Then the bishop sent for another man of Najrān (1), Jabbār ibn Fayḍ of the clan of al-Ḥārith ibn Kaʿb. He read the letter to him and asked for his judgment, and he replied exactly as Shuraḥbīl and ʿAbd Allāh had done. The bishop therefore told him to step aside.

When they had all reached the same conclusion, the bishop ordered that the bell be struck and the monastic habits (2) be hoisted on the towers—this was their daytime alarm; if the alarm came at night they would strike the bell and light fires on the towers. The inhabitants of the whole valley gathered, upper and lower alike, across a stretch that a fast rider covers in a single day. The valley held seventy-three villages and one hundred and twenty thousand fighting men. The bishop read out the letter of the Messenger of Allah ﷺ and asked for their counsel. The men of influence agreed to send Shuraḥbīl ibn Wādaʿah al-Hamdānī, ʿAbd Allāh ibn Shuraḥbīl, and Jabbār ibn Fayḍ to bring back word from the Messenger of Allah ﷺ.

The delegation set out, and when they were (3) in Medina they laid aside their travel clothes and put on flowing robes of ḥibrah—fine, striped cloth—and gold signet rings. They then came to the Messenger of Allah ﷺ, greeted him with salām, but he did not return their greeting. They tried for most of the day to speak with him, yet he would not address them while they were wearing those robes and gold rings. So they left to find ʿUthmān ibn ʿAffān and ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn ʿAwf, whom they already knew: in the Days of Ignorance the two used to send caravans to Najrān to buy wheat and dates for them. They found them sitting with a group of the Emigrants and the Helpers and said, “O ʿUthmān, O ʿAbd al-Raḥmān, your Prophet sent us a letter, so we have come…"