The Journey to Ta'if

This in-depth content is currently written in English. A faithful translation is in progress.

وَمَا أَرْسَلْنَاكَ إِلَّا رَحْمَةً لِلْعَالَمِينَ

And We have not sent you, [O Muhammad], except as a mercy to the worlds.

— Quran 21:107

Seeking Support Beyond Mecca

With Abu Talib gone and Quraysh's hostility unrestrained, the Prophet Muhammad ○ set out on foot for Ta'if, a city roughly sixty miles southeast of Mecca known for its fertile orchards and the influential tribe of Thaqif. He hoped its leaders might offer him and his message a measure of protection, or at least a fair hearing, somewhere beyond the reach of Quraysh's growing enmity. It was a journey undertaken alone in his grief, without the backing of his clan, carrying the same message of one God that had cost him so dearly in his own city, and hoping that a fresh audience might respond where his own people had not.

Rejection by Thaqif's Leaders

Upon arriving, the Prophet approached the chiefs of Thaqif and invited them to Islam, but they mocked him cruelly, with one reportedly quipping that he hoped, if Muhammad truly were a prophet, God would not humiliate him by making him one, while another dismissed him outright. Far from offering protection, the leaders of Ta'if incited the town's common people and street children against him. As he attempted to leave the city, a jeering mob pursued him through the streets, pelting him with stones until his feet bled and his sandals filled with blood, a scene remembered as one of the cruelest single episodes of his entire mission.

Refuge in an Orchard

Wounded and exhausted, the Prophet finally found brief shelter in an orchard belonging to two brothers, Utbah and Shaybah ibn Rabi'ah, sons of a Quraysh leader who happened to be present in Ta'if at the time. Though they did not embrace his message, something in his condition moved them to compassion, and they sent their Christian servant, Addas, out to him with a plate of grapes. When Addas learned Muhammad's name and heard him mention the Prophet Yunus (Jonah), of whom Addas, being from Nineveh, had deep knowledge, he was struck with wonder and kissed the Prophet's head and hands, recognizing in him something beyond an ordinary man.

The Supplication in the Orchard

Alone, injured, rejected by the very city he had walked so far to reach, the Prophet turned to God in one of the most moving supplications recorded in the Islamic tradition. He described his own weakness and lack of resources, asking God whether He was displeased with him or had simply entrusted him to a distant enemy, and affirmed that so long as God was not angry with him, he did not care about the hardship he faced, for God's protection was sufficient and vast enough to set right the affairs of this world and the next. The prayer carries no bitterness toward his tormentors, only a raw plea for God's continued pleasure and guidance despite the pain of the moment.

The Angel of the Mountains

As the Prophet made his way back toward Mecca, the Angel Jibril came to him along with the angel appointed over the mountains, who offered, with God's permission, to crush the two mountains flanking Ta'if between them and destroy the town for what its people had done. The Prophet refused, answering that he hoped God would bring forth from their descendants people who would worship God alone and associate no partners with Him. It was a response of extraordinary mercy in the depth of his own suffering, and it foreshadowed how, within a generation, Ta'if itself would embrace Islam and stand among its devoted cities.

In the orchard outside Ta'if, rejected and bleeding, the Prophet chose mercy over vengeance, and history would prove that mercy the wiser choice.

Sira reports can differ in chronology and detail. Read narrative claims with the cited Quranic passage and the site's editorial methodology in view.