“…and you extend hospitality to the guest”—that is, you honor him by promptly setting before him his meal and by providing him a pleasant place to stay. “And you assist in the calamities of justice.” Another recension reads, “of goodness,” meaning that when misfortune befalls someone in a righteous cause you help him, standing by him until he attains sufficiency or stability in his livelihood.
The ḥadīth continues: “Then she took him and went with him to her cousin Waraqah b. Nawfal, who was an elderly man and had become blind.” We have already mentioned part of his story together with that of Zayd b. ʿAmr b. Nufayl. Waraqah was among those who had embraced Christianity in the pre-Islamic era: he, Zayd b. ʿAmr, ʿUthmān b. al-Ḥuwayrith, and ʿUbayd Allāh b. Jahsh all travelled to Syria and accepted Christianity, finding it at that time the religion closest to the truth. Zayd b. ʿAmr b. Nufayl, however, detected in it flaws, confusion, alteration, distortion, and forced interpretation, and his sound natural disposition would not permit him to enter it.
Jewish scholars and Christian monks had given Zayd glad tidings that a prophet’s advent was near at hand, so he returned in search of that prophet and remained upon his innate monotheism, but death overtook him before the Muhammadan mission. Waraqah b. Nawfal, on the other hand, lived long enough to witness it, and he discerned its signs in the Messenger of Allah ﷺ, as we related from the descriptions Khadījah had given him—of the Prophet’s pure, noble qualities and the manifest proofs that surrounded him. Therefore, when the event occurred, she took the hand of the Messenger of Allah ﷺ, brought him to Waraqah, and stood him before him, saying, “Cousin, listen to your nephew.”
When the Messenger of Allah ﷺ described what he had seen, Waraqah exclaimed, “Subbūḥ! Subbūḥ! This is the Namūs who was sent down to Moses.” (In Arabic, namūs denotes a “messenger of good,” just as a jāsūs is a “messenger of evil.”) He mentioned Moses rather than Jesus, although Jesus came later, because Jesus’ law completed and perfected the Law of Moses and—according to the sound view of the scholars—abrogated part of it, as Allah says: “And [I have come] to make lawful for you some of what was forbidden to you” (Āl ʿImrān 3:50).
Waraqah’s words resemble those of the jinn who said: “They said, ‘O our people, we have indeed heard a Book sent down after Moses, confirming what came before it, guiding to the truth and to a straight path’” (al-Aḥqāf 46:30).
He then added, “Would that I were still a strong youth!”—meaning: would that today I were young, able to cultivate faith, beneficial knowledge, and righteous deeds; would that I might still be alive when your people drive you out, so that I could go forth with you.