—he used to associate with the Jews and question them about the religion, (1) and they would give him the description of the Messenger of Allah, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, adding that this very land would be his place of emigration. He then went to the Jews of Taymāʾ, and they told him the same. After that he travelled to Greater Syria, questioned the Christians there, and they too supplied him with the Prophet’s description and told him that his migration would be to Yathrib.

Abū ʿĀmir returned saying, “I follow the ḥanīfiyya,” adopted a monastic life, donned coarse woollen garments, and claimed that he was upon the religion of Abraham and was awaiting the Prophet’s appearance. When the Messenger of Allah became manifest in Mecca, he did not go out to meet him and stayed as he was. When the Prophet reached Medina he envied him, opposed him, and played the hypocrite. He came to the Prophet and said, “O Muhammad, with what have you been sent?” He replied, “With the ḥanīfiyya.” Abū ʿĀmir said, “Are you mixing it with something else?” The Prophet answered, “I have brought it pure and white. Where, then, is what the rabbis from among the Jews and the Christians used to tell you about my description?” He retorted, “You are not the one they described.” The Prophet—peace and blessings be upon him—said, “You have lied.” He replied, “I have not lied.” The Messenger of Allah then declared (2): “Whoever is the liar, Allah will cause him to die alone, banished.” Abū ʿĀmir said, “Āmīn.”

He then returned to Mecca, kept company with Quraysh and followed their religion, abandoning what he had previously claimed. When the people of Ṭāʾif accepted Islam, he fled to Syria, where he died an outcast, a stranger, and alone. (3)

Al-Wāqidī said: Muḥammad ibn Saʿd al-Thaqafī and ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz, together with a group of others—each of whom related to me part of the report—narrated from al-Mughīra ibn Shuʿba that he entered upon al-Muqawqis, and that al-Muqawqis said to him, “Muḥammad is a Prophet who has been sent; if the Copts and the Byzantines only realized this, they would follow him.”

Al-Mughīra continued: “I stayed in Alexandria, not leaving a single church without entering it and asking…"