The Prophet Departs Makkah: The Noon Visit, the Belt, and the Farewell

This is ʿĀʾishah's narration in Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī, her earliest memory of the Hijrah, told from the perspective of a girl of six or seven, sitting inside the family house behind curtains.

❧The day and its date

According to Ibn ʿAbbās in Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim, the Prophet ﷺ himself said: "On Monday, Sūrat Iqraʾ was revealed to me. On Monday, I was born. And on Monday, I emigrated." The best scholarly estimate, working backward from known calendar data, puts the date at the 26th of Ṣafar in the thirteenth year of the Prophetic mission, approximately the first year of what we now call the Hijrī calendar. (Note: the Hijrī calendar begins in Muḥarram, but the Prophet ﷺ's actual departure took place in Ṣafar, several weeks after that.)

Abū Bakr had been feeding and preparing two camels for approximately three to four months, from the time the Prophet ﷺ first told him, "Wait, I hope Allah will give us permission." Abū Bakr immediately understood: the Prophet ﷺ was hoping to travel with him. He asked: "Aṣ-ṣuḥba yā Rasūlallāh?", "Are you hoping for my companionship?" The Prophet ﷺ said yes.

To prepare a camel for a long desert crossing, you feed it a special high-carbohydrate diet for weeks, give it salt to force it to drink extra water, keep it confined so it conserves fat, and let the hump grow full. Abū Bakr did this for both camels, for the duration of the wait.

❧The arrival at noon

ʿĀʾishah narrates: "We were in our house at shiddat al-ẓahīra, the peak heat of the day." The streets were empty; this was the qaylūlah (the afternoon rest). Nobody travels, nobody walks out, nobody comes visiting in Arabian summer at noon. Then we saw a figure approaching, face completely wrapped in his turban. "Wallāhi," we said, "the only reason he would come at this hour is something very grave."

It was the Prophet ﷺ.

He asked to come in, asked that anyone else in the house be removed. Abū Bakr said: "Yā Rasūlallāh, there is only your family here", meaning ʿĀʾishah and Asmāʾ (ʿĀʾishah had already been formally engaged to the Prophet ﷺ by nikāḥ, though consummation had not yet taken place). The Prophet ﷺ spoke:

"Qad udhina lī fi al-kharūj, Allah has given me permission to emigrate."

Abū Bakr understood immediately what this meant. He said: "Aṣ-ṣuḥba yā Rasūlallāh? Bi-abī anta wa-ummī, the companionship? By my father and mother, am I to be your companion?"

The Prophet ﷺ said: "Yes."

ʿĀʾishah says: "I had never believed that a person could cry out of happiness, until I saw my father Abū Bakr cry on that day."

❧The camel

Abū Bakr offered one of the two prepared camels as a gift. The Prophet ﷺ refused: "Illā bi-th-thaman, only if I pay you its price." He would not accept it as charity. He wanted the full personal reward of the Hijrah, and he wanted the camel to be truly his. He purchased the camel from Abū Bakr.

Abū Bakr, at this point, had five thousand dirhams remaining, all that was left of forty thousand. He had spent thirty-five thousand dirhams freeing Muslim slaves being tortured in Makkah: Bilāl, Khabbāb, and many others. He took every last dirham with him. He left nothing for Asmāʾ and ʿĀʾishah. He knew they would not starve in a city; but in the desert, they might need every coin.

❧Dhāt an-Niṭāqayn

Asmāʾ bint Abī Bakr, the eldest daughter, ten to fifteen years older than ʿĀʾishah, already an adult, had prepared the food and provisions for the journey. In the rush of the moment, she had nothing to tie the bundle shut. She took off her own belt (niṭāq), bit it in two with her teeth, tied the food bag with one half, and kept the other half for her own garment. The Prophet ﷺ told her Allah had given her two belts in Jannah in exchange. She became known ever after as Dhāt an-Niṭāqayn, She of the Two Belts.

❧Abū Quḥāfah

When Abū Bakr had left, his father Abū Quḥāfah, blind, elderly, bitter, and still a pagan, came to the house and mocked his son. "He has abandoned two little girls with no money, taken everything he had for this man." Asmāʾ, without lying, took the empty money bag that Abū Bakr always used to hold his cash, filled it with pebbles, wrapped it in cloth, and placed it in the blind old man's hands. He felt the weight. He was satisfied: "If this is what he's left for you, then he's done right by you." Asmāʾ said afterward: "He didn't leave us a single penny."

Abū Jahl came later to interrogate her. When she refused to tell him where her father and the Prophet ﷺ had gone, he beat her until she bled. She said nothing.

❧ʿAlī in the bed

Before departing, the Prophet ﷺ asked ʿAlī ibn Abī Ṭālib, who had lived in his household since childhood and was now approximately eighteen or nineteen years old, to remain lying in his bed for the night wearing his green cloak. The houses of Makkah had open openings rather than closed windows; anyone peering in would see someone lying in the bed and assume it was the Prophet ﷺ. This was ʿAlī's task: stay, stay visible, and return to the rightful owners anything that had been entrusted to the Prophet ﷺ (many Makkans, even enemies, still kept deposits with him because of his reputation for trustworthiness).

Ibn Isḥāq narrates, without an isnād, that as the Prophet ﷺ walked out of the house past the armed men surrounding it, he was reciting the opening of Sūrat Yāsīn. Allah had sealed their vision: Wa-jaʿalnā min bayni aydīhim saddan wa-min khalfihim saddan fa-aghshaynāhum fahum lā yubṣirūn, "We placed barriers before them and behind them and covered their sight so they could not see." He scattered dust on each of their heads as he passed through them. They did not see him at all. They found the dust on themselves afterward.

❧Farewell to Makkah

Al-Tirmidhī narrates that when the Prophet ﷺ reached the outskirts of the city and passed the last market stalls at the edge of Makkah, he turned around one final time.

He spoke to the city itself: "You are the most beloved land to Allah, and you are the most beloved land to me. Wa-lawlā anna qawmī akhrajūnī, were it not that my own people have expelled me, I would never have left you."

Thirteen and a half years earlier, when a shaking Prophet ﷺ returned from Ghār Ḥirāʾ to the arms of Khadījah and was taken to Waraqah ibn Nawfal, Waraqah said: "I wish I were young so I could be alive the day your people expel you." The Prophet ﷺ was astonished: "A-wa-mukhrijiyya hum? My own people will expel me?" And Waraqah said: "Every prophet has been expelled. It has never been otherwise."

On the 26th of Ṣafar, in the thirteenth year, the words of that dying old man were fulfilled exactly. He would not enter Makkah again except as a conqueror, eight and a half years later.