—and Saʿd would always extend hospitality to the two of them whenever they visited Medina, so they let go of him and set him free.

Ibn Isḥāq said: Muʿādh ibn ʿAmr ibn al-Jamūḥ had been present at the Pledge of al-ʿAqabah. His father, ʿAmr ibn al-Jamūḥ, was one of the chiefs of the Banū Salamah and had installed in his house a wooden idol called Manāf. When the young men of Banū Salamah embraced Islam—Muʿādh ibn Jabal, ʿAmr’s own son Muʿādh ibn ʿAmr, and others—they would slip into the house at night, seize the idol, and throw it into one of the refuse pits where people emptied their filth, leaving it upside-down on its head.

In the morning ʿAmr would exclaim, “Woe to you! Who assaulted our god last night?” Then he would look for it; once he located it, he would wash it, cleanse it, perfume it, and say, “By Allah, if I knew who is doing this to you, I would disgrace him!” Yet when evening came and he had fallen asleep, they would do the same thing again. This happened repeatedly, until finally he hung a sword around the idol’s neck and said, “By Allah, I do not know who is treating you like this, but if there is any good in you, defend yourself—here is the sword with you.”

That night the youths removed the sword, tied a dead dog to the idol, and cast both into a cesspit. At dawn ʿAmr could not find the idol. He went out in search of it until they came upon it in the pit, upside-down and fastened to the dog. When he saw the scene, he grasped the truth. The Muslims among his people spoke to him, whereupon he accepted Islam, and his Islam was excellent. He then composed the following verses:

“By God, had you been a god
you and a dog would not lie roped together
in the depths of a pit!
Fie upon the place where you were hurled—
today we have exposed your disgrace.
Praise be to Allah, the Most High, the Possessor of grace,
the Giver of provision, the Judge of the faith.
He it is who rescued me before I became
a hostage in the darkness of the grave.”