The Journey to Ṭāʾif and the Duʿāʾ of Ṭāʾif

Speaker framing: Dr. Yasir Qadhi introduces this as one of the most famous and emotionally significant stories in the entire Seerah, the one we all hear as children. He works from the Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī narration of ʿĀʾishah as well as Ibn Isḥāq's detailed account.

❧WHY HE LEFT MAKKAH AT ALL

For ten straight years the Prophet ﷺ never once thought of leaving Makkah. Through every boycott, every mockery, every torture of his followers, he remained part of his city. Only when it became politically impossible to stay did he begin thinking of another city. Abū Ṭālib died; Khadījah died; Abū Lahab granted protection and then withdrew it, and the whole Abū Lahab episode lasted at most twenty or thirty days. The moment that protection was gone, the speaker says, he was in the position of what we would today call an illegal alien, no visa status, no protection, anything could happen to him at any moment and nobody would answer for it.

The lesson the speaker draws from this is deliberate and pointed: the base ruling is that a person remains in the society he feels a part of, even if it is an evil society, even if it is an Islamophobic society, even if that society has real problems. Nūḥ ʿalayhi al-salām stayed with his people for nine hundred and fifty years. He did not throw in the towel. He stayed and battled it out, at least verbally. And the Prophet ﷺ did Hijrah, yes, but when? When life became impossible to live in Makkah. As long as it was possible, he stayed. The speaker notes that the voices which once preached constant Hijrah have largely gone quiet, because they eventually asked themselves: move where?

❧THE WORST DAY (from Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī)

ʿĀʾishah (رَضِيَ اللَّهُ عَنْهَا) asked the Prophet ﷺ: "O Messenger of Allāh, was there ever a day more difficult for you than the Day of Uḥud?" ʿĀʾishah was not cognizant of the Makkan Seerah; from the life she had shared with him, Uḥud, where he was nearly killed and took two or three wounds, was the worst she could imagine.

The Prophet ﷺ answered immediately: "Yes." He called it the Day of ʿAqabah, after the mountain pass outside Ṭāʾif where the stoning happened. "Indeed your people have hurt me a great deal, and the worst was the Day of ʿAqabah. I presented myself to ʿAbd Yālīl ibn ʿAbd Kulāl, and they did not respond the way I wanted. And so I found myself in grief and sadness, and I did not realize where I was until I reached Qarn al-Thaʿālib." Qarn al-Thaʿālib (also called Qarn al-Manāzil, the mīqāt point) is some seven to eight kilometres outside the city.

Note how he phrased it, the speaker says: "they did not respond the way I wanted." That is all. He did not want ʿĀʾishah's pity, so he left out the sordid details entirely. Those details are for others to narrate to us. Although Uḥud was worse physically, near death, Ṭāʾif was worse psychologically, and a trauma that wounds the heart is harder to bear than one that wounds the body.

❧THE STATE OF SHOCK, AND RECOVERING FROM IT

"Fa lam ashʿur", I had no idea where I was, until I found myself at Qarn al-Manāzil. He walked seven or eight kilometres without registering it. In our language, he was in a state of shock. The speaker is emphatic that there is nothing wrong with this: when something traumatic happens, it is natural not to know what is happening, natural to withdraw for a while. But you do not let the shock remain forever. You recover your wits, as he ﷺ recovered his, and then you think rationally rather than reacting emotionally. The Prophet ﷺ did not react emotionally; he reacted long-term.

The speaker applies this directly: things happen daily that make our blood boil, national news, foreign policy, one thing after another. We do not react emotionally. We react the way he ﷺ reacted, calm, collected, and long-term, and where we do not know, we turn to those with knowledge and look for the long-term benefit.

❧A MUSLIM DOES NOT WHINE

Were it not for ʿĀʾishah asking and prodding him, he would never have said "the worst day I ever had was Ṭāʾif." He would not have said it at all. A Muslim is not somebody who whines for sympathy, who plays the victim, who says "look how poor we are." The speaker calls this out as a habit the American Muslim community in particular needs to break: our ʿizzah (dignity) comes from Allāh, not from groveling in front of others. He ﷺ suffered worse than any of us and did not grovel for sympathy even from those who loved and respected him, let alone from those who opposed him.

❧WHY ṬĀʾIF

Ṭāʾif was the natural choice: the closest large city to Makkah, and its twin. Quraysh and Thaqīf had a love-hate relationship, so close that they could afford neither too much animosity nor real peace, so it alternated between rivalry and treaty. Allāh references the pair in the Quran when He quotes al-Walīd ibn al-Mughīrah, Surah al-Zukhruf 43:31: "Wa qālū lawlā nuzzila hādha-l-Qurʾānu ʿalā rajulin mina-l-qaryatayni ʿaẓīm (وَقَالُوا لَوْلَا نُزِّلَ هَٰذَا الْقُرْآنُ عَلَىٰ رَجُلٍ مِّنَ الْقَرْيَتَيْنِ عَظِيمٍ)", why was this Quran not sent down to a great man from one of the two cities? Al-Walīd, the father of Khālid ibn al-Walīd, said it out of jealousy: why not to me, or to someone of Ṭāʾif?

Ṭāʾif was also the right choice because the two cities knew each other family by family, unlike a strange city where he would have been an unknown. One of the very chieftains he went to address was married to a distant aunt of the Prophet ﷺ, not an immediate daughter of ʿAbd al-Muṭṭalib, but a distant aunt of Quraysh, so there was even a blood tie.

❧THE SECRET DEPARTURE

In Shawwāl, Year 10, the very month of Khadījah's death and a few weeks after Abū Ṭālib's, the Prophet ﷺ set out in secret. He did not publicize it, because had it been known, anyone could have stopped him or harmed him on the spot. He and Zayd ibn Ḥārithah, his adopted son, went on foot, no camel, no horse, so as to arouse no suspicion, as though he were simply going for a stroll through town. Ṭāʾif is a day and a half to two days' walk, up winding mountain roads that take an hour and a half by car today. A mount would have been enormously helpful. He went without one anyway.

This shows the tactics and the planning of the Prophet ﷺ. Trusting in Allāh does not mean acting foolishly. It means you plot your plan to perfection, crossing every T and dotting every I, and then in your heart you realize it is up to Allāh.

There is also a symbolism in the walk itself. By leaving the city he was, literally and metaphorically, turning his back on the last ties he had to Quraysh. He was living in a gray area, in limbo, since Abū Lahab had withdrawn protection. To make any move at all was to accept that status and cut himself off.

❧THE THREE CHIEFTAINS OF THAQĪF

Ṭāʾif belonged to the tribe of Thaqīf as Makkah belonged to Quraysh, and the two were perpetual rivals. Ṭāʾif was ruled by three brothers: ʿAbd Yālīl, Masʿūd, and Ḥabīb, the sons of ʿAmr. When their father the chieftain died, they made a strange treaty among themselves, no fighting over succession, all three would rule simultaneously by Shura. The Prophet ﷺ arranged a meeting, told them he was in town and needed to speak with them, presented the message of Islam to all three, and asked them to accept it.

All three rejected, in the utmost sarcastic manner:

First brother: "If Allāh has sent you as a Prophet, I might as well tear down the curtains of the Kaaba!"

Second brother: "Has Allāh not found anyone better than you?"

Third brother: "I cannot speak to you. Because if you really are a Prophet, then you are too holy for me to address. And if you are a liar, then you are too far beneath my dignity for me to answer."

The Prophet ﷺ stood up to leave and said: "Very well. If you have rejected my message, then at least do not tell the Quraysh of my visit." It appears they granted him this, and the Quraysh did not hear of it immediately. Even at the very end of a total rejection, he was still tying his camel, still planning, because if Quraysh heard of the failed attempt his position in Makkah would collapse further. He did not simply say "I put my trust in Allāh." Tawakkul comes after the vision and the plan, not instead of them.

❧A WEEK PREACHING IN ṬĀʾIF

According to the more authentic reports, he did not leave immediately. Ibn Isḥāq says he stayed many days; another report says six or seven. He preached in the souq, the marketplace, to the ordinary people. We have authentic reports of later converts from Ṭāʾif recalling: "I remember the Prophet ﷺ preaching in the marketplace of Ṭāʾif, and nobody responded to his call." Nobody converted.

The lesson: you approach those with power, money, status, the politicians and noblemen, first. It is human nature that when a powerful or famous person converts, the masses follow, and it is not un-Islamic to give the leadership more emphasis. What is un-Islamic is to ignore the common folk when they come to you, which is exactly why ʿAbasa wa tawallā an jāʾahu-l-aʿmā (80:1-2) was revealed. Leaders first; then, when they reject, the masses.

❧WHY WE HAVE SO FEW DETAILS

The speaker pauses on a point worth noting: the only Muslim present for the entire trip was Zayd. And Zayd died at the Battle of Muʾtah, before the Prophet ﷺ. He did not live on to narrate these events to the next generation. He may have told someone a little here and there, and that is why we have pieces rather than a continuous account.

❧THE MOB AND THE STONING

What appears to have sparked the mob was the possibility that someone was about to convert. Daʿwah is inevitable; you preach the truth and eventually somebody comes. When the leaders of Thaqīf saw that, they panicked. They gathered the riffraff and the ruffians, the people with nothing better to do, and told them to stone this man out of the city so the preaching would stop.

They pelted him with stones. Zayd ibn Ḥārithah tried his best to shield him and was himself injured from head to toe, but there is only so much one man can do while both are running, and there is no protection from an entire mob. The Prophet ﷺ bled until his sandals were soaked with his own blood. They chased them until they had driven them clear of the city.

❧THE DUʿĀʾ OF ṬĀʾIF

He saw shade, and sat under a tree beside a garden wall, not knowing the garden belonged to ʿUtbah ibn Abī Rabīʿah, his father's second cousin. Many of the Quraysh kept small plots outside Ṭāʾif, summer resorts, because Ṭāʾif has a climate almost unheard of in Arabia: rain falls copiously on the mountaintops, the soil is different, and fruits grow there, grapes among them, that do not grow in Makkah or Yathrib.

There he made the duʿāʾ recorded in the Seerah of Ibn Isḥāq. The speaker is candid about its chain: this duʿāʾ has no isnād. It is not in Bukhārī, not in Muslim; Ibn Isḥāq narrates it with missing links. But as one of the scholars of our time said, it does not need an isnād, the wording alone tells you it comes from the heart of a Prophet. The content authenticates it.

This is a duʿāʾ, the speaker says, that we should all ponder over and even memorize. He then takes it phrase by phrase.

اللَّهُمَّ إِنِّي أَشْكُو إِلَيْكَ ضَعْفَ قُوَّتِي

"Allāhumma innī ashkū ilayka ḍaʿfa quwwatī."

"O Allāh, to You I complain of the weakness of my strength." I have no strength. My weakness.

وَهَوَانِي عَلَى النَّاسِ

"Wa hawānī ʿala-n-nās."

"And my helplessness and my lowliness before men."

أَنْتَ أَرْحَمُ الرَّاحِمِينَ، وَأَنْتَ رَبُّ الْمُسْتَضْعَفِينَ، وَأَنْتَ رَبِّي

"Anta Arḥamu-r-Rāḥimīn. Wa Anta Rabbu-l-mustaḍʿafīn. Wa Anta Rabbī."

"You are the Most Merciful of all those who show mercy. And You are the Lord of the weak and the humbled. And You are my Lord." The three build on one another: Your mercy in general, Your lordship over exactly the category I am now in, and then the personal claim, You are mine.

إِلَى مَنْ تَكِلُنِي؟

"Ilā man takilunī?"

"To whom do You leave me? Who else can I go to besides You?"

إِلَى بَعِيدٍ يَتَجَهَّمُنِي؟

"Ilā baʿīdin yatajahhamunī?"

"To a stranger, who will treat me harshly?" As these people of Ṭāʾif have just done.

أَمْ إِلَى قَرِيبٍ مَلَّكْتَهُ أَمْرِي؟

"Am ilā qarībin mallaktahu amrī?"

"Or to a close relative to whom You have given power over my affair?" That is, Abū Lahab, the uncle who was handed authority over him and used it against him.

إِنْ لَمْ يَكُنْ غَضَبٌ عَلَيَّ فَلَا أُبَالِي

"In lam yakun ghaḍabun ʿalayya falā ubālī."

"As long as You are not angry with me, then I do not care." Nothing else in this entire ordeal registers as the real danger.

غَيْرَ أَنَّ عَافِيَتَكَ أَوْسَعُ لِي

"Ghayra anna ʿāfiyataka awsaʿu lī."

"Except that Your ʿāfiyah, Your protection from tribulation, Your ease and comfort, is easier for me." Your ease is easier for me.

اللَّهُمَّ إِنِّي أَعُوذُ بِوَجْهِكَ الَّذِي أَشْرَقَتْ لَهُ الظُّلُمَاتُ وَصَلُحَ عَلَيْهِ أَمْرُ الدُّنْيَا وَالْآخِرَةِ

"Allāhumma innī aʿūdhu bi wajhika-lladhī ashraqat lahu-ẓ-ẓulumāt, wa ṣaluḥa ʿalayhi amru-d-dunyā wa-l-ākhirah."

"O Allāh, I seek refuge in Your Face, the Face that is the source of all light that drives away darkness, and by which all the affairs of this world and the next are set right."

أَنْ يَنْزِلَ بِي غَضَبُكَ أَوْ يَحِلَّ بِي سَخَطُكَ

"An yanzila bī ghaḍabuk, aw yaḥilla bī sakhaṭuk."

"[I seek refuge] from Your anger descending upon me, or Your wrath enveloping me."

لَكَ الْعُتْبَى حَتَّى تَرْضَى

"Laka-l-ʿutbā ḥattā tarḍā."

"It is Your right to criticize and reproach me until You are content."

وَلَا حَوْلَ وَلَا قُوَّةَ إِلَّا بِكَ

"Wa lā ḥawla wa lā quwwata illā bik."

"And there is no power and no change except with You and through You."

❧SHAKWĀ ILĀ ALLĀH, NOT IʿTIRĀḌ ʿALĀ ALLĀH

"To You I complain." The speaker says there is a legitimate, indeed obligatory, concept of complaining to Allāh, and that it is part of our Tawḥīd. We do not complain to men; we complain to Allāh. The Quranic model is Yaʿqūb ʿalayhi al-salām, when his sons mocked him, "how long will you keep remembering Yūsuf?", and he answered: "Innamā ashkū baththī wa ḥuznī ila-Llāh (إِنَّمَا أَشْكُو بَثِّي وَحُزْنِي إِلَى اللَّهِ)", "I complain of my grief and my sorrow only to Allāh" [Surah Yūsuf 12:86]. I am not asking you for sympathy.

Complaints are of two kinds. The first is ḥarām and is in fact a type of Kufr: rejecting the decree of Allāh and rejecting His wisdom. It sounds like "Why? Why are You doing this to me? This should not happen. I don't deserve this." The prime example is Iblīs: "Rabbi bimā aghwaytanī (رَبِّ بِمَا أَغْوَيْتَنِي)" [15:39], You are the one who led me astray, You did this, not me. That is iʿtirāḍ ʿalā Allāh, objecting against Allāh, and it is Kufr.

The opposite is the essence of Tawḥīd: shakwā ilā Allāh, complaining to Allāh, seeking refuge in Allāh from Allāh, turning to Allāh for His own mercy. The speaker notes that the English word "complaint" does not do justice to shakwā here. The meaning is: "Yā Allāh, look at me. Help me, please." Not "Yā Allāh, why are You doing this?" That second kind is never allowed.

❧THE FEAR THAT IS NOT ABOUT THE BLOOD

There is a clear element in this duʿāʾ of "O Allāh, I am worried, are You angry with me?" After everything that has happened, his main fear is not the blood on his hands or the blood soaking his sandals. His main fear is: have I done something wrong? Have I fallen short? As long as You are not angry, I am fine, and You have every right to reproach me. What causes him distress is not the pain of the body but the possibility of having earned the displeasure of Allāh. He seeks refuge in Allāh from Allāh's own punishment; and if there is no punishment he is satisfied, though he would be more satisfied still with extra mercy. This is the perfection of Tawḥīd.

❧ASKING FOR ʿĀFIYAH IS ALLOWED

"Ghayra anna ʿāfiyataka awsaʿu lī." Even while accepting the decree, he asks for something easier. The speaker uses this to correct a real misunderstanding: some strands of Taṣawwuf hold that the servant has no right to ever ask for relief, that whatever the Master gives, the slave must swallow in silence, sick, bereaved, whatever it is. But Allāh had decreed this for the Prophet ﷺ, and the Prophet ﷺ, while accepting it, still said: "if You give me something easier, that is better for me." Riḍā means contentment, and contentment means you do not challenge Allāh's decree. It does not mean you stop asking for something easier. Every person is pained by trials, and so we ask Allāh to protect us from them and to lift them.

❧LĀ ḤAWLA WA LĀ QUWWATA ILLĀ BIK

He concludes with what the Prophet ﷺ elsewhere called a treasure from the treasures of Jannah, kanzun min kunūzi-l-Jannah. The speaker calls it the perfect ending to this duʿāʾ: "O Allāh, only You can change my situation. Right now I have no power on this earth, none. Only You can give me that power. Any change I want, any strength I want, it comes from You."

❧THE ROLE MODEL

The speaker closes the incident by saying that in it there is a role model for every problem we suffer, every rejection, every experience of Islamophobia. Whatever happens to us is far less than what happened to him ﷺ. And when we look at how he responded to it, we find the verse: "Laqad kāna lakum fī RasūliLlāhi uswatun ḥasanah (لَقَدْ كَانَ لَكُمْ فِي رَسُولِ اللَّهِ أُسْوَةٌ حَسَنَةٌ)" [Surah al-Aḥzāb 33:21], there is in the Messenger of Allāh a perfect example to follow.

Ṭāʾif was not a political success. But it produced the conversion of ʿAddās, and of the Prophet ﷺ it is reported that if Allāh guides a single man through you it is worth more than hundreds of camels; and on the road home, at Nakhlah, it produced the conversion of the Jinn.