59AbyssiniaThe huoiliations and persecutions increased as Revelation of Quranic
verses w~nt 00. Now they were no longer aimed only at the most vuJner-
able among Muslims but also at men and women whose status normally
would have protected them, such as Abu Bakr. Muhammad, protected by
his uncle Abu Talib, was the bun of jeers and ridicule, but he was not
physically harmed. Seeing that the situation in t..'iecca was getting worse,
the Prophet suggested: "If you went to the land of th e Ahyssinians, you
would find there a king uncler whose command nobody suffers injustice.
II is a land of sincerity in religion. YCY.l would remain there until God
delivered you from what you suffer at present."\S
The Prophet was referring to the king of Abyssinia, the Negus, who
was a Christian and who was reputed to be respectful and fair with his
people.^16 Part of the community therefore started to prepare fo r depar-
ture, and eventually a number of individuals and families discreetly left
Mecca to u ndertake the first emigratio n (al-hijrab al-ula): there were in ~U
about a h undred people, d ghl)-lWU ut eighly-three men and dose to
twenty women.
This took place in the year 615, five years after the beginning of
Revelation and t\vO years after the beginning of the public call. The situ-
ation bad become particularly difficult, so much so as to prompt those
ivluslims to take the risk of going into exile very far from Mecca. Uthm"n
ibn Affan and his wife, Ruqayyah, the Prophet's daughter, wefe part of the
g roup; w was Abu Bakr, but he came back when, on the way, he met a
Meccan dignitary who granted him his protection. It also included Urn
Salamah. who was later to become the Prophet's wife, and through whom
accounts of the \'arious episodes of the emigration to Abyssinia have
come down to us.
The Quraysh leaders soon found out that some lvfuslims-paradoxical-
Iy. no t the most vulnerable- had left Mecca. It was not long either before
they knew where the Muslims had gone. T hey had some reason to worry:
if this small group of :Muslims managed to settle elsewhere, they were
bound to tarnish the Meceans' reputation and perhaps aro use animosity
tOWard them or cvcn try to constitute an alliance against them with a king
who they knew shared that faith in one God. After the Muslims had been
gone some time, the Quraysh leaders decided to send the Negus n vo