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When the Negus, king of Abyssinia, realized that the worshipers of the cross would never abandon (1) the cross to worship Allah alone, he embraced Islam in secret. He and the members of his household concealed their faith, for he could not declare it publicly.

Ibn Isḥāq relates that the Messenger of Allah ﷺ sent ʿAmr ibn Umayya al-Ḍamrī(2) with his letter(3) inviting the Negus to Islam. ʿAmr said to him, “O Aṣḥama! The speaking is on me and the listening is on you (4). It is as though, in your tenderness toward us, you are one of us, and as though, in our trust of you, we are of you; for we have never expected any good from you without obtaining it, nor feared you in any matter without finding safety. We have taken the decisive proof against you from your own mouth: the Gospel stands between us and you, a witness that cannot be refuted and a judge that does not wrong. In this lies the stroke that cuts clean and strikes the very joint. Otherwise you, with regard to this unlettered Prophet, are like the Jews with regard to Jesus son of Mary. The Prophet ﷺ has dispersed his envoys among the peoples; he pinned his hope on you for what he did not hope from them, and he entrusted you with what he feared from them, on account of past kindness and a reward still awaited (5).”

The Negus replied, “I bear witness before Allah that he is indeed the unlettered Prophet awaited by the People of the Scripture, and that Moses’s glad tidings of the rider on the donkey are just like Jesus’s glad tidings of the rider on the camel; and direct sight is no more convincing than trustworthy report (6).”