Return of the Abyssinian Emigrants

# The Return of the Abyssinian Emigrants

The Long Absence

The first Muslims to emigrate had left Mecca in the fifth year of prophethood — approximately 615 CE — fleeing persecution under the Negus Ashama ibn Abjar, the Christian king of Abyssinia who granted them protection when no one else would. Two waves of emigration to Abyssinia had preceded the Hijra to Medina: an initial group of about fifteen, followed by a second larger group of approximately eighty-three men and nineteen women. Some of the Abyssinian emigrants had returned earlier — drawn back by a false report that the Meccans had accepted Islam, only to find the report untrue and the persecution continuing. But a significant portion had remained in Abyssinia for years, some for over a decade, building lives in exile while the Muslim community in Arabia fought its foundational battles.

The return of the Abyssinian emigrants is not a single event with a precise date but a process that unfolded in stages across several years of the Medinan period. The principal return of the remaining Abyssinian emigrants occurred around 7 AH, following the Conquest of Khaybar, when the Prophet ﷺ was receiving delegations and consolidating the Muslim community's position in Arabia. The narrations describe the Prophet ﷺ expressing happiness at receiving two goods together on the same day: the arrival of Jafar ibn Abi Talib, who led the returning emigrants, and the victory at Khaybar. He embraced Jafar and is reported to have said: "I do not know which delights me more — the conquest of Khaybar or the coming of Jafar."

Jafar ibn Abi Talib

Jafar ibn Abi Talib was one of the most significant figures among the Abyssinian emigrants and perhaps the most important Muslim ambassador in the early period of Islam. When the Quraysh sent Amr ibn al-As and Abdullah ibn Abi Rabia to the court of the Negus to demand the return of the Muslim fugitives, it was Jafar who spoke for the Muslims before the Negus. His address to the court — preserved in detail in the seerah literature — is among the most eloquent early summaries of Islamic teaching. He described the pre-Islamic condition of Arabia: idol worship, the killing of daughters, the violation of neighbors' rights, the rule of the strong over the weak. He described what the Prophet ﷺ had brought: monotheism, prayer, zakat, the prohibition of fornication and lying, the honoring of kinship. Then he recited the opening of Surah Maryam — the Quranic account of Jesus and Mary — and the Negus wept, saying: "The difference between what you have said and what we believe about Jesus is no greater than this line," drawing a small line on the ground.

The Negus refused to hand over the Muslims. Jafar's speech before the Negus of Abyssinia is the first recorded Islamic dawah address to a Christian ruler, and it resulted in the first grant of protection extended to the Muslim community by a non-Muslim authority.

The Emigrants' Experience in Abyssinia

The years in Abyssinia were formative for the emigrants in ways the seerah sources record carefully. They lived under a just non-Muslim ruler and observed that justice could exist outside of Islam — a fact the Prophet ﷺ later used to establish principles about engaging with just governance wherever it existed. They raised children in a foreign land. Some, like Umm Habiba bint Abi Sufyan — whose husband had converted to Christianity in Abyssinia — found themselves in difficult personal circumstances that the Prophet ﷺ later resolved by marrying her himself. The children born to the Abyssinian emigrants were among the early generation of Muslims with no direct memory of Mecca's persecution.

The experience also produced the tradition — preserved in the hadith and affirmed by classical scholars — that seeking protection in a just environment, even under non-Muslim rule, is permissible and sometimes obligatory when facing religious persecution. The Prophet's ﷺ instruction to emigrate to Abyssinia established this principle at the very beginning of Islam's history, when the young Muslim community had no military power and no territory of its own.

The Joy of Return

The hadith literature describes the reunion between the Prophet ﷺ and the returning Abyssinian emigrants with warmth. Jafar's arrival at Khaybar, the embrace, the Prophet's ﷺ comparison of two joys on one day — these details point to the emotional weight of the reunion. Many of the returning emigrants had been gone for years; they were reuniting with a community that had fought Badr, Uhud, the Battle of the Trench, and the Conquest of Khaybar in their absence. They returned not to the persecuted minority they had left but to the governing authority of the Hijaz.

Jafar ibn Abi Talib would not have long to enjoy the return. He was killed at the Battle of Mutah in 8 AH — his arms cut off while he carried the battle standard, the Prophet ﷺ reported to have seen him in paradise with two wings replacing the arms. He is known in the Islamic tradition as Jafar al-Tayyar (Jafar the Flyer) for this reason. The Prophet ﷺ wept for him at the news of his death and visited his family for three days.

The return of the Abyssinian emigrants closed the first chapter of the diaspora that the Prophet ﷺ had initiated to protect his community. The community that had scattered to survive had come home, and what had been a handful of persecuted believers in Mecca was now the governing authority of Arabia.

The Negus's Death and the Prophet's Prayer

The connection between the Muslim community and Abyssinia extended beyond the physical return of the emigrants. When the Negus Ashama died in 9 AH, the Prophet ﷺ announced his death to the companions and prayed the funeral prayer (salat al-gha'ib) for him — an absent funeral prayer for a man who had died on the other side of the African continent. This was the first recorded instance of the absent funeral prayer in Islamic practice. The Negus had accepted Islam privately — the narrations indicate he had accepted the testimony of faith — and the Prophet ﷺ honored him accordingly. The prayer over the Negus established the principle that the Prophet's ﷺ community extended beyond geographic Arabia, and that just rulers who protected the Muslim community had a claim on Muslim honor and gratitude regardless of where they died.

Sources: Sahih al-Bukhari (Kitab al-Maghazi); Sahih Muslim; Ibn Hisham, al-Sira al-Nabawiyya; Ibn Kathir, al-Bidayah wan-Nihayah; Ibn Sa'd, al-Tabaqat al-Kubra