The command to go public
Allah revealed: 'And warn your closest kindred.' (Quran 26:214). The Prophet ﷺ then climbed Mount Safa near the Kaaba and called out the leading clans of Quraysh, asking them: 'If I told you that an army was on the other side of this mountain ready to attack, would you believe me?' They said yes — he had never lied to them. He then warned them of the punishment of Allah for those who reject His message.
The Quraysh respond with hostility
The Quraysh leadership had economic and religious reasons to oppose the message: their custodianship of the Kaaba and the pilgrimage to its 360 idols was a source of prestige and trade. They tried bargaining (offering wealth, marriage, leadership), then mockery, then physical violence — first against vulnerable believers without tribal protection.
The first martyrs
Sumayyah bint Khabbat, an enslaved woman, became the first martyr in Islam — killed by Abu Jahl for her refusal to renounce her faith. Her husband Yasir was tortured to death. Their son Ammar survived. The freed slave Bilal ibn Rabah was tortured by his master Umayya — laid in the desert sun under heated stones — until Abu Bakr purchased and freed him.
The first hijra to Abyssinia
When the persecution intensified, the Prophet ﷺ instructed a group of believers to migrate to Abyssinia (modern Ethiopia) in 615 CE, ruled by a just Christian king known to Muslims as An-Najashi (the Negus). When Quraysh emissaries arrived to demand their return, the Negus listened to the Muslims' recitation of Surah Maryam describing Maryam and Isa, wept, and refused to hand them over.
The Boycott of Banu Hashim
Around 617 CE, the Quraysh declared a complete social and economic boycott against the Hashim clan — both the Muslims and the non-Muslim relatives who refused to surrender the Prophet ﷺ. The clan was confined to a valley outside Mecca for nearly three years. They ate leaves; children's hunger was audible from outside. The boycott collapsed when several Quraysh nobles, ashamed, ended it publicly.
Reflection
The Quraysh tried bribery, then ridicule, then violence, then a blockade. None of it broke the community. What did emerge was a small group of believers proven by years of pressure — the foundation on which the later Muslim polity would be built.
Primary sources
- Surah Ash-Shu'ara (26:214)
- Surah Maryam (19) — recited before the Negus
- Sahih Bukhari 4770 and parallel narrations
- Ibn Hisham, As-Sirah an-Nabawiyyah