The First Emigration

By the fifth year of Prophet Muhammad’s mission, conditions in Mecca had become intolerable for many of the Muslims, as persecution by the Quraysh intensified. At this time, the Prophet advised his companions to emigrate to Abyssinia. This is called the first emigration of Islam; it preceded by some eighty years the mass emigration of Muslims to Medina.

This was part of the advice which the Prophet imparted to his followers on the occasion of the emigration to Abyssinia:

“Disperse in the land; surely God will gather you once again.” (Seerah al-Halbiyyah by Ali ibn al-Burhan al-Din, Vol. 1, p. 456)

How meaningful these words of the Prophet are! What they amount to is an exhortation by the Prophet to his followers that they should avoid confronting the enemy for the present, but rather remove themselves from the line of fire. God would then provide them with the means to vanquish the enemy; He would gather them together so that they could come into their own once again.

Emigration is indeed a great test of patience. It is those who pass this test who will receive the reward of God. As the Prophet said: “You should know that succour comes with patience; there is ease with hardship.” (Mu’jam al-Kabir by Al-Tabarini, Hadith 11243)

Patience, then, is the ladder by which one ascends to the Lord’s favour and succour. It is with patience that we should react to the difficulties of life, for it is on the field of human patience that divine succour descends. Our ability to face hardship with patience is a great portent, for it means that we are leaving our cause to God. That is a signal for the swift ending of our plight, and the conversion of our hardship into ease.

Real paradise lies on the other side of the divide of patience. Any paradise that one finds without crossing that divide can only be an illusion.