Suraqah's Pursuit and the Prophecy of Kisra's Bracelets

Surāqah ibn Mālik narrated this story himself, in the first person, after he accepted Islam. It is recorded in the Musnad of Imām Aḥmad.

❧The bounty and the lie

The Quraysh had placed a bounty of one hundred camels on the Prophet ﷺ and Abū Bakr, dead or alive. One hundred camels. At a time when the Prophet ﷺ himself did not own a single camel, this was an enormous sum. To put it in perspective: when the Prophet ﷺ later emigrated, Abū Bakr had to prepare the camel for him; and Abū Bakr's entire remaining fortune was five thousand dirhams, after spending thirty-five thousand on freeing Muslim slaves.

Surāqah was sitting with fellow tribesmen when a man returned from a hunting trip: "I saw three riders in the distance. I'm sure it's the ones the Quraysh are looking for." Surāqah knew immediately. He also knew he wanted that reward entirely for himself.

He said casually: "Oh, those? I know who they are. That's so-and-so's party, they told me they'd be heading through that area. It's not them." The others relaxed. The conversation moved on. Surāqah quietly slipped away, armed himself, put on his armor, and galloped at full speed on his war horse.

❧Three attempts

Attempt one: He spotted them. He spurred his horse forward at a gallop. The horse's legs sank into the ground as if it had stepped into sand. It stumbled and threw him. He had never seen this horse behave this way. He pulled out his azlām, the pagan fortune-telling arrows, his people's equivalent of tarot cards, threw them on the sand, and read the pattern. It said: Do not proceed. He ignored it. He remounted.

Attempt two: He came closer. The same thing happened, the horse sank again, threw him again. He pulled the azlām again. Do not proceed. He ignored it again. He remounted.

Attempt three: He came close enough to make out the details of the three riders. He saw that one of them, Abū Bakr, was riding in extreme agitation: constantly spurring forward, looking back, then racing ahead, then falling back again, unable to settle, rotating between protecting the front and protecting the rear. "He was the most agitated rider I had ever seen." The other, the Prophet ﷺ, was riding in complete stillness. Not turning his head. Not looking left or right. Reciting something. Tawakkul ʿalā Allāh, complete reliance on Allāh, while the rider beside him was doing the human job of protecting.

On the third attempt, the horse sank the most violently yet. And when it stumbled, he saw something: a dust, or a smoke, between himself and the three riders. Something he could not name.

"And in that moment, I knew. I knew that the affair of this man would encompass the earth."

He called out. He asked for safe passage to approach.

❧The amān

He came close. He told them he meant no harm. He told them he wanted a written document, an amān, a safe conduct, for when the Prophet ﷺ's power would spread and he would need protection. He wanted it in writing, with his name on it.

The Prophet ﷺ asked ʿAbdullāh ibn Urayqiṭ, the guide, to write it. On a piece of leather, on a desert road, they wrote Surāqah ibn Mālik his amān.

Abū Bakr said to him: "One request. Ikhfi ʿannā, do not tell anyone about us."

Surāqah agreed. He turned to leave. And as he was going, the Prophet ﷺ, for the first time, spoke to him directly:

"Yā Surāqah, kayfa bika idh labbasta siwāray Kisrā?"

"O Surāqah, how will you be when you are wearing the bracelets of Kisrā?"

Surāqah was dumbstruck. He could only manage: "Kisrā ibn Hurmuz?" The Emperor of Persia. The Kisrā. The Prophet ﷺ said nothing more.

❧Abū Jahl's poetry and Surāqah's reply

Surāqah kept his word. He didn't tell anyone. But when the news spread eventually, as it always does, Abū Jahl wrote him scathing poetry, preserved in Ibn Isḥāq: calling him foolish and incompetent, shaming him for letting the greatest prize in Arabia slip through his fingers. Surāqah wrote back: "Had you been there and seen what I saw, you would not be saying what you are saying. I know what happened on that day. You do not."

❧The fulfillment: Kisrā's bracelets

Surāqah held that piece of leather for years.

When the Prophet ﷺ conquered the tribes near Ṭāʾif after the Battle of Ḥunayn, among them was Surāqah's own. Surāqah came forward holding the parchment. The Prophet ﷺ recognized him. He honored the amān. Surāqah accepted Islam.

Years passed. The Prophet ﷺ died. Abū Bakr died. ʿUmar ibn al-Khaṭṭāb became Caliph.

In ʿUmar's time, the ancient and seemingly invincible Sassanid Persian Empire began to collapse. The Battle of Qādisiyyah (636 CE) broke the Persian army. Eventually Persepolis, the legendary capital, still visible today in the Iranian desert as columns of stone rising from nowhere, ruins of palaces that astound the modern visitor, was conquered. Its treasures were gathered and sent to ʿUmar in Madinah: gold, jewels, ornaments of the most powerful throne on earth.

ʿUmar called for Surāqah. He found him in the city.

He sat Surāqah in his own chair. He opened the treasury. Among the gold were the famous jeweled bracelets of Kisrā, the ornamental wrist bracelets of the Persian Emperor, pieces of jewelry that had been envied by the entire known world.

ʿUmar put them on Surāqah's wrists himself.

The congregation in the Masjid said: "Allāhu Akbar!"

And ʿUmar ibn al-Khaṭṭāb declared: "Alḥamdulillāhi lladhī salaba dhālik min Kisrā ibn Hurmuz wa-aʿṭāhu Surāqah ibn Mālik rajulan min Banī Mudlij, Praise be to Allāh who stripped these from Kisrā ibn Hurmuz and gave them to Surāqah, a Bedouin man from the Banū Mudlij."

Ibn ʿAbd al-Barr says they paraded Surāqah through the streets of Madinah with those bracelets on his wrists.

The man who had ridden at full gallop toward the Prophet ﷺ for a hundred camels was now wearing the jewelry of the greatest empire on earth, just as that same Prophet ﷺ had predicted, on a desert road, as a fugitive with a price on his head.