Blood in the Sandals: The Journey to Ta'if
The dust of the mountain road clings to his sandals, and the sandals are filling with blood. Somewhere between a city that cast him out and a desert that offers no shelter, a prophet walks in a daze — and speaks the most beautiful prayer of his life.
pre-hijra · 616 – 618 CE
The dust of the mountain road clings to his sandals, and the sandals are filling with blood.
He does not know where he is. Somewhere between the walls of a city that has just cast him out and the open desert that offers no shelter, a man walks in a daze — bleeding, barefoot in spirit if not in body, his companion Zayd ibn Haritha (may Allah be pleased with him) staggering beside him with wounds of his own. The Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) will later tell his wife Aisha that he did not regain awareness of his surroundings until he found himself at Qarn al-Tha’alib, some seven or eight kilometers outside the city. In our modern vocabulary, we would call this shock. In the vocabulary of the seventh century, there was no word for it — only the silence of a man whose grief has eclipsed his senses.
This is the day of Ta’if. And the Prophet himself would one day confirm that it was the worst day of his life — worse even than the battlefield of Uhud, where blades split his lip and arrows sought his throat. Because Ta’if was not a wound of the body alone. It was a wound of the soul.
The Twin City
To understand why the Prophet chose Ta’if, one must understand the geography of power in western Arabia. Mecca and Ta’if were twin cities — rivals, trading partners, and neighbors bound by blood ties and mutual suspicion. Ta’if sat high in the mountains southeast of Mecca, a lush resort town where grapes grew heavy on the vine and the air carried a coolness unknown in the scorching lowlands. Wealthy Meccans kept gardens there, summer retreats perched among greenery that seemed almost miraculous in the Arabian landscape.
Allah references this twinship in the Quran, quoting the Meccan elite:
“Why was this Quran not sent down to a great man from one of the two cities?” — Az-Zukhruf (43:31)
The “two cities” were Mecca and Ta’if. In the eyes of the Quraysh aristocracy, these were the only places that mattered.
For the Prophet, Ta’if was the natural — perhaps the only — option. Abu Talib had died mere weeks earlier. Khadijah bint Khuwaylid (may Allah be pleased with her) was already gone. Abu Lahab, who had briefly and reluctantly extended his tribal protection, had withdrawn it within twenty or thirty days. The Prophet now existed in a kind of political limbo: a man without a visa, as it were, in his own homeland. Any Meccan could harm him with impunity. No clan chief would answer for his blood.
And so, in the month of Shawwal — the same month that had swallowed Khadijah — he made his decision. He would go to Ta’if. He would go quietly.
A Secret Departure
He told no one. He took no camel, no horse — nothing that might arouse the suspicion of watchers in a city that was watching him very closely. Just two men on foot: the Prophet and Zayd ibn Haritha, his freed slave and beloved companion, walking as though they were simply strolling through the outskirts of town.
The journey to Ta’if was a day and a half to two days on foot, winding upward through mountain passes that in our era take ninety minutes by car along precarious switchback roads. Every step was deliberate. Every decision — the secrecy, the lack of provisions that might signal a journey, the choice of Zayd alone as companion — reflected a meticulous mind at work.
Scholarly Note
The primary source for the Ta’if incident is the hadith of Aisha in Sahih al-Bukhari, supplemented by Ibn Ishaq’s detailed account in his Sirah. Zayd ibn Haritha, the only Muslim eyewitness, was martyred at the Battle of Mu’tah before the Prophet’s death, which means we have only fragments of his testimony passed through intermediary narrators. The full story, as Yasir Qadhi notes, is therefore pieced together from multiple partial accounts rather than a single comprehensive narration.
There is a principle embedded in this quiet departure that the Prophet would demonstrate again and again throughout his life: trust in Allah does not mean acting recklessly. Tawakkul — complete reliance on the Divine — comes after one has planned meticulously, crossed every T, dotted every I. The Prophet had the most absolute trust in Allah of any human being who ever lived, yet he walked instead of riding, departed without announcement, and chose the cover of normalcy over the drama of proclamation. Faith and strategy were never, in his practice, at war with each other.
Three Brothers, Three Rejections
Ta’if was governed by three brothers: Abd Yalil, Mas’ud, and Habib — the sons of Amr, the former chieftain of the Thaqif tribe. When their father died, the brothers had forged an unusual arrangement: rather than fight over succession, they would rule together, a triumvirate sharing power by consensus. One of them had married a distant aunt of the Prophet’s clan, so there existed a thread of kinship, however thin, connecting the Qurayshi visitor to the Thaqifi rulers.
The Prophet arranged a meeting. He presented himself to the three brothers and laid before them the message of Islam, asking them to embrace it and to support his mission. The response was devastating — not merely a refusal, but a triple mockery that struck at the core of his prophetic identity.
The first brother sneered: “If Allah has truly sent you as a Prophet, then I might as well tear down the curtains of the Ka’bah.” The words dripped with sarcasm — the implication being that Allah’s judgment must be so flawed that the sacred House itself deserved desecration.
The second said — and one can almost hear the contempt curling around each syllable — “Has Allah not found anyone better than you?”
The third offered the cruelest dismissal of all, cloaked in false logic: “I cannot speak to you. If you truly are a Prophet, then you are too holy for me to address. And if you are a liar, then you are too beneath my dignity to warrant a response.”
The Prophet rose to leave. But even in this moment of stinging rejection, his strategic mind was working. He made one final request: “If you have rejected my message, then at least do not inform the Quraysh of my visit.” It was a plea born of tactical necessity — if Mecca learned he had gone begging to their rival city and been refused, his already precarious position would collapse entirely. The brothers apparently honored this request; the Quraysh did not learn of the visit immediately.
A Week Among the People
What many retellings of this story compress into a single dramatic scene was, according to the more authentic reports, a longer ordeal. Ibn Ishaq records that the Prophet did not leave Ta’if immediately after the leaders’ rejection. He stayed for approximately a week, turning from the elite to the common people, preaching in the marketplace — the suq — approaching individuals one by one.
This was a pattern he had followed throughout his mission: begin with the leaders, the people of influence and clout, because when they convert, the masses follow. But never ignore the common folk. The Quran itself had corrected him when he once turned from a blind man to attend to a Meccan nobleman — “He frowned and turned away, because the blind man came to him” (Abasa, 80:1-2). The lesson had been absorbed. In Ta’if, when the powerful said no, he went to the powerless.
Later converts from Ta’if would recall, years afterward, seeing the Prophet preaching in their marketplace during that week. No one responded to his call. Not a single soul converted. But there were stirrings — perhaps a few individuals showed interest, perhaps some seemed on the verge of accepting — and it was precisely this possibility that panicked the leadership.
The three brothers acted. They gathered the riffraff of the city — the idle, the violent, the easily directed — and sent them to drive this preacher out by force.
Blood in the Sandals
What followed was a scene of raw brutality. A mob descended upon the Prophet and Zayd, pelting them with stones as they fled toward the city gates. Zayd threw himself over the Prophet, shielding him with his own body, sustaining injuries from head to toe. But what protection can one man offer against an entire mob? The stones found their marks. Blood ran down the Prophet’s legs and pooled in his sandals until the leather was soaked through.
They ran. The mob pursued, hurling rocks until the two men had cleared the city limits, and then — satisfied, perhaps, or simply bored — the pursuers turned back, leaving two bloodied figures stumbling into the open country.
And then came the silence. The Prophet walked, and walked, and did not know where he was walking. Seven or eight kilometers passed beneath his bleeding feet before awareness returned. He found himself at Qarn al-Tha’alib. He saw shade — a tree beside a garden wall — and he sat down.
He did not know that this garden belonged to Utbah and Shaybah, the sons of Rabi’ah — distant relatives from the Quraysh who kept a summer estate here, as many wealthy Meccans did. They had watched from a distance as their kinsman was stoned out of a rival city, and something stirred in them. Not faith — tribalism. How dare the Thaqif do this to one of our own?
But before their pity could reach him, the Prophet raised his hands and spoke to the only One who had never turned away.
The Du'a of Ta'if: A Prayer That Needs No Chain
The supplication the Prophet made beneath that tree is one of the most celebrated prayers in Islamic tradition. Ibn Ishaq records it in his Sirah, though the chain of transmission has gaps — it does not appear in Bukhari or Muslim with a complete isnad. Yet as one contemporary scholar has observed, “It doesn’t need an isnad. The content is authentic enough to tell us that this comes from the heart of a prophet.”
The prayer reads, in part: “O Allah, to You I complain of my weakness, my helplessness, and my lowliness before men. You are the Most Merciful of those who show mercy, and You are the Lord of the weak, and You are my Lord. To whom will You entrust me? To a stranger who will treat me harshly? Or to a close relative whom You have given power over me? As long as You are not angry with me, then I do not care — except that Your ease and protection would be easier for me. I seek refuge in the light of Your Face, by which all darkness is illuminated and the affairs of this world and the next are set right, from Your anger descending upon me or Your wrath enveloping me. It is Your right to admonish until You are pleased. And there is no power or change except through You.”
Several theological principles emerge from this prayer. First, there is the concept of shakwa ila Allah — complaining to Allah, not about Allah. The Prophet is not questioning divine wisdom or rejecting the decree. He is turning to Allah with his pain, seeking refuge in Allah from Allah’s displeasure. This mirrors the prayer of Ya’qub in the Quran: “I only complain of my grief and sorrow to Allah” (Yusuf, 12:86).
Second, notice the Prophet’s deepest fear: not the blood on his hands, not the pain in his feet, but the possibility that he has done something to earn Allah’s displeasure. “As long as You are not angry with me, then I do not care.” The physical suffering is secondary; the spiritual question is paramount.
Third, there is a nuance in how he asks for relief. He does not demand it. He accepts the decree — but adds, “Your ease would be easier for me.” This corrects a misunderstanding found in some strands of Sufi thought that the servant must accept suffering with absolute passivity, never asking for something better. The Prophet’s model shows that acceptance of divine decree and asking for divine ease are not contradictory. You do not challenge Allah’s wisdom, but you may ask for His mercy.
Finally, the conclusion — “There is no power or change except through You” — is what the Prophet himself called “a treasure from the treasures of Paradise.” At his lowest moment, abandoned by city and tribe alike, he affirms that only Allah can alter his circumstances. This is where tawakkul lives: not in the planning phase, which demands human effort, but in the aftermath, when all plans have been exhausted and only the Divine remains.
Grapes, a Christian Slave, and a Prophet from Nineveh
The two sons of Rabi’ah, watching from their garden, sent their servant with a bowl of grapes. His name was Addas, and he was an Iraqi Christian — perhaps the only practicing Christian for hundreds of miles in any direction. How he had come to be enslaved in Arabia, how he had ended up in the service of Meccan landowners near Ta’if, history does not record. But Allah’s plan does not require a paper trail.
The Prophet took the grapes and said, “Bismillah” — in the name of God — before eating. Addas froze. “What is this phrase?” he asked. “The people of this land do not say this.”
“Where are you from, Addas?” the Prophet asked.
“From the city of Nineveh.”
“The city of Yunus ibn Matta.”
Addas stared. “How do you know Yunus ibn Matta? No one in this entire land has ever heard of Yunus ibn Matta.”
“How could I not know him?” the Prophet replied. “He is my brother. We are both prophets of Allah.”
The effect was electric. Here, in the aftermath of the worst day of his life, a man from the farthest corner of the known Arab world recognized the truth that an entire city had just rejected. Addas fell to his knees, kissing the Prophet’s hands and feet, believing on the spot.
Scholarly Note
The story of Addas is narrated by Ibn Ishaq with some gaps in the chain of transmission. While it is not found in Bukhari or Muslim, scholars have generally accepted it based on the coherence of its content and its consistency with the broader narrative. The detail about Addas refusing to fight at Badr — telling his masters, “You want me to fight that man who was sitting under the trees? By Allah, the mountains could not harm him” — is also from Ibn Ishaq’s account.
Utbah and Shaybah watched in bewilderment as their slave knelt before the bloodied stranger. When Addas returned, they demanded an explanation. “No one on earth is better than he is,” Addas told them, “for he told me things that only a Prophet could know.” They tried to dissuade him: “He has bewitched you from your religion. Your religion is better than his.” But Addas would not be moved. When his masters later tried to conscript him for the Battle of Badr, he refused outright — an act of defiance almost unheard of for a slave. His masters met their deaths at Badr. Addas survived, his faith intact.
The symbolism was not lost on the Prophet, nor should it be lost on us. If the nearest people had rejected him, Allah sent a man from the farthest known land to affirm his truth. Iraq — Nineveh — the world of Jonah and the whale, a tradition utterly foreign to Arabia: even from there, recognition came. It was a whisper from the Divine: the near have rejected you now, but the far shall accept you soon.
The Angel of the Mountains
Back to the hadith in Sahih al-Bukhari. The Prophet narrated to Aisha what happened next:
“I looked up, and there was a cloud that had given me shade. And in the cloud was Jibreel, who said to me: ‘Your Lord has heard what your people said to you and their rejection of you, and He has sent the Angel of the Mountains to be at your disposal, to do with as you please.’”
Then another voice:
“I am the Angel of the Mountains. Your Lord has sent me to you. Command me as you wish. If you want, I can crush them between the two mountains.”
As recorded in Sahih al-Bukhari, the Prophet’s response was immediate:
“No. Rather, I hope that Allah will bring forth from their descendants people who will worship Him alone, without associating any partners with Him.”
Consider what is happening in this moment. The sarcasm of the three brothers is still ringing in his ears. His blood has not yet dried. His sandals are still wet. And an angel stands before him offering total annihilation of the city that did this to him — and he says no.
This is not the miracle. The miracle is not that Allah sent an angel. The miracle is that a human being, in the immediate aftermath of such humiliation and physical agony, still possessed enough mercy to pray for the children of his tormentors. If this is not rahmat lil-‘alamin — mercy to all the worlds — then the phrase has no meaning.
And history vindicated his prayer. Barely ten years later, after the conquest of Mecca, the Prophet himself led the campaign that brought Ta’if into the fold of Islam. The very place where he was stoned became a mosque where Allah is worshipped five times a day. The descendants he prayed for became Muslims. The city he spared became, and remains, one of the most visited destinations in the Hijaz.
Voices in the Desert Night
The journey back toward Mecca was its own ordeal. The Prophet could not simply walk back into the city — by leaving, he had effectively sealed the limbo that Abu Lahab’s withdrawal of protection had created. He was, in the most literal sense, a man without a country.
He and Zayd camped in the valley of Nakhlah, partway between Ta’if and Mecca. And despite everything — the wounds still unhealed, the blood still on his skin, the cold of the desert night — the Prophet rose for tahajjud, the voluntary night prayer. He stood in the darkness and began reciting the Quran.
What happened next, only Allah could have told us, because no human eye witnessed it:
“And when We directed a group of jinn toward you, listening to the Quran — and when they were in its presence, they said, ‘Be silent!’ — and when it was concluded, they went back to their people as warners.” — Al-Ahqaf (46:29-30)
Allah had steered a band of jinn — Jewish jinn, as the narration makes clear, who recognized the Quran as coming from the same God who had sent the Torah — directly into the path of the Prophet’s midnight recitation. If the world of men had rejected him, the world beyond men stopped in its tracks and listened. If the people of Ta’if had mocked, the jinn said “Quiet!” — and were transformed not merely into believers, but into scholars, warners, and callers to their own people.
Scholarly Note
The encounter with the jinn is referenced in both Surah Al-Ahqaf (46:29-32) and Surah Al-Jinn (72:1-15). The hadith in Sahih Muslim, narrated by Ibn Mas’ud (may Allah be pleased with him), describes a later incident — the Laylat al-Jinn — in which the Prophet disappeared from among the Companions at night to meet with a congregation of jinn who had come to learn Islam. Some scholars consider the Nakhlah encounter and the Laylat al-Jinn to be separate events; others attempt to reconcile them as different accounts of the same incident. The detail about Muslim jinn eating from bones over which Allah’s name has been mentioned, while the shayateen consume meat over which it has not, is found in both Bukhari and Muslim.
The symbolism is layered and deliberate. Addas came from Iraq — the farthest human horizon the Arabs knew. The jinn came from beyond the human horizon entirely. If Mecca rejected him and Ta’if stoned him, then the furthest corners of the earth and the unseen world beyond it affirmed his truth. No barrier erected by men could contain the spread of this message.
Re-entering the City
Zayd voiced the question that must have been burning in both their minds: “Ya Rasulullah, how are we going to enter Mecca now that you have been expelled from it?”
The Prophet’s answer was simple and total: “Ya Zayd, Allah will make a way out for us, and Allah will help His Prophet and make His message supreme.”
He did not know what form that help would take. He was camped in open desert with no city, no tribe, no resources. But his certainty was absolute — not in a specific plan, but in Allah’s promise.
He began sending emissaries to potential allies within the Quraysh. The first, Al-Akhnas ibn Shuraiq, sent back a polite refusal — he was not in a position to offer protection. The second, Suhail ibn Amr, declined with a flimsy tribal excuse about precedent. Both men would eventually convert to Islam, which tells us the Prophet knew exactly whom he was approaching: sympathizers, not enemies. Their refusals came with embarrassment, not hostility.
The third message went to Mut’im ibn Adi, chieftain of the Banu Nawfal — the same man who had been instrumental in breaking the Quraysh boycott against the Banu Hashim, the man who had once sent an entire camel laden with provisions to the besieged clan at great personal cost.
Mut’im did not send a messenger back. He told his four sons to arm themselves, don their armor, take their weapons, and ride out to escort the Prophet personally into Mecca. They arrived as an armed guard, brought the Prophet to the Ka’bah, and stood watch while he performed tawaf. Then Mut’im rose before the gathered Meccans and declared: “I have given my protection to Muhammad.”
Abu Sufyan stood and asked the critical question: “Are you his follower, or are you merely giving protection?”
“I am giving protection,” Mut’im replied. Nothing more.
“Then we accept it,” Abu Sufyan said.
Had Mut’im said he was a follower — a Muslim — the Quraysh would have rejected his protection outright. The political calculus was precise: a pagan chieftain shielding a kinsman was tribal custom. A convert defending a prophet was revolution. Mut’im understood this, and so did the Prophet.
Mut’im ibn Adi died a pagan. He never accepted Islam. Yet when seventy prisoners were taken at the Battle of Badr, the Prophet declared — as recorded in authentic narrations — that if Mut’im had been alive and had asked for the release of every single prisoner, he would have returned them all, no questions asked. It was a badge of honor bestowed upon a man who had earned it through justice, not through faith. The Prophet drew a clear line: he did not pray Mut’im’s funeral prayer, did not make supplication for his soul. Religion was religion. But civic honor was civic honor, and the two were not the same.
The Mercy That Outlasts the Pain
The journey to Ta’if was, by any political measure, a failure. No tribe was won, no alliance forged, no city converted. The Prophet returned to Mecca under the protection of a pagan chieftain, in a more precarious position than when he had left.
And yet. Addas believed. The jinn believed. Mut’im’s honor held. And the du’a spoken beneath a garden wall — “I hope that Allah will bring forth from their descendants people who will worship Him alone” — set in motion a future that would unfold with the patience of mountains.
The Year of Sorrow was not yet over. The losses of Khadijah and Abu Talib still pressed upon the Prophet’s heart like stones. The mockery of Ta’if’s rulers still echoed. The political ground beneath his feet was as unstable as desert sand.
But Allah had promised: “Indeed, with hardship comes ease” (Ash-Sharh, 94:6). And the ease that was coming would be unlike anything the Prophet — or any human being — had ever experienced. It would not come as a political victory or a military alliance. It would come as a journey: upward, through the seven heavens, past the angels and the prophets, to a station where even Jibreel could not follow. The lowest point of the Prophet’s earthly life was about to be answered by the highest point any created being has ever reached.
The night of the Isra and Mi’raj was drawing near.
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