The Prophet's Announcement of the Land of Hijrah

After the Second Pledge of Aqabah, the Prophet ﷺ made a formal announcement to the Muslims, most likely in the house of Dār al-Arqam. Allah had shown him the destination in a dream.

He said: "Allah has shown me the land that you shall emigrate to. I saw it in a dream. It is a land of date palms, bayna labbatayn, between two volcanic plains."

A labbah (لَابَة) is a volcanic plain, an expanse of hardened, porous, jagged lava rock, impossible to traverse by horse, hostile to walking. Madinah sits in a basin surrounded by exactly such formations. If you fly into Madinah in daylight and look down, you see them clearly: large stretches of dark, porous volcanic rock outside the city, remnants of ancient eruptions.

At first the Prophet ﷺ said, "I think it is such-and-such," not yet certain of the exact city. Later he clarified: "Allah has told me it is Yathrib." He had initially considered Khaybar, another oasis city famous for its date palms, or a city in Yemen, both of which also have dates. But neither has both signs: date palms and volcanic plains on all sides. Only Yathrib has both.

With the announcement came permission: the Muslims could begin to emigrate. They started moving in ones and twos, secretly. Every departure was a risk, the Quraysh would not willingly allow the Muslim community to consolidate elsewhere. The secret nature of the emigration was essential.

Abu Salamah ibn ʿAbd al-Asad was the first to go, and he went openly, not secretly. That cost him dearly. His openness became a lesson: what followed were sixteen months of brutal separation for his wife Umm Salamah and a daring rescue for the imprisoned companions Ayyāsh and Hishām. The early emigrants discovered that this Hijra would demand of them everything they had.