The Makkah period — persecution and patience

When the Prophet ﷺ began preaching openly — acting on the command “And warn your nearest kindred” (Qur’an 26:214) — Makkan opposition hardened. The message threatened the religious and economic order built around the idols of the Ka’bah, and the leaders of Quraysh moved against it.

Those with tribal protection, like the Prophet ﷺ himself under Abu Talib, faced ridicule, slander and pressure. Those without it — the poor, the enslaved, the foreign — faced far worse. Bilal ibn Rabah رضي الله عنه, an Abyssinian slave, was laid on the burning sand with a rock on his chest and told to renounce his faith; he answered only, “Ahad, Ahad” — “One, One” (Ibn Hisham’s Sirah) — until Abu Bakr bought and freed him, an event also recorded in Sahih al-Bukhari (no. 3754). Others, like the family of Yasir, were tortured; Sumayyah رضي الله عنها is remembered as the first to be killed for the faith.

To relieve the pressure, the Prophet ﷺ sent a group of Companions to Abyssinia, whose Christian king, an-Najashi, refused a Makkan demand to hand them back after hearing them recite from Surah Maryam. Meanwhile Quraysh imposed a social and economic boycott on the Prophet’s clan, confining them to a mountain valley for around three years of real hardship before it collapsed.

Two moments lifted the community in these years: the acceptance of Islam by Hamzah, the Prophet’s uncle, and by Umar ibn al-Khattab رضي الله عنهما, both strong and respected men. But the hardest blow came around 619 CE, the “Year of Sorrow”, when Khadijah and Abu Talib both died within a short time — the Prophet ﷺ losing at once his closest support and his protector. A journey to nearby Ta’if seeking help ended in him being stoned and driven out.

It was against this backdrop that the night journey and ascension (al-Isra’ wa’l-Mi’raj) took place, and the five daily prayers were made obligatory — a consolation and a turning of the community’s daily life towards God. The lesson the Companions drew from Makkah was not one of strategy but of character: hold to the truth, be patient, and keep your intention pure.