Dimam ibn Tha'labah: the Blunt Bedouin

Shaykh Yasir Qadhi explains:

The second delegation is that of Banū Saʿd ibn Bakr, a tribe you ought to know, because Ḥalīmah al-Saʿdiyyah is from it. They lived around Ṭāʾif and came down to Makkah in the summer months to take the infants of Quraysh into the desert, as we studied years ago. Banū Saʿd is one of the tribes of Hawāzin, and this delegation came before that of Thaqīf, which is next week's subject, Thaqīf being the enemy still unbroken after Ḥunayn.

The difference between Hawāzin and Thaqīf, the two tribes of Ḥunayn, is that Thaqīf were the townsmen of Ṭāʾif and Hawāzin the Bedouin; they are distant cousins going back to the same ancestor, one line settled, the other nomadic. And it is because Ḥalīmah's people were Bedouin that they were the ones who took the children, townspeople do not do that. Bedouin also means rough manners, or none at all, which is exactly why the ḥadīth of Ḍimām is so blunt that it amuses people whenever it is read.

❧Where is the son of Abd al-Muttalib?

The man they sent was not a Muslim; the tribe wanted a treaty. Ḍimām ibn Thaʿlabah was a crude, hairy, gruff chieftain wearing the two long braids the Bedouin men wore in those days, you can still see them in photographs of Saudi Bedouin from seventy or a hundred years ago. He rode his camel right up to the door of the masjid, made it kneel there, walked in and demanded: where is the son of ʿAbd al-Muṭṭalib?

Pause at that. Here is one of the wisdoms in Allah's choosing so prestigious a lineage for His Prophet ﷺ. This is an illiterate Bedouin from a different tribe, and he knows ʿAbd al-Muṭṭalib, and he knows that the man claiming prophethood is his grandson. For these people lineage was everything, and it weighed on their acceptance: if I am to follow someone, let it be a man whose ancestry I can admire. It is also why at Ḥunayn the rallying cry was أَنَا النَّبِيُّ لَا كَذِبْ، أَنَا ابْنُ عَبْدِ الْمُطَّلِبِ. And so he ﷺ answered: أَنَا ابْنُ عَبْدِ الْمُطَّلِبِ, in Arabic ibn covers both son and grandson.

❧I shall be harsh with you

Ḍimām came up to him, the Prophet ﷺ standing, all the Companions seated, and said: are you Muḥammad? He said yes. Then: إِنِّي سَائِلُكَ فَمُشَدِّدٌ عَلَيْكَ, I am going to question you, and I shall be hard on you, so do not be angry with me. At least he had that much adab, to say so first. And the answer: ask whatever you wish.

Your envoy came to us and told us that Allah has sent you., He has spoken the truth. Then the Bedouin builds his melodrama: who created the sky? Allah. Who created the earth? Allah. Who created the mountains? Allah. Who put all this here? Allah. Then: I ask you by the One who created the heavens and the earth and the mountains and placed all this here, has Allah sent you to us? To a mind like his, a man under oath does not lie. And he ﷺ said: by Allah, I am sent by Allah.

Then, one by one, under the same oath: your envoy said we must pray five times a day, I do not trust the envoy; did Allah command you to tell us this? Yes. And the zakāh? Yes. And the fast, and the Ḥajj, and this time the Ḥajj is included, because we are in the ninth year and its command has been revealed; Abū Bakr will lead the Ḥajj the following month.

According to some narrations this is also the Bedouin of the famous ḥadīth of the bare minimum: must I pray anything beyond the five obligatory prayers? No, unless you wish to. Must I give any more zakāh than this? No, unless you wish to. Must I fast a day outside Ramaḍān? No, unless you wish to. And then his oath: by the One who has sent you with the truth, I shall do exactly this, لَا أَزِيدُ عَلَىٰ شَيْءٍ, I will not add one thing to it, nor take anything from it. And he barged out as melodramatically as he had come in. Of him the Prophet ﷺ said: if he is truthful, he shall enter Paradise, this is the bare skeleton of Islam, the five pillars and the avoidance of the major sins, and it suffices.

❧One envoy, one tribe

It is said that Ḍimām went home and began at once to preach to his people; the books of Sīrah record that he was so respected among them that the entire tribe embraced Islam, and that on the same day he destroyed the idol they had worshipped. Ibn Isḥāq transmits from one of the Tābiʿūn that no envoy was ever a greater blessing to his people than Ḍimām, one man going of his own accord, and a whole tribe following him in. And in the shaykh's own view there is something further in it: this is Ḥalīmah's tribe, and Allah had surely placed a barakah in them through that relationship.