By the sixth year of the dawah the map looks bleak. The second flight to Abyssinia has emptied Makkah of all but a handful of believers, only 37 or 38 men by one precise count, and the Quraysh seem to have won their city back. Then, in the space of a single week, Allah answers with two conversions that change the arithmetic forever: Hamza, the hunter whose strength all of Makkah respected, and Umar ibn al-Khattab, the man who set out through the streets with an unsheathed sword to end the Prophet's ﷺ life.
Makkah feels the ground shift under it, and reaches for the cruelest weapon it has left: a written pact of starvation, sealed and hung inside the Kaaba itself. Today's stretch of the story holds both the sweetest conversions of the Makkan years and the hungriest valley in the whole seerah.
A plan held across the sea
First, a thread to tie off from last time. The Muslims who fled to Abyssinia did not come home when the danger eased. They stayed, ten or eleven years in all: through the hijrah to Madinah, through Badr and Uhud and the Trench, the Prophet ﷺ kept telling them to remain where they were. Only after Khaybar, when the threats around Madinah had been cleared and the new home stood fully secure, did he ﷺ send word to Jafar: bring everyone back.
Why keep a community parked in a foreign kingdom for a decade while he needed every pair of hands? Dr. Yasir Qadhi reads it the only way that makes sense to him, and Allah knows best: Abyssinia was the Prophet's ﷺ plan B, a refuge held in reserve in case Madinah did not work out, released only when it was no longer needed. The man of perfect tawakkul was also the man who tied his camel, trusting Allah completely and planning years ahead at the same time.
One more gift came out of that land. Ubaydullah ibn Jahsh, a cousin of the Prophet ﷺ, died in Abyssinia, leaving his widow Umm Habiba, the daughter of Abu Sufyan, with no one to care for her so far from home. When her waiting period ended, a marriage proposal reached her from the Prophet ﷺ himself, carried through the Najashi, and the king who had sheltered the believers took charge of the marriage, gifted the dowry from his own wealth unasked, and sent her with an escort to Madinah, a Mother of the Believers.
The day Hamza's blood boiled
Back in Makkah, Hamza, the Prophet's ﷺ uncle, was a famous archer and hunter, and his habit on returning from a hunt was the habit of Quraysh: tawaf around the Kaaba before his own doorstep. While he was away on one of those trips, Abu Jahl found the Prophet ﷺ near the hill of Safa and emptied himself on him: cursing him, his faith, his forefathers, on and on, while the Prophet ﷺ stood silent and answered nothing, until Abu Jahl simply tired himself out and walked away.
The women of the Banu Hashim had seen it all, and Muslim or not, an insult to the clan's son was an insult to the clan. When Hamza came striding back, bow on his shoulder, they met him with a taunt: what kind of uncle are you, what kind of leader, when your own nephew is abused in the open and no man stands up for him? Hamza asked one question: did people see it? All of Makkah saw it, they said. He never made it home. He marched to where Abu Jahl sat among his clansmen, raised the bow, and struck him across the face hard enough to open a gush of blood. How dare you curse my nephew, he said, and then heard himself say a thing he had never planned: I too am a follower of his religion. The men of Banu Makhzum rose to defend their chief, and Abu Jahl waved them down: leave him be, for by Allah, today I cursed his nephew like I never have before. Even he knew what he had lit. The Qur'an itself has a name for what surged in Hamza that hour: hamiyyah, the hot clan pride of the days of ignorance (Surah al-Fath 48:26). He had defended a nephew, not a prophet, and now he had publicly declared a faith he did not yet believe.
Hamza radiyallahu anhu went home dazed and spent the most miserable night of his life, and out of it came one of the most honest du'as in the seerah: O Allah, You know I am one of the leaders of Quraysh, and I have said a thing I cannot take back. If this matter is true, cause my heart to be guided to it. And if it is not, then let me die. In the morning he went to his nephew ﷺ and told him everything, and the Prophet ﷺ stood and spoke with him, reasoned with him, called him to Allah, until Hamza said words that this time came from the heart: I testify that you are truthful. I never want to return to the religion of my forefathers.
With one swing of a bow, the dawah gained its first elder: a son of Abdul Muttalib, brother of the chieftain Abu Talib, the most senior man yet to embrace Islam. Quraysh measurably toned down its abuse, because insulting the Prophet ﷺ now carried a price. And Allah took the man who had converted out of family pride and set him on a road that ends at Uhud, where he falls, beloved and avenged by heaven, as sayyid ash-shuhada, the master of the martyrs.
A du'a for one of two men
Three days later, says one report, Allah followed the gift with a second. To feel the shock of it, remember who Umar ibn al-Khattab was in year six of the dawah: with Abu Jahl, one of the two fiercest enemies Islam had, mighty in body, mighty in lineage, the measuring stick of the persecution itself. And yet there had been a glimpse of something underneath. When Layla bint Abi Hathma was loading her camel for the second journey to Abyssinia, she turned on him bitterly: you dare ask where we are going, when it is because of you that we leave our land to worship Allah. She braced for cruelty, and instead, for once, Umar wavered and softened. Has it really come to this, he said, and then: may Allah give you barakah wherever you go. Her husband refused to read anything into it: by Allah, his father's donkeys will accept Islam before he does.
What no household in Makkah knew was that the Prophet ﷺ had already taken Umar's name into his night prayers. In a du'a preserved in Sunan at-Tirmidhi he ﷺ asked: O Allah, bring honor to Islam through the more beloved of these two men to You, Abu Jahl or Umar ibn al-Khattab. The two strongest, best connected, most dangerous men in the city: he ﷺ asked Allah for either one, and Allah chose Umar.
Dr. Yasir Qadhi pauses here to hand you two lessons before the story itself. First, guidance belongs to Allah alone, so never stamp a final verdict on any soul: the two most hopeless cases in Makkah were one du'a away. Second, it is not flattery but wisdom to carry dawah to people of influence, because a society moves when its symbols move. His example is American: no scholar, not a million scholars, he says, did for the image of Islam in this land what one beloved boxer, Muhammad Ali, did by simply living his Islam in public. The Prophet ﷺ understood that fourteen centuries earlier, and prayed accordingly.
The night the Qur'an answered his thoughts
إِنَّهُ لَقَوْلُ رَسُولٍ كَرِيمٍ وَمَا هُوَ بِقَوْلِ شَاعِرٍ ۚ قَلِيلًا مَّا تُؤْمِنُونَ وَلَا بِقَوْلِ كَاهِنٍ ۚ قَلِيلًا مَّا تَذَكَّرُونَ تَنزِيلٌ مِّن رَّبِّ الْعَالَمِينَ
“[That] indeed, it [i.e., the Qur’ān] is the word of a noble Messenger. And it is not the word of a poet; little do you believe. Nor the word of a soothsayer; little do you remember. [It is] a revelation from the Lord of the worlds.”
Surah al-Haqqah 69:40-43 Read 69:40 with tafsir
وَلَوْ تَقَوَّلَ عَلَيْنَا بَعْضَ الْأَقَاوِيلِ لَأَخَذْنَا مِنْهُ بِالْيَمِينِ ثُمَّ لَقَطَعْنَا مِنْهُ الْوَتِينَ
“And if he [i.e., Muḥammad] had made up about Us some [false] sayings, We would have seized him by the right hand; Then We would have cut from him the aorta.”
Surah al-Haqqah 69:44-46 Read 69:44 with tafsir
More than one story is told of how Umar came to Islam, and when that happens, the Sheikh notes, the truth is usually all of them together: blow after blow landing on one heart until it opens. The first blow fell on a night Umar later loved to retell himself; his own first person account is preserved in the Musnad of Imam Ahmad. He was in his mid twenties then and fond of wine, and the craving sent him out into the dark to find his drinking companions. None were at the first house, none at the second, even the wine seller was gone. So he gave up and went to make tawaf of the Kaaba instead.
There were no lamps, and the sanctuary was empty except for one man: the Prophet ﷺ, standing in prayer before the Kaaba in the middle of the night, alone, unguarded, reciting. Umar's first thought was the old one: here is my chance to hurt him, with no one watching. He crept up close behind. And then the recitation reached him and the plan dissolved, because for the first time in his life, the man who had only ever hated stopped and actually listened. The surah was al-Haqqah, and Umar said: I was amazed at how it was put together.
Then came the part he could never explain away. A thought crossed his mind: this must be the speech of a poet, just as Quraysh say. And the very next words from the Prophet's ﷺ lips answered him: it is not the word of a poet, little do you believe. Then a soothsayer, Umar thought. The recitation moved on: nor the word of a soothsayer, little do you remember; a revelation from the Lord of the worlds. Then what if he is inventing it, he thought, and the surah closed the door: had he invented sayings against Allah, He would have seized him by the right hand and cut his life's vein.
Allah was answering Umar's private thoughts, in real time, through the mouth of a Prophet ﷺ who did not even know he was there. Umar said: that was the first time Islam entered my heart. He did not submit that night. He shook it off and slipped away into the dark. But the Word had touched him, and it does not let go easily.
His sister's blood
طه مَا أَنزَلْنَا عَلَيْكَ الْقُرْآنَ لِتَشْقَىٰ
“Ṭā, Hā. We have not sent down to you the Qur’ān that you be distressed”
Surah Taha 20:1-2 Read 20:1 with tafsir
The famous day began with a bounty. Abu Jahl raged before Quraysh: this man has cursed our religion, mocked our forefathers, condemned our gods; who will rid us of him? A hundred camels, red and black, the choicest wealth in Arabia, and a hundred pouches of silver to whoever does it. Umar stood up for the price, greed and grievance in a single motion, strapped on his sword, and walked through Makkah with the blade bare in his hand. On the way he met Nu'aym ibn Abdullah, a man who had quietly accepted Islam and told no one, and who now saw death in Umar's eyes. Where to? To kill Muhammad. Nu'aym thought fast: have you lost your mind? His clan will not let you walk the earth afterward. And if you are so eager to set things right, start with your own house: your sister and her husband have accepted Islam.
It was true. Fatima bint al-Khattab and her husband Sa'id ibn Zayd, son of Zayd ibn Amr who had rejected the idols and died five years before the revelation, the seeker the Prophet ﷺ said he saw in Jannah, counted as an ummah all by himself. And inside their house that very hour sat a teacher: Khabbab ibn al-Aratt, the former slave whose back the idolaters had burned. Dr. Yasir Qadhi stops the story here and will not let the moment pass: even in the depths of persecution, the dawah ran an education program. Whoever converted was assigned someone to teach them the Book and the prayer, in secrecy, under threat of torture. Then he looks at us: today a convert gets a hug at the masjid and is too often never called again. Knowledge was the lifeline of this religion at its weakest hour.
Umar heard the murmur of recitation through the door and began pounding on it. Khabbab hid, and Fatima pushed the written page beneath her skirt and all but sat on it (paper did not exist; it was likely a tablet of stone or the like, nobody knows). What was that humming I heard? Nothing, they said. By Allah, I know, he said: the two of you have joined him. He lunged at Sa'id, and Fatima threw herself between them, and the blow meant for her husband landed on her and split her lip open. Then, bleeding in front of the brother she had been hiding from, she stopped hiding: yes, we have accepted Islam, we believe in Allah and His Messenger ﷺ, so do as you please.
The sight of his sister's blood and the courage behind it broke something open in him: granite on the outside, and under it, a heart that tore easily, the same two layers the ummah would later watch through his whole khilafah. Show me what you were reading, he said, suddenly quiet. She refused until he purified himself, because even in year six, the believers knew this Book is touched only in cleanliness. So Umar washed, took up the page, and read the opening of Taha. Islam entered his heart, and he knew it was true, and he asked one question: where is he now?
Allahu Akbar from the house of al-Arqam
Sa'id saw that the rage had drained from his brother-in-law's eyes and gave up the secret: the Prophet ﷺ is in the house of al-Arqam. Umar walked there, the sword still in his hand, and knocked. A companion peered through a crack in the door, saw who stood outside, and came back trembling: it is Umar, with his sword. It was Hamza, only days into his own Islam, who settled the room: let him in. If Allah intends good for him, he will accept. And if not, the very sword in his hand will be his end.
They opened the door and took an arm each, and brought him before the Prophet ﷺ, who took hold of his garment and pulled the most feared man in Makkah toward himself: what has brought you here, son of al-Khattab? By Allah, if you do not stop, Allah will send His punishment down upon you. And Umar radiyallahu anhu answered: O Messenger of Allah, I have come to believe in Allah and His Messenger and to testify to the truth. The Prophet ﷺ cried Allahu Akbar so loudly that everyone in the house knew, without being told, that Umar ibn al-Khattab had become Muslim.
What happened next had never happened before. Around forty believers formed two rows and marched to the Kaaba in open daylight, Hamza at the head of one and Umar at the head of the other, the two freshest converts in Makkah leading because no one would dare touch them, and there, for the first time, the Muslims prayed publicly at the House of Allah. Years later Ibn Abbas asked Umar where his title came from, and Umar pointed to this day: the Prophet ﷺ named him al-Farooq, the one who separates truth from falsehood, because his Islam dragged the truth out of hiding. And decades later, as Umar lay dying, Ibn Masud measured a whole era by him: we have remained in honor ever since Umar accepted Islam; we could not even pray at the Kaaba until that day.
Umar being Umar, secrecy offended him. He went personally to Abu Jahl's house and knocked, just to inform him face to face: I have come to tell you that I believe in Allah and His Messenger. The door slammed shut on a curse. Then he asked which man in Makkah could least keep a secret, was pointed to Jamil ibn Ma'mar, and confided that he had accepted Islam; Jamil barely got his garment on before he was running through the streets shouting the news, Umar walking calmly behind him, correcting the wording for the crowds. Men mobbed and shoved him at the Kaaba until al-As ibn Wa'il, father of Amr ibn al-As, threw his protection over him with plain common sense: the man has chosen a path for himself, let him be. The Prophet ﷺ would later say of this convert, as Bukhari records: nations before you had inspired men who were spoken to though they were not prophets, and if there is such a man in my ummah, it is Umar.
The pact hung inside the Kaaba
Now look at the year through the eyes of Quraysh: the bulk of the believers have slipped overseas beyond your power, which is humiliation enough, and in one week the dawah has taken your two most promising men. So in the seventh year of the dawah the clans gathered and reached the only consensus they had left: Muhammad ﷺ must be killed. They came to Abu Talib one final time with a cold offer: hand over your nephew, name whatever blood money you wish, and no Qurayshi hand will strike the blow. Or be cut off from us entirely. Abu Talib's fury answered before his words did: do as you please, I will never hand him over.
So Quraysh did something Arabia had never seen: they wrote the threat down. A formal pact: no one would buy from or sell to the Banu Hashim, no one would marry into them or give them daughters, no one would so much as deal with them, no food, no water, until they surrendered the Prophet ﷺ. They sealed the document and hung it inside the locked Kaaba, dressing a starvation siege in the robes of the sacred. It is said the Prophet ﷺ made du'a against the man who penned it, and the hand that wrote the pact was paralyzed until the day he died.
The Banu Hashim and their twin clan the Banu al-Muttalib, Muslim and idol worshipper alike, withdrew together into the valley Makkah knew as the shi'b of Abu Talib. Sit with how strange and how telling that is: most of those who starved beside the Prophet ﷺ for the next years did not believe in him; they went hungry out of pure loyalty of blood, with Abu Talib, still unconverted, presiding over the camp the whole time. One man of the clan refused, defected to Quraysh, and kept his comfortable house in the city: Abu Lahab.
Two years, some say three, in that valley were the hungriest of the whole seerah. They lived on rainwater and the leaves of shrubs; one of those who endured it remembered that their droppings became like the droppings of goats. The sources fall strangely quiet about this period, and the Sheikh reads the silence itself: few who lived it survived into the years when history came asking, and those who did, like all human beings, did not love retelling their most painful season. We do know who fed them. Every so often Mut'im ibn Adi, the most decent of the Prophet's ﷺ non-Muslim countrymen, would load a camel with grain and water in the night, strike its flank, and send it walking into the valley's one entrance; Khadijah's nephew Hakim ibn Hizam did the same in secret. After Badr, years later, the Prophet ﷺ said that if Mut'im were still alive and asked him for all seventy captives of that battle, he would have freed them for him, no ransom asked. He ﷺ never forgot a kindness. Quraysh's hardest men patrolled the other direction: when foreign traders came in the hajj months, Abu Lahab would call out: do not sell to these people, and I will pay you double. And still, every hajj season, the Prophet ﷺ walked out of the valley to the visiting tribes and kept giving dawah while his family chewed leaves.
Eaten away, all but the name of Allah
The boycott broke under three blows that landed together. The first came from the Prophet's ﷺ own lips: he prayed against them, O Allah, send upon them a famine like the famine of Yusuf. Drought settled over Makkah until its people were eating carcasses and chewing dead hides, and they understood whose du'a had done it; messengers began to move, feeling for reconciliation.
The second was a conspiracy of decency. Hisham ibn Amr, bound to the besieged families through his mother, had had enough, and quietly built a coalition: his friend Zuhayr ibn Abi Umayyah, then Mut'im ibn Adi, Abu al-Bakhtari, and a fifth, the handful of Quraysh whose hearts had never truly signed the pact. They planted themselves around the assembly by the Kaaba, and on cue Zuhayr rose: how long are we going to starve our own kith and kin to death? Abu Jahl shot back that the pact had been agreed by all, and the trap sprang. Hisham rose: I never agreed, this was your idea. Mut'im rose: you forced it on us. Then the fourth, then the fifth, each from a different corner of the gathering, until Abu Jahl looked around and said the truest thing he ever said: by Allah, this is a plan that was hatched in the night. It was. And it had worked: the public mood had turned.
The third blow no man could have staged. The Prophet ﷺ came to his uncle in the valley: Allah has informed me that He has set the termites upon their pact, and they have eaten every word of it except the opening, Bismika Allahumma, in Your name, O Allah. The Kaaba was locked; the document sealed in its cloth; no human eye could have checked. Abu Talib asked: your Lord has told you this? Yes. Then, said the old chieftain, I stake everything on it. For the first time in years he walked into the Haram with his clansmen behind him and offered Quraysh a wager: my nephew says his Lord has informed him your treaty is devoured, all but Bismika Allahumma. Bring it out. If he is wrong, I hand him to you this very hour; if he is right, you end this. They agreed, certain of an easy win, unsealed the cloth, and found nothing left to read but: in Your name, O Allah. They spat the word sorcery, but a promise before all of Quraysh is a promise. The boycott was dead, and around the tenth year of the dawah, the Prophet ﷺ nearing fifty, the two clans walked home.
Out of those starving years came, of all things, the era's greatest poem: the Lamiyyah of Abu Talib, around a hundred verses each landing on the letter lam, the old man's indictment of Quraysh for what they did to their own kin in the very shadow of the sanctuary; Ibn Kathir judged it finer than the seven hanging odes in style and in substance both. But the seerah holds its breath here, because the relief is brief. Ahead, close ahead, wait the deaths of Abu Talib and Khadijah and the road to Ta'if: the lowest valley of the whole story, and the doorway through which Madinah will come.