For this reason Imām Aḥmad (1) reported: “Abū al-Naḍr narrated to us; al-Faraj—that is, Ibn Faḍālah—narrated to us; Luqmān ibn ʿĀmir narrated to us, saying: I heard Abū Umāmah ask, ‘O Prophet of God, how did your affair first begin?’ He replied, ‘[With] the supplication of my forefather Abraham, the glad tidings of Jesus, and my mother’s vision that a light issued from her which illumined the palaces of Syria.’” Imām Aḥmad alone transmitted this ḥadīth; none of the six canonical compilers included it (2).
Al-Ḥāfiẓ Abū Bakr ibn Abī ʿĀṣim also relates in his work al-Mawlid, through the chain of Baqiyyah, from Ṣafwān ibn ʿAmr, from Ḥujr, from Abū Maryam (3), that a Bedouin asked, “O Messenger of God, what was the first stage of your Prophethood?” He replied, “God took a covenant from me just as He had taken a covenant from the other prophets, and the mother of the Messenger of God ﷺ saw in her dream a lamp emerging from between her legs that illumined the palaces of Syria.”
Imām Muḥammad ibn Isḥāq ibn Yasār (4) said: “Thawr ibn Yazīd narrated to me, from Khālid ibn Maʿdān, from Companions of the Messenger of God ﷺ that they said, ‘O Messenger of God, tell us about yourself.’ He said, ‘[I am] the supplication of my forefather Abraham and the glad tidings of Jesus. My mother, when she conceived me (5), saw as though a light issued from her which lit up Busra in the land of Syria.’” This chain is also sound.
In it is a glad tiding for the people of our locality—Busra—that it was the first spot in Syria to which the light of Prophethood reached; all praise and favor belong to God. For that reason it became the first Syrian city to be conquered, and its conquest was completed in the caliphate of Abū Bakr al-Ṣiddīq ﵁, as will be explained. The Messenger of God ﷺ had visited it twice: once with his uncle Abū Ṭālib when he was twelve years old—at which time the incident with the monk Baḥīrā occurred, as we have described—and a second time with Maysarah, Khadīja’s servant, on a trading journey for her.
Within the city is the spot where the she-camel said to have belonged to the Messenger of God ﷺ knelt; its trace remained, it is reported, until a mosque—still famous today—was built over it. It is also the city at whose outskirts the necks of camels shone from the light of the fire that erupted in the Ḥijāz in the year 654 AH, exactly as the Messenger of God ﷺ foretold in his words, “A fire will emerge from the land of the Ḥijāz that will illumine the necks of camels in Busra.” We shall discuss this in its proper place, God willing; in Him we trust and upon Him we rely (6).
God the Exalted says: “Those who follow the Messenger, the unlettered Prophet whom they find written [about] in the Torah and the Gospel—he commands them to what is right, forbids them what is wrong, makes lawful for them the good things, prohibits for them the foul things, and relieves them of their burden…” (Qurʾān 7:157)