Living as a Muslim minority: what Abyssinia teaches

The first Muslims to live as a minority did it in Abyssinia, under a Christian king, from 615 CE. They kept their faith openly, told the truth about it when questioned, lived as good neighbours under the Negus’s protection, and prayed for him. When he died, the Prophet ﷺ prayed over him from Madinah (Bukhari 1245, sahih (al-Bukhari)).

Why Abyssinia

In the fifth year of the prophethood, 615 CE, the Muslims of Makkah were being persecuted, and a small group crossed the Red Sea to the kingdom of Abyssinia, in today’s Ethiopia and Eritrea. More followed. Prophetic Footsteps tells the journey; this page is about how they lived once they got there.

Umm Salamah, later a wife of the Prophet ﷺ, was among them, and she tells the story in a long report. It opens: “When we came to the land of Abyssinia, we lived beside the best of neighbours, the Negus. We were safe in our religion. We worshipped Allah without being harmed, and heard nothing we disliked” (Musnad Ahmad 1740, isnad qawi (Shu’ayb al-Arna’ut); isnad sahih (al-Albani); our translation). The quotations below are from the same report.

Quraysh ask for them back

Quraysh sent two envoys, ’Abd Allah ibn Abi Rabi’ah and ’Amr ibn al-’As, who was not yet Muslim, with gifts of fine leather for the Negus and each of his generals. They asked him to hand the Muslims over without hearing them. His generals agreed. The Negus refused:

No, by Allah. I will not hand over people who sought my protection, settled in my land and chose me over everyone else, until I have called them and asked them.

Before they went in, the Muslims agreed what they would say: “By Allah, we will say what we know and what our Prophet ﷺ commanded us, whatever comes of it.”

Ja’far speaks

The Negus asked what this religion was, for which they had left their people’s faith without taking up his. Ja’far ibn Abi Talib answered:

O king, we were a people of jahiliyyah. We worshipped idols, ate dead animals, did shameful things, cut off our relatives and treated our neighbours badly, and the strong among us ate up the weak. Then Allah sent us a messenger from among ourselves, whose lineage, truthfulness, trustworthiness and chastity we knew. He called us to Allah, to worship Him alone … He told us to speak the truth, return what is entrusted to us, keep ties with our relatives, be good to our neighbours, and stop shedding blood and doing what is forbidden.

The Negus asked to hear something of what had come from Allah, and Ja’far recited the opening of Surah Maryam. The Negus wept until his beard was wet, and his bishops wept until their scrolls were wet. “This and what Musa brought,” he said, “come from the same lamp-niche.”

The next day ’Amr tried again: ask them what they say about ’Isa son of Maryam. The Muslims had never faced anything like it, and again they agreed to say what Allah had said, whatever came of it. Ja’far told the king:

We say about him what our Prophet brought: he is the servant of Allah and His messenger, His spirit and His word, which He cast into Maryam, the virgin, devoted to Allah.

The Negus picked up a twig from the ground. ’Isa, he said, is not one twig more than what you have said. His generals snorted, and he told them to snort if they liked. He told the Muslims they were safe in his land, that anyone who insulted them would be fined, and that he would not harm one of them for a mountain of gold. He sent the envoys home with their gifts.

Good neighbours, and a prayer for the king

Later a rival rose against the Negus. Umm Salamah says the Muslims had never been so anxious, for fear that a king would win who would not know their rights as the Negus did.

The armies met across the Nile. Al-Zubayr ibn al-’Awwam, one of the youngest of them, tied an inflated waterskin to his chest and swam across to watch and bring back the news. The Muslims, she says, prayed to Allah for the Negus to win and for his rule to be secured in his land. He won, and they stayed “in the best home, with the best neighbour”.

“Your brother Ashamah”

Years later, in Madinah, the Prophet ﷺ announced the Negus’s death on the day he died, took the Muslims out to the prayer ground, lined them up in rows and prayed over him with four takbirs (Bukhari 1245, sahih (al-Bukhari)). Jabir ibn ’Abd Allah narrates what he said:

The Negus never met the Prophet ﷺ, yet he was “your brother”, and the ummah in Madinah stood in rows for a king across the sea. The last of the Muslims in Abyssinia, with Ja’far, reached Madinah just after Khaybar, in 7 AH (628 CE). The Prophet ﷺ told those who had come by ship that they had made two hijrahs (Bukhari 3876, sahih (al-Bukhari)).

What it teaches Muslims today

About one Muslim in five lives as part of a religious minority, as our page on the ummah today shows. Abyssinia was the first time. What the Companions did there:

• They practised Islam openly. Umm Salamah’s first words about the place are that they worshipped Allah without being harmed.
• They told the truth about it. Twice they agreed to say what they believed, “whatever comes of it”, and the second time it was the question most likely to cost them.
• They were good neighbours. Ja’far described Islam to a Christian king through truthfulness, trust, family ties and neighbourliness.
• They were grateful for justice. They prayed for the king who protected them.
• They stayed part of the ummah. When they could, they came to the Prophet ﷺ, and he never stopped counting them as his own.

The Qur’an sets the terms for dealing with people of other faiths who live peacefully alongside you:

Asma’ bint Abi Bakr asked whether she should keep good ties with her mother, who was not Muslim and had come to visit, hoping for kindness. The Prophet ﷺ said yes (Bukhari 2620, sahih (al-Bukhari)). The Qur’an also asks Muslims to keep their word (Qur’an 17:34), which is why our ground rules say we follow the law where our readers live.

Read next: “My brothers”: what the Prophet ﷺ said about the Muslims after him

Sources

1. Umm Salamah’s report of the hijrah to Abyssinia (Musnad Ahmad 1740, isnad hasan (Darussalam edition)), on Tohed, with the Arabic text. en.tohed.com
2. Dorar al-Saniyyah, hadith encyclopedia: the full report, graded isnad qawi by Shu’ayb al-Arna’ut (Takhrij Siyar A’lam al-Nubala’ 1/431-434) and isnad sahih by al-Albani (Fiqh al-Sirah 115). dorar.net

Qur’an and hadith on this page

• Qur’an 60:8
• Bukhari 1245, sahih (al-Bukhari)
• Bukhari 2620, sahih (al-Bukhari)
• Bukhari 3876, sahih (al-Bukhari)
• Bukhari 3877, sahih (al-Bukhari)