The First Hijra: Fifteen Muslims Emigrate to Abyssinia

After a year and a half of public Dawah, more than a year of open torture, of camel entrails, of burning iron, of choking, of boulder and desert heat, the Prophet صلى الله عليه وسلم gave the first of several permissions to emigrate. He said: "Go to the land of Abyssinia. There is a king there who does not oppress. It is a land of truth. Stay there until Allah brings relief."

This was in Rajab of the fifth year of the Dawah, approximately seven years before the Hijra.

❧What emigration meant

To understand what the Prophet صلى الله عليه وسلم was asking them to do, it is necessary to understand that most of mankind throughout most of history was born, lived, and died within twenty miles of their father's house. Emigration was not a practical adjustment, it was a severing. In Jahili Makkah this was especially acute: your identity, protection, and livelihood were all tied to your tribe in your city. If you left, you entered a world where no one had any obligation to protect you. You could be robbed, killed, enslaved, with no recourse.

On top of this: no bank transfers. You could not take your wealth. If you tried, you would be carrying gold and silver while fleeing for your life. Most emigrants left their property behind, knowing it would be seized. Even in the Hijra to Madīnah, years later, wealthy Sahābah arrived poor.

And Abyssinia was not an Arab land. The language was different. The culture was different. They were going not to somewhere familiar, but into a complete unknown.

That they chose to go rather than stay in Makkah tells us everything we need to know about what Makkah had become for them.

❧The fifteen emigrants

The first group consisted of fifteen people: 11 men and 4 women.

The first to emigrate was ʿUthmān ibn ʿAffān رضي الله عنه, with his wife Ruqayyah, the daughter of the Prophet صلى الله عليه وسلم. The first couple to leave Makkah for the sake of Islām was the Prophet's صلى الله عليه وسلم own son-in-law and daughter.

Among the others: ʿUthmān ibn Maẓʿūn; ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn ʿAwf; Zubayr ibn al-ʿAwwām; Muṣʿab ibn ʿUmayr (who would later be martyred at Uḥud); Abū Salamah al-Makhzūmī and his wife Umm Salamah; and ʿĀmir ibn Rabīʿah and his wife Layla.

The emigrants made their way to the port of Jiddah, a day and a half's walk, and took a ship to Abyssinia.

❧Umar's unexpected compassion

There is a narration in al-Muʿjam of al-Ṭabarānī about one of the four women who migrated: Layla, wife of ʿĀmir ibn Rabīʿah. She was loading the camel in public, packing for Abyssinia, when ʿUmar ibn al-Khaṭṭāb passed by.

He asked where she was going. And she, exhausted and furious, snapped at him: "Because of you! Because of your persecution and your terrorizing, because we cannot worship Allah in our own city, we have to go to another land to find peace."

ʿUmar did not get angry. For the first time, those who saw it noticed something different in his face. He said: "Has the matter reached that level?" He seemed genuinely surprised. And then he said: "May Allah be with you." And walked on.

She was so shocked she could barely process it. When her husband ʿĀmir ibn Rabīʿah came home, she told him excitedly: "Umar ibn al-Khaṭṭāb came by. He was... kind."

Her husband laughed in contempt and said: "You think he is going to accept Islām? Wallāhi, his father's donkeys will become Muslim before Umar does." (Lā ḥimāru bayti al-Khaṭṭāb.)

Two years later, ʿUmar ibn al-Khaṭṭāb said Lā ilāha illā Allāh in Dār al-Arqam. The lesson: we never close the door of guidance on anyone. We never know.

❧Who could not go

The political reality is this: all fifteen emigrants were from the nobility of Quraysh. Every one of them had a tribal lineage that could, at minimum, slow the Quraysh down. They could emigrate because no one would kill them outright before they reached the port.

The people who most needed to leave, Bilāl, ʿAmmār, Ibn Masʿūd, Khabbāb, could not. They were slaves and clients with no tribal protection. If they tried to leave, they would have been dragged back immediately. The ones who most needed Abyssinia were precisely the ones who could not get there.

And yet: those who could go were commanded to go. Islam does not require people to stay and suffer when they can legitimately avoid it. This is akhaffu al-dararayn, always choose the lesser of two harms when both are unavoidable.

❧Umm Salamah's account (Ṣaḥīḥ Bukhārī)

Umm Salamah رضي الله عنها later narrated, in Ṣaḥīḥ Bukhārī: "We began to live in a good land, with good neighbors, and we were safe with regards to our religion and did not fear any persecution."

Her husband Abū Salamah died in Abyssinia. She was left alone, a widow in a foreign land, cut off from her family in Makkah, without a maḥram (male guardian), without a community except the small émigré group. It was out of mercy to her in this situation that the Prophet صلى الله عليه وسلم later sent her a proposal of marriage.

❧Jaʿfar ibn Abī Ṭālib and fourteen years

Jaʿfar ibn Abī Ṭālib رضي الله عنه, the Prophet's صلى الله عليه وسلم cousin, the brother of ʿAlī ibn Abī Ṭālib, came to lead the émigré community in Abyssinia. This is why he did not participate in the Battle of Badr or Uḥud: he was in Abyssinia. He led the Muslim community there for fourteen years.

The emigrants only returned after the Battle of Khaybar, in the seventh year of the Hijra. That is: they were still in Abyssinia seven years after the Hijra, seven years after the founding of the Islamic state in Madīnah. There was a Dār al-Islām functioning, and yet the Abyssinian community was still there.

This is its own lesson: even the existence of a legitimate Islamic state in Madīnah did not make the Abyssinian residence illegitimate or unacceptable. If that was true then, when Madīnah existed, it is even more clearly true in our times, when no such Dār al-Islām exists in the same form.