Cities & Lands · The city of stones that became a city of Islam
الطائف
Ta'if
It bloodied the sandals of the best of creation; a generation later its children filled the mosques he hoped for.
The account
A garden city on the heights south of Makkah, cool, walled, and proud, Ta'if received the Prophet's ﷺ quietest mission and returned the Seerah's cruelest afternoon: chiefs who mocked, and a street of slaves and boys set loose with stones until blood filled his sandals. In the orchard outside its wall he made the complaint of the weak, and above it he declined the Angel of the Mountains' offer with the hope that named this city's future: from their loins, worshippers of Allah alone.
The hope compounded fast. Ta'if sent its fighters against Hunayn and lost; the Muslims besieged its wall and lifted the siege with the du'a the city never knew it received: "O Allah, guide Thaqif and bring them" (Tirmidhi 3942). Within the year its delegation arrived, negotiated, submitted, and the idol of al-Lat was pulled down by the city's own hands. The boy who carried grapes to the bleeding Prophet in that orchard, Addas, had asked the right question a decade early. The Codex keeps Ta'if as the patron city of long games: nowhere in the Seerah is the distance between a wound and its healing measured so exactly.
The facts
- The afternoonStones, blood in the sandals
- The refusalTwo mountains, declined
- The du'a“Guide Thaqif and bring them”
- The returnDelegation, within a year of Hunayn
The narrations
O Allah, guide Thaqif and bring them.
Tirmidhi 3942 (hasan)
Read beside it
The words
Lights that name it
On the Path
- 24Jahiliyya: 360 Idolsالجاهلية
- 31Taif Rejectionالطائف
- 32Isra & Miraj: Buraqالإسراء والمعراج
- 42Fath Makkah: Idols Fallفتح مكة
- 43Hunayn: 12,000 Testedحنين
People beside it
- Abu Sufyan ibn HarbCommander of the enemy · then companionأبو سفيان بن حرب
- Abdullah ibn AbbasInterpreter of the Qur'anعبد الله بن عباس
- The Angel of the MountainsOffered to crush Ta'if, and was declinedملك الجبال
Places