Thumamah's Change of Heart

This is a true story.

One day, the Prophet ﷺ sent a group of horsemen out towards Najd. They came back to Madinah with a prisoner: Thumamah ibn Uthal, of Banu Hanifah. And he was no ordinary man. He was the chief of the people of Yamamah, a land in the heart of Arabia where wheat grew.

It was a time of conflict, when the Muslims of Madinah had many enemies. And Thumamah, as he would later admit himself, was no friend of the Prophet ﷺ or of the Muslims.

They tied him to one of the pillars of the masjid.

The masjid of the Prophet ﷺ was a simple place in those days. Its walls were made of mud bricks. Its roof was made of palm leaves. Its pillars were the trunks of date-palm trees. So there Thumamah stayed, beside a palm-trunk pillar, while the life of the masjid went on around him.

Then the Prophet ﷺ came out to him.

"What do you have to say, Thumamah?" he asked.

"I think well of you," Thumamah replied. "If you set me free, you will be doing a favour for someone who is grateful. And if it is wealth you want, ask for whatever you wish."

The Prophet ﷺ left him until the next day. Then he came again, with the same question.

"What do you have to say, Thumamah?"

"What I told you," said Thumamah. "If you set me free, you will be doing a favour for someone who is grateful."

Again the Prophet ﷺ left him, until the day after. And again he came.

"What do you have to say, Thumamah?"

"I have what I told you."

Three days. The same question, and the same answer. The hadith does not tell us what went on inside Thumamah's heart during those days. It only tells us what happened next.

The Prophet ﷺ said, "Release Thumamah."

Thumamah had offered wealth. But the hadith mentions no ransom and no conditions. He was simply set free.

He could have gone anywhere he liked. He went only as far as a grove of date palms near the masjid. There, among the palms, he made ghusl, washing himself from head to toe. Then he walked back into the masjid he had just been allowed to leave.

"I bear witness that there is none worthy of worship except Allah," he said, "and I bear witness that Muhammad ﷺ is His Messenger."

Then he spoke to the Prophet ﷺ directly. "By Allah, O Muhammad ﷺ, there was no face on the whole earth that I disliked more than yours, but now your face has become the most beloved face of all to me. By Allah, there was no religion I disliked more than yours, but now it has become the most beloved religion to me. By Allah, there was no town I disliked more than your town, but now it has become the most beloved town to me."

Then he added, "Your horsemen took me when I was intending to perform Umrah. So what do you think?"

The Prophet ﷺ gave him good news, and told him to go and perform his Umrah. When Thumamah reached Makkah, someone there asked if he had become a "Sabi", the scornful name the Makkans gave anyone who left the idols. "No," said Thumamah. "I have accepted Islam with the Messenger of Allah ﷺ."

Think about that. The Prophet ﷺ had set free a man who, by his own words, had disliked him more than anyone on earth. And notice when Thumamah said his shahadah: not while he was tied to the pillar, but afterwards, as a free man, when nothing was holding him there.

Hundreds of years later, the great scholar Ibn Hajar al-Asqalani wrote about this. Thumamah's hatred had turned into love in a single moment, he said, because he had been pardoned and set free as a favour, with nothing asked in return. And doing good, he added, removes hatred and makes love take root. Only Allah can change a heart.

Abu Hurairah, a Companion of the Prophet ﷺ, told this story, and it was carefully passed on until Imam al-Bukhari wrote it down. That is how it has reached you tonight.

Now let your own heart grow soft and quiet, like a still night in Madinah, and rest.