Surah An-Najm, the Quraysh's Sajdah, and the Return from Abyssinia

Three months. That is how long the first Abyssinian emigrants lasted before a rumor brought them back to the very land they had fled.

They had immigrated in the month of Rajab of the fifth year of the Dawah. By Shawwal, just three months later, they were on their way back. Not because they had been expelled, not because they had found the land inhospitable, but because a single piece of news reached them and they could not resist it:

The Quraysh have accepted Islām.

Life in Abyssinia was peaceful. They had the freedom they needed. But "peaceful" is not the same as "home." The acclimatization to a different language, different culture, different norms, all of it was real hardship even without persecution. And the people they had left behind, family, the Prophet صلى الله عليه وسلم himself, the emerging community, were the pull that never went away.

There was no way to verify the news. They were fifteen people. There was no letter system, no way to send an inquiry and wait for a reply within a practical timeframe. They had only the rumor. And the rumor was intoxicating. They packed their belongings and began the journey back.

Somewhere on the road, they learned the truth: it was not true.

❧What actually happened: the recitation of Sūrat an-Najm

The Sahīh Bukhārī version of what occurred in Makkah, the incident that was distorted by rumor into "the Quraysh have accepted Islām", is this:

The Prophet صلى الله عليه وسلم was in the Ḥaram, in the presence of both Muslims and Quraysh. He recited Sūrat an-Najm from beginning to end, wan-najmi idhā hawā (وَالنَّجْمِ إِذَا هَوَى). The sūrah is an extraordinary piece of Quranic revelation: short verses, rhetorical questions, building verse by verse in pitch and urgency. It opens by describing the Prophet's صلى الله عليه وسلم own experience of revelation (mā dalla ṣāḥibukum wa mā ghawā), then moves into what he saw at the highest limits (ʿinda sidratil-muntahā), then pivots to challenge the Quraysh on their idol worship of al-Lāt, al-ʿUzzā, and Manāt.

The final verses build to a crescendo. Allah names the destroyed nations: ʿĀd, Thamūd, the people of Nūḥ, the overthrown cities. One by one. Fabi-ayyi ālāʾi rabbika tatamārā, "Which of your Lord's signs will you still argue about?" Then the sequence of existential truths: it is Allah who makes you laugh, makes you cry, makes you die, gives you life. He creates everything in pairs. He promised you a second creation. He is the Lord of the mighty Sirius.

And then the questions: Afamin hādhal-ḥadīthi taʿjabūn? Wa taḍḥakūna wa lā tabkūn? Wa antum sāmidūn?, "Do you marvel at this? Are you laughing and not crying? Are you going about your daily lives ignoring what is coming?" And then the command:

فَاسْجُدُوا لِلَّهِ وَاعْبُدُوا

"Prostrate to Allah and worship Him."

The Prophet صلى الله عليه وسلم went into Sajdah. The Muslims followed. And then something unprecedented happened: the Quraysh, those who had tortured Bilāl, who had thrown camel entrails on the Prophet's صلى الله عليه وسلم back, who had choked him with a garment, they too fell into Sajdah. Muslim and non-Muslim, together, behind the Prophet صلى الله عليه وسلم, for the first time.

The only exception was al-Walīd ibn al-Mughīrah. He was too proud to prostrate, but also too overwhelmed to simply stand and mock. He was an elderly man. He picked up sand from the ground and pressed it to his forehead and said: "This is enough for me." That was his compromise.

❧How the rumor formed and what it became

The Quraysh prostrating behind the Prophet صلى الله عليه وسلم was an event no one could have predicted. Word traveled fast in Arabia, but it traveled without context. By the time the news covered the distance to Abyssinia, it had shed all its nuance. The Quraysh had prostrated behind Muḥammad صلى الله عليه وسلم → that became → Quraysh have accepted Islam.

The returning emigrants arrived at the outskirts of Makkah to discover that Quraysh had not accepted Islām. Persecution was ongoing. They had left a safe haven for nothing.

Now they faced a practical problem: re-entry. In a tribal society, you could not simply walk back in after having publicly left. You needed someone's protection. Some found their way back under the protection of a powerful individual. Uthmān ibn Maẓʿūn, for example, entered under the protection of al-Walīd ibn al-Mughīrah himself, the very man who had pressed sand to his forehead the day of the Sajdah. Others made different arrangements.

Eventually, when it became clear that Makkah had not changed, many of these same emigrants would make the second, larger Hijra to Abyssinia, this time with no plans to return until Allah gave permission.