I was walking when I caught sight of a fire that would blaze up at times and die down at others, yet I could not find my way to it. So I prayed, “O Allah, I pledge to You that if You lead me to it, I shall ward off any injustice I may find afflicting its people.” I reached the place and found an old man tending the fire, surrounded by a group of women.
I asked, “Who are you?” They said, “This woman has been in labor for three days; the child will not come out.”
The old man, the owner of the house, then asked me, “And what is your story?” I replied, “I am searching for two she-camels of mine that have strayed.” He said, “I have found them; they are with our herd.” So I dismounted and stayed with him.
Hardly had I settled in when the women cried out, “She has delivered!” The old man said, “If the child is a boy, break camp and leave; but if it is a girl, let me not hear her voice!”
I said to him, “Why would you kill your child when her provision is guaranteed by Allah?” He answered, “I have no need of her.”
I offered, “Let me ransom her from you. I will leave her with you until she becomes independent of you or dies (1).”
He asked, “For how much?” I said, “For one of my two she-camels.”
“No,” he replied.
“For both of them, then.”
“No,” he insisted, “unless you add that camel of yours as well, for I see it is young and handsome.”
I said, “On the condition that you escort me back to my people.”
He agreed.
When I left them, I realized that what I had done was a favor Allah had bestowed upon me and guided me to, so I vowed to Allah that I would never find another girl destined for burial alive without ransoming her just as I had ransomed this one.
He continued, “Before Islam arrived I had rescued one hundred infant girls, save four, and then the Quran was revealed forbidding that practice for all people.”
Among the well-known figures who died in this year were:
Jabalah ibn al-Ayyam al-Ghassani (2), king of the Christian Arabs.
He was Jabalah ibn al-Ayyam ibn Jabalah ibn al-Harith ibn Abi Shamir; his personal name was al-Mundhir ibn al-Harith. He was the son of Maria ‘of the Two Earrings’, the son of Thalabah ibn ʿAmr ibn Jafnah—whose given name was Kaʿb ibn ʿAmr ibn Harithah ibn Imruʾ al-Qays—and Maria was the daughter of Arqam ibn Thalabah ibn ʿAmr ibn Jafnah. Other genealogies are also reported. Jabalah’s teknonym was Abū al-Mundhir al-Ghassani al-Jafni.
He ruled over Ghassan, the Christian Arabs, in the days of Heraclius; the Ghassanids were cousins of the Ansar, the Aws and the Khazraj. Jabalah was the last of the Ghassanid kings. The Messenger of Allah ﷺ sent him a letter by way of Shujaʿ ibn Wahb inviting him to Islam, and he embraced Islam and wrote back confirming his acceptance to the Messenger of Allah ﷺ (3).
Ibn ʿAsakir said: It is also reported that he never embraced Islam at all, and this is stated explicitly by al-Waqidi (4) and by Saʿid ibn ʿAbd al-ʿAziz.