The Alliance of the Virtuous

Some years after the Fijār Wars, when the Prophet ﷺ was about twenty, a nobler event took place. A merchant of the tribe of Zubaid, come from Yemen for the pilgrimage, sold goods to al-ʿĀṣ ibn Wāʾil, a rich and powerful chief of Quraysh, father of ʿAmr ibn al-ʿĀṣ, who then withheld his payment, putting him off day after day. The man had no clan in Mecca to defend him, and when he appealed to the sub-tribes of Quraysh, each made excuses, unwilling to cross so great a man.

So he climbed beside the Kaʿbah at the gathering hour and cried out his grievance in verse:

يَا آلَ فِهْرٍ لِمَظْلُومٍ بِضَاعَتُهُ ... بِبَطْنِ مَكَّةَ نَائِي ٱلدَّارِ وَٱلنَّفَرِ

"O house of Fihr, here is one wronged of his goods, in the heart of Mecca, far from home and kin." He declared that there is no sanctity for the treacherous and the sinful, however holy the land in which they dwell.

Stirred by this, the Prophet's ﷺ elder uncle az-Zubayr ibn Abdul-Muttalib summoned the chiefs of Quraysh to the house of Abdullah ibn Judʿān, the most honoured and hospitable man of Mecca, and there they swore a pact: that they would stand with the oppressed against the oppressor, whoever he might be, until the wronged was given his due, even were the wronged a stranger and the oppressor of Quraysh themselves. They sealed it by dipping their hands in perfume and touching the Kaʿbah, and so it was called Ḥilf al-Muṭayyabīn, the Pact of the Perfumed; it is also called Ḥilf al-Fuḍūl. And the man of Zubaid was given his right.

The Prophet ﷺ, the youngest present, never forgot it. He said, as recorded in al-Bukhārī: "I witnessed in the house of Abdullah ibn Judʿān a pact I would not exchange for red camels; and were I called to it now, in Islam, I would answer." So a covenant of justice, sworn among pagans, was honoured by the Messenger of Allah ﷺ himself.