The Delegation of Daws: Tufayl ibn Amr and the Cotton in his Ears

Shaykh Yasir Qadhi explains:

The delegations ran from the fifth year to the ninth, and we skipped most of the earlier ones because we were in a hurry to reach Khandaq and Ḥudaybiyyah and the other great episodes; and in truth we do not know the exact month or year of most of them. Even Ibn Isḥāq gathers delegations of the seventh and eighth years here, because this is where they belong thematically. So we too will move back and forth chronologically.

We begin with the earliest of today's, going back perhaps to the seventh or eighth year: the delegation of Daws, a Yemeni tribe whose chieftain was Ṭufayl ibn ʿAmr al-Dawsī.

❧Cotton in the ears

Ṭufayl's own story begins far earlier. He came to Makkah for ʿUmrah while the Prophet ﷺ was still being persecuted, perhaps the seventh, eighth or ninth year of the daʿwah, when the pressure had not yet reached the level of assassination but Quraysh had a standing policy of warning every visitor. As the chieftain of a whole tribe he was greeted warmly, and then cautioned: one of our own has become a magician, a sāḥir, who can split a father from his son and a brother from his brother, merely listening to him leaves you spellbound.

They kept at it, he said, until he was frightened of the man; so much so that when he went to the Kaʿbah to present himself before the idols he would stuff his ears with cotton, so as not to hear a word. And one day he came to an idol with his ears stopped, and the Prophet ﷺ was praying and reciting Qurʾān. Cotton does not block everything. He heard, and he had never heard anything like it, and it worked on him, so he began to reprimand himself: why can you not listen to him? You are an intelligent man, a poet, you know truth from falsehood. Listen. If there is good in it, take it; if not, leave it.

He pulled out the cotton and went to the Prophet ﷺ and said plainly: your people came to me warning me against you, and for days I have kept away, but I have heard you recite, and I want to hear what you have to say. If it is good, so be it; if it is bad, so be it. A forthright man. The Prophet ﷺ sat him down, explained Islam and recited to him, it is said only al-Falaq, al-Nās and al-Ikhlāṣ, the last three sūrahs, and Ṭufayl embraced Islam on the spot.

❧Allahumma-hdi Dawsan

He said: I will go back to my tribe and call them; make duʿāʾ for me. And the Prophet ﷺ prayed for him and for his tribe. The portion in al-Bukhārī is the duʿāʾ itself, said three times: اللَّهُمَّ اهْدِ دَوْسًا، اللَّهُمَّ اهْدِ دَوْسًا، اللَّهُمَّ اهْدِ دَوْسًا, O Allah, guide Daws. Some historians place this duʿāʾ in Makkah and some in Madinah, since Ṭufayl visited him ﷺ in both; we do not know exactly when it was said. He was also told: go back to your people and be gentle with them, do not be harsh, and perhaps they will be guided.

He went back and kept calling. It is said that on the very day he returned his father, his mother and his wife accepted Islam one after another; he was beloved among his people and he was their chief, and slowly more and more followed, until over eighty families of Daws had embraced Islam at his hands. He also made the Prophet ﷺ an offer while still in Makkah: why not come to my protected fortress, emigrate to my land, to Yemen. Here was a refuge offered before Madinah, and he ﷺ did not take it; Allah gave him no permission to, because Allah had willed Yathrib. But that the offer was made at all is significant.

❧Giving up a chieftainship

Later Ṭufayl decided to emigrate, not merely to come as a delegate and go home, but to give up being chieftain, leave his tribe and become a muhājir. It is easy to say; picture what it meant. He was not being persecuted where he was. He had status, ʿizzah, lineage and land, and he laid it down. And the faith of those who had accepted Islam with him was strong enough that many came with him. He reached Madinah around the time of Khaybar, some reports say at it, some after it.

❧And out of it came Abu Hurayrah

Here is what makes the story extraordinary. Ṭufayl embraced Islam, asked for a duʿāʾ, went back to his people, and among those who converted at his hands, from the tribe of Daws, was ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn Ṣakhr al-Dawsī: Abū Hurayrah. He converted at Ṭufayl's hands in Yemen and emigrated with him, most likely in the middle of the eighth year, so that he kept the Prophet's ﷺ company for barely two years. And yet no one narrated the quantity of ḥadīth that Abū Hurayrah narrated, over five thousand five hundred, more than any other Companion; ʿĀʾishah and Jābir come to four thousand and more, but he is first on that list.

Why? He explained it himself: he gave up everything, marriage and the pursuit of a living, and stayed in the masjid with no food and no possessions simply to be with the Prophet ﷺ. He would say that sometimes, half-starved, he would ask a Companion outside a question he had no need of and already knew the answer to better than the man himself, hoping the answer would carry them as far as the man's door, where he might be offered something to eat.

Now: every ḥasanah of Abū Hurayrah's is his in full, and who else has a share in them? Ṭufayl ibn ʿAmr, who guided him. Most people have never heard of Ṭufayl. So never trivialise any good deed you do; you have no idea what it becomes.