Wa'il ibn Hujr, and the Sandals He Would Not Lend

Shaykh Yasir Qadhi explains:

Another interesting delegation, and this one is squarely in the ninth year: Wāʾil ibn Ḥujr, from Ḥaḍramawt in Yemen. Yemen was one of the few parts of Arabia where there were small kingdoms rather than pure tribalism, perhaps a remnant from the time of the Queen of Sheba, and Wāʾil's grandfather had been one of those kings. He was of royal blood.

❧Announced three days before

Before he arrived, the Prophet ﷺ told the Companions: there shall come to you Wāʾil ibn Ḥujr, one of the noblemen, one of the princes, we might say, of Yemen, and he comes seeking Islam without any pressure having been put on him, رَاغِبًا فِي الْإِسْلَام. Nobody had fought him; he was coming of his own accord. He said it three days in advance, so that the Companions could receive him with honour, and it is another of the miracles of the Prophet ﷺ.

When Wāʾil came he was honoured as the shaykh has not come across the Prophet ﷺ honouring anyone else: he brought him up onto the minbar with him, and he seated him on his own ridāʾ, the Arab custom of taking off one's cloak and spreading it for a guest to sit on, which he ﷺ did only rarely. He made duʿāʾ for Wāʾil and for Wāʾil's children.

And Wāʾil complained to him that his family had taken his right from him. Meaning the throne, this is always the way with royal houses, one prince against another, each certain he is the qualified one. Some cousin was sitting where he believed he should be. The Prophet ﷺ answered: I will give you better than that. Meaning Paradise, through Islam. You have given something up; I promise you better.

And that is literally true, Islam gives you more than a king has. We know from explicit narrations that the lowest of the people of Paradise will be told by Allah to wish, and wish, and wish, and will be given all the riches of this world and ten times the like of it. No king of this world has a tenth of it. So a claimant to a throne is told, do not worry, I will give you better than your kingdom, and every one of us, if we are faithful to Allah, has something better than an entire kingdom.

❧The camel and the sandals

Then a tidbit, and notice that each of these delegation stories has its own separate benefit; there is no single thread. Having accepted Islam, Wāʾil was given the governorship of a small district of Yemen, as befitted his blood, and the Prophet ﷺ sent Muʿāwiyah ibn Abī Sufyān along to escort him and settle matters there. Muʿāwiyah would become caliph, but that is some forty-odd years away; right now he is barely eighteen, a young man and dirt poor.

Wāʾil rode; Muʿāwiyah walked. He asked whether he might ride with him, and Wāʾil, a brand-new convert still in his old habits, said that it is not befitting that one such as you should ride with kings. He was not technically a king, but he felt himself one; that is what royal upbringing does. Muʿāwiyah's sandals were in tatters, so he asked at least to borrow his, because the ground was burning. Not befitting that the sandals of the king be given to you. He said, but the stones are hot. And Wāʾil said: take shade from the shadow of my camel.

May Allah forgive them both, they are Companions, but you can hear the kingly phase in it. And it shows that conversion does not instantly transform a man: he is a Muslim now, but the akhlāq of sharing has not arrived yet. It does arrive, in time.

❧Forty years later

And who becomes the king? Muʿāwiyah, the first king of Islam, a caliph, yes, but also a man who founds a dynasty. And by Allah's decree Wāʾil lived long, and came before Muʿāwiyah as a delegate, with Muʿāwiyah on the throne. The seventeen-year-old boy is now a man of sixty, and of course he remembers that day, and reminds him of it: do you recall that journey, when you would not give me your sandals or a place on your camel? And Wāʾil said: how I wish I had done it.

Not that we should be calculating about our kindness, but never underestimate whom you are doing good to, or what they will become, or when you might need them. Who could have imagined it? Abū Sufyān was a late and grudging convert with lineage but no money; the kings of Yemen were kings. And then the Caliphate came, and their status was nothing, and Muʿāwiyah ibn Abī Sufyān became what he became.

Wāʾil, incidentally, later took ʿAlī ibn Abī Ṭālib's side in the civil war and fought at Ṣiffīn as one of the most significant noblemen on that side, the people of Yemen generally sided with ʿAlī. Be careful whom you withhold your favours from; it comes back.