Shujaʿ said: I then came to the Messenger of Allah ﷺ and informed him of everything. He replied, “His kingdom has vanished.” I also conveyed Muri’s greetings and reported his words. The Messenger of Allah ﷺ remarked, “He has spoken the truth.” (1)

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We have mentioned only a handful of the regional kings who believed in him, together with their foremost scholars and dignitaries; it is impossible for us to list everyone else (2). Indeed, they make up the majority of the world’s people—only a small minority refrained from following him (3)—and those who did not follow him fall into two classes: either they made peace with him, accepting humiliation, jizyah, and abasement, or they feared him. Accordingly, mankind in relation to him is divided into three groups: believers (4), those who have made peace with him, and those who fear him.

Had only one man from the Jews in his time embraced Islam—namely their absolute leader, the son of their leader, their scholar, the son of their scholar, by their own admission and testimony, ʿAbd Allah ibn Salam—he would have sufficed to offset every other Jew on earth. How much more so when countless rabbis and monks, whose number only Allah can reckon, also accepted Islam!

We shall now relate the story of ʿAbd Allah ibn Salam.

Al-Bukhari narrates in his Ṣaḥīḥ, through the chain of ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz ibn Ṣuhayb, from Anas ibn Mālik, who said: The Messenger of Allah ﷺ approached Medina, and people began saying, “The Prophet of Allah has arrived!” They rushed out, craning their necks to see him. ʿAbd Allah ibn Salam heard the news while he was in a family-owned date-palm grove gathering fruit for them. He hastened to put down what he had collected and came