The Delegation of Banu Hanifah: Musaylimah the Liar

Shaykh Yasir Qadhi explains:

This is the third and last instalment on the delegations. The books of Sīrah list over a hundred and ten of them by name, and of most we know nothing beyond the fact that they came; another lesson would be little more than a list of tribal names. So: the more important ones only.

We begin with the most bizarre of them all, the delegation of Banū Ḥanīfah, whose leader was Musaylimah al-Kadhdhāb.

❧Who he was

His name was Musaylimah ibn Ḥabīb, and he was an old man by then, in his late sixties or early seventies. He was a Christian of a Christian tribe, and in his youth he had gone to Jerusalem to study Christianity, learning Latin and taking on Roman ways. Imagine how such a man is received when he returns to his people: with enormous respect, which only grew, until by the coming of Islam he was an elder venerated across the whole region of al-Yamāmah.

Banū Ḥanīfah did not come to submit. They were also, later, the largest and worst of the apostate tribes in the time of Abū Bakr al-Ṣiddīq, the most dangerous of the Ahl al-Riddah. And as Islam spread across Arabia, Musaylimah watched his own tribe divide along its lines, and grew angrier. One of their noblemen had already converted, and his whole sub-tribe with him: Thumāmah ibn Uthāl, the chieftain who was captured by accident on his way to ʿUmrah and tied in the masjid for three days, who answered the Prophet ﷺ with that mixture of arrogance and dignity, إِنْ تَقْتُلْ تَقْتُلْ ذَا دَمٍ, if you kill, you kill a man whose blood is weighty; and if you pardon, you pardon a man who is generous; and if you want wealth, ask and you ask one who has plenty, and who, released on the third day, embraced Islam after what he had seen of the prayer and the Qurʾān, and then cut Quraysh off from the wheat of al-Yamāmah until the Prophet ﷺ permitted it.

❧"I would not give you this stick"

Musaylimah told his people his terms: if he grants me the succession after his death, I will follow him, and he must share prophethood with me as Mūsā shared it with his brother Hārūn. He was carried into the masjid by his followers screening him with fine cloths, entering like a king in procession. He had been venerated so long that he could not conceive of laying it down; and that is one of the great dangers of power, that once a man tastes it he begins to think people owe him something.

The Prophet ﷺ had a branch in his hand, as a man idly does. He said: by Allah, if you asked me for this stick I would not give it to you, you want command after me, when I would not give you a worthless twig? Allah will deal with you and humiliate you. And I am certain you are the one Allah showed me.

Years later Ibn ʿAbbās, who was barely twelve at the time and whose knowledge largely came second-hand after the Prophet's ﷺ death, asked Abū Hurayrah what that dream had been. Abū Hurayrah's answer is the ḥadīth in al-Bukhārī: while I slept, I saw myself wearing two bracelets of gold, and it disturbed me. It was inspired to me to blow on them; I blew, and they broke off and flew away. I interpreted them as two liars who would come after me. Gold on a man is forbidden, and each bracelet is a nuisance pretending to be an ornament of his, each claiming prophethood alongside him and being none. The first is the one of ʿAns from Ṣanʿāʾ, al-ʿAnsī; the second is Musaylimah of al-Yamāmah. So he ﷺ told him to his face: you are the one Allah warned me about.

❧The letter, and the two envoys

Back among his people he wrote, and quoting kufr is not kufr, "From Musaylimah the Messenger of Allah to Muḥammad the Messenger of Allah. Peace be upon you. Know that I have been given a share in this matter alongside you: Quraysh have half of it and I have the other half, but Quraysh are a people who transgress." He had not been given a share, so he simply awarded himself one.

Two of his men brought the letter, and the Prophet ﷺ asked them what they said about Musaylimah. They answered: we hold what the letter says; we believe him to be the Messenger of Allah. And he ﷺ said: لَوْلَا أَنَّ الرُّسُلَ لَا تُقْتَلُ, were it not that envoys are not killed, I would have had the two of you executed. For this is riddah, not ordinary disbelief. There is kufr aṣlī, the disbelief of one who was never Muslim, and there is the kufr of apostasy and of claiming false prophethood, which the Sharīʿah in its own domain punishes with death.

Note what this establishes: there are protocols that hold between peoples regardless of religion, and the Sharīʿah endorses them. What is diplomatic immunity today but this? Every state grants it to another's envoys, in mutual interest, and here is the Prophet ﷺ saying so himself.

❧The first of the false prophets

So far as we know, Musaylimah was the first human being not only to declare himself a prophet but to try to imitate the style of the Qurʾān, and the Prophet ﷺ foretold in the famous ḥadīth that after him would come thirty liars and deceivers, the worst of them being al-Masīḥ al-Dajjāl. There is no harm in repeating some of his absurdities. He produced a parody of al-Kawthar: إِنَّا أَعْطَيْنَاكَ الْجَوَاهِرَ، فَصَلِّ لِرَبِّكَ وَهَاجِرْ، إِنَّ مُبْغِضَكَ لَرَجُلٌ كَافِرٌ, we have given you the jewels, so pray to your Lord and depart early; whoever hates you is a disbeliever. And a chapter of the frog, narrated in every book that mentions him: يَا ضِفْدَعُ بِنْتَ ضِفْدَعَيْنِ، نَقِّي كَمَا تُنَقِّينَ، لَا الْمَاءَ تُكَدِّرِينَ وَلَا الشَّارِبَ تَمْنَعِينَ، رَأْسُكِ فِي الْمَاءِ وَذَنَبُكِ فِي الطِّينِ, O frog, daughter of two frogs, go on purifying as you purify; you neither muddy the water nor keep the drinker from it; your head is in the water and your tail in the mud. They believed in those days that frogs purified water. And a chapter of the elephant, the most bizarre of them: الْفِيلُ، مَا الْفِيلُ، وَمَا أَدْرَاكَ مَا الْفِيلُ، لَهُ ذَنَبٌ وَبِيلٌ وَخُرْطُومٌ طَوِيلٌ, the elephant, what is the elephant, and what will make you know what the elephant is; it has a mighty tail and a long trunk. It is said an Arab passing through his territory asked him whether he too was a prophet, and whether he had anything like the other prophet's Qurʾān; Musaylimah recited him the elephant, and the man said: وَاللَّهِ إِنَّكَ لَتَعْلَمُ أَنِّي أَعْلَمُ أَنَّكَ كَاذِبٌ, by Allah, you know that I know you are a liar. And he was not even a Muslim.

Musaylimah was killed in the Wars of the Riddah, and everyone should know by whom: by Waḥshī, who took the same javelin he had used at Uḥud and said that he would make up for what he had done with it.

One last thing. Until the coming of the Prophet ﷺ, the Arabian Peninsula had never heard of a man calling himself a prophet; the phenomenon was unknown. Recall Heraclius's questions to Abū Sufyān, is this something common among you, do prophets keep appearing?, and the answer: we had never heard of such a thing. The Qurʾān says of them لِتُنذِرَ قَوْمًا مَّا أَتَاهُم مِّن نَّذِيرٍ مِّن قَبْلِكَ. Prophecy was a Judaeo-Christian category; the children of Ismāʿīl had no such tradition. It was only after his ﷺ success that all the copycats appeared.