The events of the year: the pilgrimage and the ambassadors

This is the chapter of what occurred of events in this year, meaning the year six of the Hijra. In it descended the prescription of the Hajj, as ash-Shafi’i established, at the time of al-Hudaybiyya, in the word of the Most High ’and complete the Hajj and the Umra for Allah’ [al-Baqara: 196]; and for that he inclined to the view that the Hajj is deferred, not immediate, for he performed no Hajj until the year ten, while the three disagreed with him: Malik, Abu Hanifa and Ahmad, holding for them that the Hajj is obligatory upon everyone able upon immediacy, and they forbade that the obligation be derived from the word of the Most High ’and complete the Hajj and the Umra for Allah’, for in this verse is only the command of completing after entering into ihram; and they argued by proofs, many of which we reported at the tafsir of this verse in our book of Tafsir, with what suffices therein; and to Allah belong praise and favor.

In this year the Muslim women were forbidden to the polytheists, specifying the generality of what occurred with the treaty of the year of al-Hudaybiyya upon that: none of ours shall come to you, though upon your religion, but you return him to us. So descended the word of the Most High: ’O you who believe, when the believing women come to you as emigrants, examine them; Allah knows best their faith; if you know them to be believers,

return them not to the disbelievers: they are not lawful for them, nor are they lawful for them’ [al-Mumtahina: 1], the verse. And in this year was the campaign of al-Muraysi’, in which was the story of the lie and the descent of the innocence of Aisha the Mother of the Believers, as preceded; and in it was the Umra of al-Hudaybiyya and what occurred of the polytheists’ barring the Messenger of Allah, and how the treaty was concluded between them, putting the war aside between them ten years wherein people would feel safe from one another, and that there should be no treachery nor complicity; and all that has preceded at length in its places, and to Allah belong praise and favor. The pilgrimage of this year was kept by the polytheists.

Al-Waqidi said: in it, in Dhu l-Hijja of it, the Messenger of Allah sent six men bearing letters: Hatib ibn Abi Balta’a to al-Muqawqis, lord of Alexandria; Shuja’ ibn Wahb, of the Banu Asad ibn Khuzayma, who witnessed Badr, to al-Harith ibn Abi Shimr al-Ghassani, meaning the king of the Christian Arabs in Syria; Dihya ibn Khalifa al-Kalbi to Caesar, who is Heraclius king of the Romans; Abdallah ibn Hudhayfa as-Sahmi to Khusrau king of the Persians; Salit ibn Amr al-Amiri to Hawza ibn Ali al-Hanafi; and Amr ibn Umayya ad-Damri to the Negus, king of the Christians in Abyssinia, who is Ashama son of Abjar.