without the presence of God’s Messenger to supervise that society and conduct its affairs. When the Prophet completed his mission and conveyed his message in full, establishing the model Muslim state which made submission to God its own foundation, his life on earth was over. His companions followed his guidance and continued along the road he mapped out. None of them ever entertained any thought that the absence of the Prophet could rule out the implementation of Islam, as is sometimes claimed by ignorant people or by tyrants who happen to rule over parts of the Muslim world. The Prophet’s companions provided a practical example of what human life could be like when Islam was implemented, and of the magnitude of the blessings that are enjoyed by mankind when they adopt Islam as a code of living. The emigration to Abyssinia provided practical training during the Prophet’s lifetime for the establishment of a Muslim society in which the Prophet does not live.
Perhaps some leaders of the Quraysh could see some of the benefits which this emigration to Abyssinia could bring to Islam. At least they realized that the emigration was bound to make Islam well known to people far beyond the boundaries of Arabia. Hence, their attempt to have the emigrants extradited.
Creating an Impression of Weakness
Important as the aforementioned reasons were, the Prophet might have preferred not to send his companions on such a trip had the atmosphere in Makkah been somewhat less hostile to Islam. He might have preferred to have all his followers near him in Makkah, had he felt that the Quraysh’s hostility to Islam could weaken, or had he felt that he could widen the geographical area in which he was able to preach his message. One can see clearly that the Quraysh imposed a tight siege on Islam and effectively prevented its message from going beyond the valley of Makkah. Worse still, the Quraysh, or the hard-line elements in it, were able to heighten the conflict and increase its polarization. The struggle against Islam was the subject of every conversation in the traditional social gatherings around the Kaʿbah. As the Prophet reviewed the situation, he could clearly detect the danger that could threaten the very existence of the Muslim community. As he rejected every offer of compromise which required him to abandon some Islamic principles, the position of the hardliners was inevitably strengthened. The voice of moderation in the Quraysh ranks was becoming weaker all the time. The question which needed a well considered answer was whether the extremists could persuade the chiefs of the different clans that an all-out strike for a final solution was necessary. It certainly was not beyond Abū Jahl to advocate that course of action. He was assured of enough supporters at the beginning to make it worth considering. If he could carry one or two of the influential chiefs with him, the balance could easily be tilted in his favour. If Islam could be seen to get stronger and stronger, Abū Jahl could plausibly argue that such a final solution was needed there and then. He was no different from many an extremist leader who lends temporary support to conciliatory efforts in order to show that moderation cannot bring the desired results. Once he had done that, he could easily win support for his extreme line.
As already mentioned, the fact that the Muslims belonged to most, if not all, the clans of the Quraysh was a negative factor working against this extremist way of thinking. Most Muslims were young men who were valued by their clans for their strength. No clan would readily sacrifice its young men to remove a danger of whose presence they were not utterly convinced. Hence, the hard-liners in Makkah were aware that they needed to work hard in order to have matters their way. They were of course able to argue that their approach of exterminating Islam altogether would weaken all clans to more or less the same degree. When these clans inflicted torture on the vulnerable elements in their ranks who followed the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him), their action did not strengthen any single one of them at the expense of any other. Similarly, a radical effort against those in their ranks who followed Muhammad would maintain their relative strength.
The Prophet always tried to gather intelligence of what the enemies of Islam were planning. He was also keenly aware that the early period in the life of any new faith or creed was also the most dangerous, because it would not be difficult physically to kill such a new creed when its following was small. In the fifth year of the start of Islamic revelation, Islam faced a real danger of extermination.
Forestalling such danger was perhaps paramount in the Prophet’s thinking when he advised his companions to emigrate to Abyssinia. When the numbers of Muslims in Makkah were drastically reduced, the problem presented by Islam appeared to be a very simple one which could not warrant radical solutions, let alone extermination. The Prophet remained in Makkah surrounded by a small number of his companions, most of whom belonged to the weaker and more vulnerable elements in society. As such, Islam could not be seen to present a real danger to the social order in Makkah or Arabia as a whole. The Quraysh were sure to feel that they continued to hold the initiative and could strike at any moment. Moreover, the emigration of the Muslims made it clear to the Quraysh that a radical solution required unanimous support from all clans. It was not enough for two or three to agree to it, even though these might have been the strongest.
The emigration to Abyssinia was therefore a shrewd tactical move, calculated to make the Quraysh tend to dismiss Islam as representing little or no danger to its supremacy. Giving the enemy an impression of weakness could be a decisive factor in wars. Ten years later, when the Muslims fought their first major battle against the Quraysh in Badr, God Himself intervened to give the Quraysh the impression that the Muslims were a weak force: “God made you, when you met in battle, see them as small in number and made you appear few to them, so that God might accomplish a definite purpose of His.” (8: 44) We may ask: did not this move by the Prophet make those Muslims who stayed in Makkah more vulnerable? It certainly did, but it was a move that was taken after weighing up all eventualities in order to avoid the worst dangers and in the hope of preventing them all. One should not forget that the Prophet was being directed by God, assured of His help.
The emigration of the Prophet’s companions to Abyssinia took place in the fifth year of the start of the Qur’ānic revelations. It preceded emigration to Madinah by eight years. When the last of the Prophet’s companions who went to Abyssinia came back, they joined the Prophet and his army at the conquest of Khaybar, when the battle was already over. This took place in the seventh year after the Prophet’s settlement in Madinah. In other words, Jaʿfar ibn Abī Ṭālib and some of his companions stayed in Abyssinia for 15 years. The Prophet gave the new arrivals equal shares of the spoils of the war against the Jews in Khaybar. He did not apportion any share to any one of his companions who did not take part in the battle of Khaybar, apart from those returning emigrants from Abyssinia. The Prophet would not have given them such shares had he not considered that they were on a mission which was equal to that of those who took part in the Battle of Khaybar. He valued their contribution to the welfare of Islam and considered that their stay in Abyssinia was a part of the work to establish Islam as a Divine message for all mankind.
A Second Base for Islam
Perhaps one of the clearest indications to support this was the fact that some of the emigrants to Abyssinia stayed there for 15 years. As already mentioned, there was much more to the emigration than an attempt to spare the emigrants the verbal and physical abuse by the unbelievers in Makkah. Had this been the main reason, it might have been expected that those who went to Abyssinia would come back and join the Prophet in Madinah as soon as he settled there. The Muslim community in Madinah needed the support of every individual Muslim. There were more than a hundred in Abyssinia, and it would not have been acceptable for them to stay there at a time when the newly-founded Muslim state in Madinah was threatened by the Quraysh and the rest of the Arabian tribes. We cannot visualize the settlement of those Muslims in Abyssinia as something that was left to their own discretion. Indeed, contacts were maintained between them and the Prophet throughout their stay.
In this connection one can cite the fact that ʿAmr ibn Umayyah al-Ḍamrī, who embraced Islam in the third year after the Prophet’s settlement in Madinah, went to Abyssinia three times with messages from the Prophet to Negus. The first time was to ask Negus to arrange the Prophet’s marriage with one of the emigrants, Umm Ḥabībah bint Abī Sufyān. When she left Makkah on her journey to Abyssinia, she was
