He asked, “Do they grow in number or do they dwindle?”
I replied, “On the contrary, they grow.”
He said, “Does anyone among them ever renounce his religion after accepting it, out of displeasure with it?”
I answered, “No.”
He asked, “Have you fought against him?”
I replied, “Yes.”
He said, “How has your warfare with him gone?”
I replied, “The fighting between us and him goes back and forth: sometimes he prevails over us and sometimes we prevail over him.”
He asked, “Does he ever break his covenants?”
I answered, “No. We are presently bound to him by a truce, though we do not know what he will do with it.”
Abu Sufyan added, “By Allah, I could not slip in a single word against him other than that.”
He then asked, “Has anyone before him ever made this claim?”
I replied, “No.”
Then he said to his interpreter, “Tell him: I questioned you about his lineage and you asserted that he is of noble descent among you; that is how messengers are—sent from the noblest families of their people.
I also asked whether any of his forefathers had been a king, and you said, ‘No.’ Had you said, ‘Yes,’ I would have thought he was a man seeking to regain his father’s kingdom.
I asked you about his followers—whether they are the weak or the elite—and you said, ‘Rather, the weak,’ and they are indeed the followers of the messengers.
I asked you whether you used to accuse him of lying before he made his claim, and you said, ‘No.’ From that I understood that he would not refrain from…"