After the Year of Sorrow

The Prophet ﷺ traveled to Taif in the tenth year of prophethood — approximately 619 CE — under conditions that made the journey both urgent and desperate. The deaths of Abu Talib and Khadijah in the same year had removed the two greatest pillars of his life in Mecca: the tribal protector whose word had shielded the mission from violence, and the wife whose faith and resources had sustained it. The Quraysh, sensing the change, had already begun testing what Abu Talib's absence meant: a man had thrown dirt on the Prophet's ﷺ head in the street within days of Abu Talib's death.

The Prophet ﷺ needed a new base. He had tried presenting Islam to tribal delegations during the pilgrimage season without success. Taif was the next major city after Mecca — approximately sixty miles to the southeast in the mountainous region of al-Ta'if, seat of the Thaqif tribe, a center of commerce and agricultural wealth built around its orchards and vines. If Taif would receive him, he would have an alternative to the hostile environment of Mecca. He traveled with Zayd ibn Harith, his freed slave and adopted son, the companion he trusted most for personal matters.

The Meeting with the Three Brothers

The Prophet ﷺ approached the three sons of Amr ibn Umayr al-Thaqafi — the most powerful men in Taif — and presented his message, asking them to receive him and protect him so that he could preach. Their responses were a lesson in the varieties of human rejection.

The first said: "If you are truly a prophet sent by Allah, you are too important for me to speak with. If you are lying about Allah, then you are not a suitable person to speak with." A dismissal dressed in apparent deference.

The second said: "Could Allah find no one better than you to send?" An insult dressed as a theological question.

The third said: "I swear, I will never speak to you. If you are truly a prophet from Allah as you say, then your rejection of me will be serious. If you are lying about Allah, then you are not worth speaking with."

The Prophet ﷺ asked them to keep the meeting private if they would not help — not wanting the news of another rejection to spread through Arabia. They refused even this. They arranged for the servants and young men of the city to line the road on both sides as the Prophet ﷺ departed and to throw stones at him, jeering and shouting, until he reached the wall of a garden at the edge of the city and could go no further. By the time he stopped, his feet were bleeding and his sandals were filled with blood. Zayd had tried to shield him and was himself wounded.

The Prayer at the Wall of the Garden

The Prophet ﷺ stopped at a wall belonging to a garden owned by Utbah and Shaybah, two sons of Rabia — men of the Quraysh who happened to be in Taif. He sat under the shade of a grapevine. Utbah and Shaybah watched him from a distance. The Prophet ﷺ looked to the sky and prayed what became known as one of the most intimate prayers in the seerah:

"O Allah, I complain to You of my weakness, my insufficient means, and my insignificance before people. O Most Merciful of those who show mercy! You are the Lord of the weak, and You are my Lord. To whom will You entrust me? To one far away who receives me with hostility? Or to an enemy to whom You have given power over me? If You are not angry with me, I do not care — but Your favor is the most expansive thing for me. I seek refuge in the light of Your face by which darkness is illuminated and the affairs of this world and the next are set right, that Your wrath should fall upon me or Your anger descend upon me. I will keep appealing to You until You are satisfied with me. There is no power and no strength except through You."

Utbah and Shaybah, watching, were moved by the sight — a man sitting battered and bleeding, praying with evident sincerity. Neither was a Muslim, but they sent their Christian slave Addas with a plate of grapes. Addas brought them to the Prophet ﷺ. When the Prophet ﷺ said "Bismillah" before eating, Addas was startled: these were not words spoken in this land. The Prophet ﷺ asked where he was from; Addas said he was from Nineveh. The Prophet ﷺ said: "The city of the righteous man Yunus ibn Matta?" Addas: "How do you know Yunus ibn Matta?" The Prophet ﷺ said that Yunus was his brother, a prophet. Addas wept, kissed the Prophet's ﷺ head, hands, and feet. The two men watching from a distance noted the encounter and said to each other: "He has corrupted our slave."

The Angel of the Mountains

After the prayer, Jibril appeared with another angel. The second angel introduced himself as the Angel of the Mountains and said he had been sent by Allah with the mountains of Taif under his control: if the Prophet ﷺ wished, he could bring the two mountains flanking the city together and crush its people within them.

The Prophet ﷺ said: "No. I hope that Allah will bring from their descendants people who will worship Allah alone and not associate anything with Him."

This response — made at the lowest moment of the Meccan mission, by a man whose feet were still bleeding and who had just been driven out of the second major city of Arabia — is one of the most illuminating moments in the entire seerah. It reveals the depth of the prophetic mercy. The city that had thrown stones at him in 619 CE accepted Islam before his death in 632 CE. The children of the people who had set their servants against him grew up Muslim. The Prophet ﷺ had seen that future, or had hoped for it, and had declined the immediate punishment in its favor.

The Return to Mecca

The Prophet ﷺ could not simply reenter Mecca without tribal protection — he was technically without a patron after Abu Talib's death, and to reenter without one was to accept an entirely exposed social status. He sent word asking several leaders to extend their protection (jiwar). Two refused. Mut'im ibn Adi accepted. Mut'im — a Qurayshi leader who had been instrumental in breaking the boycott of Banu Hashim, and who would die a non-Muslim at the Battle of Badr — publicly extended his protection and sent his sons with swords to the Kaaba to announce it visibly. The Prophet ﷺ reentered Mecca and continued preaching under Mut'im's protection.

The Prophet ﷺ did not forget Mut'im's act. After the Battle of Badr, when seventy Qurayshi prisoners were being held and the question arose of ransoming them, the Prophet ﷺ said: "If Mut'im ibn Adi were alive and had interceded for these people, I would have released them all for his sake." The standard of gratitude the Prophet ﷺ maintained toward those who helped him — Muslim or not — is one of the moral signatures of his character.

What Taif Meant for the Mission

The journey to Taif marked the effective end of the Meccan phase's primary strategy: attempting to find within the Quraysh's sphere of influence a community willing to receive and protect the Muslim mission. Every major avenue within that sphere had been tried. The Prophet ﷺ would now increasingly look northward — to the tribes coming through Mecca for the annual pilgrimage — and among them he would find, in 620 and 621 CE, the men from Yathrib who would eventually make the Hijra possible.

The stones of Taif were the closing of one door. The opening of the next would come, within a year, at the well of Zamzam and on the hill of al-Aqabah — when six men from the Khazraj tribe of Yathrib heard the Prophet's ﷺ presentation, recognized in it the message they had heard described by their Jewish neighbors as the coming of a prophet, and took it home with them.

Sources: Ibn Hisham, al-Sira al-Nabawiyya; Ibn Kathir, al-Bidayah wan-Nihayah; Ibn Sa'd, al-Tabaqat al-Kubra; Sahih al-Bukhari (Kitab Manaqib); al-Bayhaqi, Dala'il al-Nubuwwa