Letters to Kings and the Expansion of the Message

Among the most distinctive features of al-Mubarakpuri's narrative of the Madinan period is the prominence he gives to the Prophet's diplomatic correspondence with the rulers of the surrounding world. In the period following the Treaty of Hudaybiyyah in the sixth year of the Hijra, the Prophet dispatched letters to multiple sovereigns — the Byzantine Emperor Heraclius, the Persian Emperor Khosrow II (Parviz), the Negus (Ashama) of Abyssinia, Muqawqis the ruler of Egypt, Harith ibn Abi Shamir the Ghassanid king of Syria, Hawdha ibn Ali the ruler of Yamama, and the rulers of Bahrain, Oman, and Yemen. Each letter was carried by a different emissary, and each was composed according to a consistent format that opened with the formula 'From Muhammad, the Messenger of Allah, to [name]' — a phrasing that made clear that the sender was writing not as a tribal chieftain addressing an equal but as a prophet conveying a divine message.

Al-Mubarakpuri treats the accounts of each letter's reception with careful attention to the primary sources, noting that some of these accounts are transmitted through chains of reasonable reliability while others require more caution. The most detailed account, transmitted in the Sahih of al-Bukhari, concerns Heraclius — the Emperor of Byzantium who had recently recaptured Jerusalem from the Persians and was at the height of his power. When the letter arrived, Heraclius convened a gathering of Byzantine nobles and, we are told through the account of Abu Sufyan ibn Harb who happened to be in Syria at the time, conducted an extended inquiry into the nature of this Arabian prophet. Abu Sufyan, still a pagan opponent of Islam at the time, was brought before Heraclius and questioned about the Prophet's lineage, character, followers, and claims. After the interrogation, Heraclius reportedly told those present: 'If what you have said is true, he will shortly possess the ground beneath these two feet of mine. I indeed knew he was coming, but I had not thought he would be from you.' Despite his apparent recognition of the Prophet's message, Heraclius did not convert — the political pressures of his court and his unwillingness to abandon his empire stood in the way.

The Persian Emperor Khosrow II took a diametrically different approach: he tore the letter to pieces when it was read to him and sent messengers to Yemen, then under Persian administration, ordering the arrest of this Arabian claiming prophethood. The governor of Yemen sent two emissaries to Medina to carry out the arrest. The Prophet received them calmly and told them to convey a message back to Khosrow: that Allah would tear his kingdom just as Khosrow had torn the letter. Within a short time, Khosrow was assassinated by his own son, and the Persian Empire entered the period of collapse that would lead to its conquest by the Muslims within a generation. Yemen, whose governor Badhan had been instructed to carry out the arrest, was eventually transformed when Badhan and his people accepted Islam without coercion — one of the most striking instances of peaceful acceptance of the message.

The Negus of Abyssinia — referred to as Ashama — was in a different position. He had already provided refuge to the first Muslims who had emigrated to Abyssinia years earlier, and his interaction with Islam predated these formal diplomatic letters. His response to the Prophet's letter was positive, and he reportedly embraced Islam privately, though his subjects never converted with him. When news of his death reached Medina, the Prophet performed the funeral prayer in absentia over him — a practice that became legally significant in Islamic jurisprudence.

Muqawqis of Egypt received the letter with considerable courtesy, sending gifts that included two Coptic slave women (one of whom, Maria al-Qibtiyyah, became the Prophet's concubine and mother of his son Ibrahim) and a white mule. He did not convert but expressed admiration for the message. Al-Mubarakpuri notes that later events — the Muslim conquest of Egypt within years of the Prophet's death — gave his courteous but non-committal response a poignancy that those who received it could not have anticipated.

The significance al-Mubarakpuri draws from these letters goes beyond their historical outcomes. They represent a formal declaration that Islam's scope was universal and not tribal. The Prophet was not calling Arabia to a new religion — he was addressing all of humanity through its most powerful representatives. The language of the letters — invariably opening with the call to Islam, quoting a Quranic verse commanding the People of the Book to a common word of monotheism, and stating that the burden of the subjects' refusal to hear the truth would fall on their rulers — was consistent across all the correspondence, demonstrating that the Prophet understood himself as carrying a single coherent message to the entire human community.

The period of diplomatic expansion also coincided with a burst of military and consolidating activity. The expedition to Khaybar in the seventh year pacified the remaining Jewish fortress communities that had been allied with those who attacked Medina. The Battle of Mu'tah in the eighth year — the first direct engagement with Byzantine-allied forces — ended in tactical withdrawal after the deaths of Zayd ibn Harithah, Ja'far ibn Abi Talib, and Abd Allah ibn Rawahah, and Khalid ibn al-Walid's masterly extrication of the Muslim force. The Expedition of Dhat al-Salasil and other northern expeditions in the same period demonstrated the Prophet's determination to project power into the regions that bordered the great empires, preparing the ground for the later Muslim expansion that would transform the world.

Al-Mubarakpuri weaves these diplomatic and military threads into a coherent picture of a prophet who understood the full strategic dimensions of his mission: to establish Islam not as a regional Arab phenomenon but as a world religion, addressed to all peoples, carried by a community whose confidence in their message was matched by their diplomatic skill and, when necessary, their military capability.