The Arrival of al-Ashʿath ibn Qays with the Kindah Delegation
Ibn Isḥāq relates: Al-Ashʿath ibn Qays came to the Messenger of Allah ﷺ at the head of the Kindah delegation. Al-Zuhrī told me that they numbered eighty horsemen. They entered the mosque of the Messenger of Allah ﷺ with their hair carefully groomed and their eyes lined with kohl, wearing striped hibarah cloaks whose edges were trimmed with silk. When they stood before the Messenger of Allah ﷺ he asked, “Have you not embraced Islam?” They replied, “Indeed we have.” He then said, “What, then, is this silk around your necks?” So they ripped it off and threw it away.
Al-Ashʿath ibn Qays then said, “O Messenger of Allah! We are the descendants of Ākil al-Mirār, and you are the son of Ākil al-Mirār.” The Messenger of Allah ﷺ smiled and said, “Use that lineage when you claim kinship with al-ʿAbbās ibn ʿAbd al-Muṭṭalib and Rabīʿah ibn al-Ḥārith.” The two of them were merchants; whenever they travelled among the Arabs and were asked, “To which people do you belong?” they would answer, “We are the descendants of Ākil al-Mirār,” linking themselves to Kindah in order to enjoy prestige in those lands, for Kindah had been kings. Because of that, Kindah came to believe that Quraysh were part of them when al-ʿAbbās and Rabīʿah said, “We are the sons of Ākil al-Mirār.” This Ākil al-Mirār is al-Ḥārith ibn ʿAmr (son of Ḥujr ibn ʿAmr) ibn Muʿāwiyah ibn al-Ḥārith ibn Muʿāwiyah ibn Thawr ibn Murtaʿ ibn Muʿāwiyah, a man of Kindah—some even say, the very son of Kindah himself.
The Messenger of Allah ﷺ then said to them, “No; we are the progeny of al-Naḍr ibn Kinānah. We do not deny our mother, nor do we repudiate our father.” Al-Ashʿath exclaimed, “By Allah, people of Kindah, if I hear anyone say otherwise I shall strike him with eighty lashes.”
This report is also transmitted with an unbroken chain through another route. Imām Aḥmad said: Bahz and ʿAffān related to us, saying: Ḥammād ibn Salamah narrated to us; ʿAqīl ibn Ṭalḥah narrated to me—and in ʿAffān’s version: ʿAqīl ibn Ṭalḥah al-Sulamī told us—from Muslim ibn Haysam, from al-Ashʿath ibn Qays, who said: “I came to the Messenger of Allah ﷺ with the Kindah delegation.” ʿAffān added, “They did not regard me as their superior.” He continued, “I said, ‘O Messenger of Allah, we claim that you are from among us.’ He replied, ‘We are the children of al-Naḍr ibn Kinānah; we do not deny our mother, nor do we disown our father.’” Al-Ashʿath then declared, “By Allah, I shall never hear anyone who excludes Quraysh from al-Naḍr ibn Kinānah without administering the prescribed punishment.”
Ibn Mājah likewise recorded this report from Abū Bakr ibn Abī Shaybah through Yazīd ibn Hārūn; from Muḥammad ibn Yaḥyā through Sulaymān ibn Ḥarb; and from Hārūn ibn Ḥayyān through ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz ibn al-Mughīrah—all of them transmitting it from Ḥammād ibn Salamah with wording to the same effect.