On the authority of Ibn ʿAbbās: when the Messenger of Allah ﷺ dispatched Muʿādh to Yemen he said to him, “You are going to a people from the People of the Book; let the very first thing you summon them to be the testimony that there is no god but Allah.” In another wording: “that they single out Allah alone.” If they obey you in that, then inform them that Allah has prescribed for them five prayers every day and night. If they obey you in that, then inform them that Allah has made obligatory upon them a charity to be taken from their wealthy and returned to their poor. If they obey you in that, then beware of taking the choicest of their wealth, and fear the supplication of the wronged, for between it and Allah there is no veil.” Both al-Bukhārī and Muslim recorded it (1).

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baʿatha Muʿādh-an: he dispatched and sent him.
ilā al-Yaman: to the well-known region south of the Arabian Peninsula, as a caller to Allah, a governor, and a judge in the tenth year after the Hijrah.
Ahl al-Kitāb: the Jews and the Christians, because in Yemen they were more numerous than the Arab polytheists, or formed the majority.
shahāda: it may be read in the nominative as the postponed subject of “let” with “the first” as its initial predicate, and the reverse is also permissible.
wa-fī riwāyah: that is, in another narration in Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī.
aṭāʿūka li-dhālik: meaning they testified and submitted to your call, and rejected whatever is worshipped besides