqīdah class, not this one, but it is why the narration is discussed so deeply.

They also mentioned that they lived in a cold country and asked about their drink, the khamr. He ﷺ told them that Allah and His Messenger had forbidden it, and went through what they used one by one by name, al-dubbāʾ, al-ḥantam and the rest, as we would today name whiskey and rum and spirits. Note the knowledge of their own culture that this shows: he named their vessels and drinks individually and forbade each. That was the message he sent home with them.

It is said that they were the first to build a masjid outside the Ḥijāz and the first to hold Jumuʿah outside Madinah, a masjid raised on the far side of the peninsula. The shaykh has heard, though he has not been able to verify it, that the site is still a functioning masjid today.