Junda' ibn Damrah: The Blind Old Man Who Refused to Stay

Ibn ʿAbbās tells us that when Sūrat al-Nisāʾ was revealed and the verse came down:

Innal-ladhīna tawaffāhumul-malāʾikatu ẓālimī anfusihim qālū fīma kuntum? Qālū kunnā mustaḍʿafīna fīl-arḍ. Qālū alam takun arḍullāhi wāsiʿatan fatuhājirū fīhā? (4:97)

"Verily, those people whom the angels take in death while they are wronging themselves, the angels will say: What were you in? And they will say: We were oppressed in the land. The angels will say: Was not the land of Allāh wide enough for you to have emigrated somewhere else?"

this verse was sent from Madinah to the Muslims remaining in Makkah. The Prophet ﷺ maintained a secret network of correspondence with the Muslims who had not yet emigrated. Any new Quranic revelation would be sent to them as well.

Among the Muslims who were still in Makkah at this time was an old man named Jundaʿ ibn Ḍamrah. He was blind. He could not walk unassisted. He was so elderly and so frail that the ordinary challenges of desert travel, the kind of travel that fit young men had labored through, were simply beyond him. Nobody would have blamed him. Everyone would have understood.

When the verse arrived, he read it and said: "I am not one of those who has an excuse. I have no ʿudhur. I will not spend another night in this city."

He called his servants. He told them to carry him on his sarīr, a large couch, a kind of stretcher, out of the walls of Makkah. He had no concrete plan for how he was going to reach Madinah from a litter in the desert. But that was not the point. The point was: one more night in Makkah was not something he was willing to accept.

So they carried him out. And as they were carrying him, the pangs of death came upon him. Right there, at Tanʿīm, the place that today marks the edge of the Ḥaram boundary, where Masjid ʿĀʾishah (Masjid al-Tanʿīm) now stands on the road out of Makkah, his time came.

As he was dying, he did something remarkable.

He put his right hand in his left hand. He clasped them together. And he said:

"Allāhumma hādhihi bayʿatī li-Rasūlillāh ṣallā -llāhu ʿalayhi wa sallam ʿalā mā amara bihi."

"O Allāh, this is my oath of allegiance (bayʿah) to the Messenger of Allāh, upon what he has commanded."

He could not go to Madinah. He could not give the bayʿah in person. This hand-clasp was all he had, and he gave it to Allāh to transmit.

And then he died.

When news reached Madinah, some Companions were... not fully at ease with it. He had been trying to make Hijrah, yes, and his intention was sincere, but he never actually got out of Makkah's territory. Was he therefore covered? The question hung in the air.

Then Allāh revealed the very next verses of Sūrat al-Nisāʾ:

Illal-mustaḍʿafīna minar-rijāli wan-nisāʾi wal-wildāni lā yastaṭīʿūna ḥīlatan wa lā yahtadūna sabīlā. Fa-ulāʾika ʿasallāhu an yaʿfuwa ʿanhum wa kānallāhu ʿafuwwan ghafūrā. (4:98–99)

"Except for the genuinely weak among the men, women and children, who cannot find any means nor any way out. For these, it may be that Allāh will pardon them, and Allāh is Ever Pardoning, Forgiving."

Ibn ʿAbbās makes a note about the word ʿasā here. He says: every time Allāh uses ʿasā ("it may be"), it is certainty when it comes from Allāh, He will do what He says. But it is phrased with ʿasā rather than a categorical guarantee to signal the gravity of what those without genuine excuse were doing. Jundaʿ ibn Ḍamrah, who had every worldly reason to stay but refused, was forgiven. But the word ʿasā was Allāh's way of showing how serious His expectation of those who could emigrate really was.