The First Pledge and the Teacher

The following pilgrimage, twelve men of Yathrib met the Prophet ﷺ secretly at Aqabah and gave him a pledge. It was not yet a pledge to fight; it became known as the Pledge of the Women, because its terms were the terms later asked of believing women: that they would worship none but Allah, not steal, not commit unlawful intimacy, not kill their children, not slander, and not disobey him in what is right. He told them: if you fulfil it, Paradise is yours; and if you fall into something, your affair is with Allah, who may punish or forgive.

Then he did something quietly decisive: he sent a man back with them to teach. Mus'ab ibn Umayr (ra), a young Makkan who had been the most pampered youth of the city, dressed in the finest garments, whose mother cut him off when he embraced Islam until he wore patched clothing, went to Yathrib as the first ambassador and teacher of Islam.

Mus'ab (ra) lodged with the believers and taught the Qur'an gently, house by house. His wisdom won the city. When two of its most powerful chiefs, Usayd ibn Hudayr and Sa'd ibn Mu'adh, came to him angry, meaning to drive him out, he met each with the same calm words: will you sit and listen? If you like what you hear, accept it; if not, I will leave. Both sat, both listened, and both believed, and when Sa'd ibn Mu'adh (ra), the chief of his clan, accepted Islam, he turned to his people and said: your men and women are forbidden to me until you believe. By nightfall not a household of his clan remained without Islam.

Mus'ab (ra) returned to Makkah before the next season with news that changed everything: Islam had taken root in a city of its own, with chiefs and fighters and homes, a place where the believers could finally be free. The refuge the Prophet ﷺ had sought from tribe to tribe for ten years now existed.