your numbers have now grown, let not that delude you with respect to us; and if destitution has driven you here, we allotted rations for you until prosperity returned, honoured your faces, clothed you, and set over you a king who would deal gently with you. At this the delegation fell silent.
Then al-Mughīrah ibn Shuʿbah rose and said:
“O King, these men are the heads and notables of the Arabs; they are nobles(1) who feel modest before other nobles. It is the noble who honours the noble, and it is the noble who upholds the rights of nobles. Not everything for which they were sent have they laid before you, nor have they answered you on everything you have said(2). They have conducted themselves well, and men of their rank could do no less. So address your reply to me, and I shall convey it to them while they bear witness.
You have described us in a way of which you were unaware. As for the wretchedness you mentioned, none were more wretched than we. As for our hunger, it was a hunger beyond hunger(3): we used to eat beetles, dung-beetles, scorpions and snakes, and we considered that our food. As for dwellings, they were nothing but the open ground, and we wore only what we spun from camel hair and sheep’s wool. Our ‘religion’ was that some of us killed others and that some of us oppressed others(4); a man would even bury his own daughter alive, loath to have her share his food. Such was our condition in this world, just as I have told you, and our prospect in the Hereafter was as bleak.
Then Allah sent to us a man whose lineage, face and birthplace we knew. The land of his birth is the best of our lands(5); his pedigree the noblest of our pedigrees; his house the finest of our houses; his clan the best of our clans. He himself was the best of us in the life he lived— the most truthful and the most forbearing. He summoned us to a cause, yet at first no one responded to him. The first of his peers to believe in him became the caliph after him. He spoke and we spoke; he told the truth and we denied; yet he never uttered a word but that it came to pass. Allah cast into our hearts faith in him and obedience to him, and he became the link between us and the Lord of all creation. Whatever he says to us is the speech of Allah, and whatever he commands us is the command of Allah.
He told us: ‘Your Lord says: Indeed, I am God alone, without partner. I existed when nothing else existed; everything will perish save My Face. I created everything, and to Me everything shall return. My mercy has encompassed you, so I sent to you this man to guide you to the path by which I will rescue you after death from My punishment and admit you to My abode, the Abode of Peace.’ We bear witness that he brought the truth from the True.
He also said: ‘Whoever joins you upon this will have what you have and bear what you bear; whoever refuses, then offer him the jizyah; then withhold from him what you withhold from yourselves. Should he refuse that, fight him, for I am the Judge between you: whosoever of you is killed I shall admit to My Garden, and whosoever remains I shall grant victory over his foe.’ So choose: the jizyah in humility if you wish, or the sword, or embrace Islam and save your own soul.”
Yazdegerd said, “You address me in such a fashion?”
He replied, “I have only answered the one who addressed me; had someone else spoken, I would not have spoken to you thus.”
Yazdegerd said, “Were it not that envoys are not to be killed, I would kill you. You shall have nothing from me.” Then he ordered, “Bring me a load of earth.”