After three nights in the Cave of Thawr, protected by the spider’s web and the care of Allah ﷻ, the Prophet ﷺ and Abu Bakr ﵁ left their hiding place. The Quraysh had largely given up the search. Most of the searchers were convinced that the two fugitives had by now gone far beyond their reach. The guide Abdullah ibn Uraiqit, a polytheist who nonetheless kept his word, appeared at the agreed time at the cave with the riding animals. He led them along unknown, unused paths to minimize the chance of discovery.
The Tent of Umm Ma’bad
On the way to Madinah, the small traveling party, consisting of the Prophet ﷺ, Abu Bakr ﵁, his servant Aamir ibn Fuhaira, and the guide Abdullah ibn Uraiqit, passed by the tent of Umm Ma’bad in Qudaid. Her full name was Atika bint Ka’b Al-Khuza’iyya. Qudaid was the area where the Khuza’a tribe lived, and her brother Khunais ibn Khalid Al-Khuza’i was the one who later narrated her story.
Umm Ma’bad was old but strong, a sturdy woman who sat outside her tent with her arms folded over her knees. The travelers asked if she had meat or dates to sell them, but she did not. Her people’s provisions were running out and they were going through a period of drought.
The Prophet ﷺ noticed a sheep next to the tent. The animal was so weakened by the drought that it could barely stand on its legs.
Prophet ﷺ: And this sheep, O Umm Ma’bad?
Umm Ma’bad: It is, despite its weakness, the only remaining sheep.
Prophet ﷺ: Does it have milk?
Umm Ma’bad: It is weaker than that.
Prophet ﷺ: Do you give me permission to milk it?
Umm Ma’bad: Yes, may my mother and father be sacrificed for you!
The Prophet ﷺ passed his hand over the udders of the sheep, mentioned the Name of Allah ﷻ, and made a supplication. At that moment, milk began flowing from the udders, abundant and white. He ﷺ asked for a container large enough to serve a small group and milked a large quantity until the container was filled to the brim. First he gave Umm Ma’bad to drink until she had enough, then his Companions until they too were satisfied. The Prophet ﷺ drank last himself. He then filled the container a second time, left the sheep and the full container with her, and paid her.
The Return of Abu Ma’bad
It was not long before the husband of Umm Ma’bad returned with a number of starving sheep, animals so weakened that they stumbled from side to side. When Abu Ma’bad saw the milk, he was astonished.
Abu Ma’bad: Where did you get this milk, O Umm Ma’bad? Our sheep are far from grazing land, have not given birth, and we have no other milk-bearing sheep in the house.
Umm Ma’bad: No, by Allah. But what happened is that a blessed man passed by us.
Abu Ma’bad: O Umm Ma’bad, describe him to me.
Umm Ma’bad then gave a description that to this day remains among the most detailed physical descriptions of the Prophet ﷺ:
I saw an unmistakably handsome man with a radiant face and good manners. He was not thin or emaciated; he could generally be described as handsome. His eyes were da’aj, the black part of his eyes was extremely black and the white part extremely white, and his eyelashes were long. His voice was not shrill, his neck was long, and his beard was thick. The hairs of his eyebrows were long and thin, and both eyebrows were connected. When he was silent, he radiated a sense of dignity, and when he spoke, he radiated beauty and brilliance. Seen from a distance, he is the most handsome and magnificent of people, and from up close, he is the kindest and the best. His speech is sweet and undeniably true; he speaks calmly, neither too much nor too little. He is of average height, not taller than most people, but also not so short that you would call him short. He ﷺ was the most radiant of the three in appearance and had the most distinction. He had companions around him. When he spoke, they listened attentively. And when he gave a command, they hurried to carry it out.
Abu Ma’bad listened to her words and said: By Allah, he is the companion of the Quraysh whose cause has been told to us. I have surely resolved to become his companion, and I will achieve this goal if I find a way to do so.
The Arrival in Madinah
The traveling party continued along the coastal route, far from the usual caravan paths that the Quraysh were guarding. After several days through the desert, they reached the village of Quba, located south of Madinah. Here the Prophet ﷺ halted and stayed with Kulthum ibn Hidm ﵁, one of the Ansar who had already pledged allegiance to the Prophet ﷺ during the Pledge of Aqaba.
In Quba, the Prophet ﷺ remained for several days. During this stay, he laid the foundations of the first mosque in Islam, Masjid Quba. With his own hands he helped carry stones and bricks, side by side with the Companions ﵃ who had preceded him in the emigration to Madinah. It was a modest structure of unbaked stones and palm trunk pillars, but it would become a place of worship about which the Quran itself would speak.
Meanwhile, the people of Madinah had received the news of his departure from Makkah. Every day, groups of Ansar went to the edge of the city and looked out over the road from the south, waiting and hoping. In the heat of midday, when the sun made the waiting unbearable, they returned to their homes disappointed, only to go out again the next morning.
On the day the Prophet ﷺ finally left Quba and rode toward Madinah, it was a Jewish man who first spotted him approaching from a lookout and called out: O Arabs, here is the one you have been waiting for! The joy was overwhelming. Men, women, and children poured outside. The streets filled with people who wanted to welcome him. According to the narration, the women and children of Madinah sang a welcome song, an expression of pure joy that the city had never known before.
The Prophet ﷺ rode his she-camel, al-Qaswa, into Madinah. Everywhere he passed, the families of the Ansar invited him to stay with them, and they grasped the reins of his camel in the hope that he would stop at their home. Each time, the Prophet ﷺ answered kindly: Leave her, for she has been sent. The she-camel walked through the streets of Madinah until she knelt of her own accord on an open piece of land that was used as a drying area for dates. This was the destined place, the place where Masjid an-Nabawi, the Mosque of the Prophet, would be built.
The Prophet ﷺ took up residence with Abu Ayyub al-Ansari ﵁, whose house stood closest to the spot where the she-camel had knelt. Abu Ayyub ﵁ insisted that the Prophet ﷺ take the upper floor, but the Prophet ﷺ chose the ground floor so that visitors could reach him more easily. The hospitality of Abu Ayyub ﵁ and his wife would later become proverbial among the Companions ﵃.
The Islamic Calendar
The Hijrah was more than a journey from one city to another. It was the turning point at which a persecuted religious minority transformed into an organized community with its own territory, its own governance, and its own laws. In Makkah, the Muslims had been subjects, at the mercy of the Quraysh. In Madinah, they became citizens of a new society, with the Prophet ﷺ as their leader, judge, and lawgiver.
It was only years later, during the caliphate of Umar ibn al-Khattab ﵁, that the need arose for a standardized calendar. The growing Islamic state required a uniform system for treaties, correspondence, and taxation. Umar ﵁ convened the prominent Companions ﵃ to deliberate on the starting point of this new chronology.
Several possibilities were considered. The birth of the Prophet ﷺ, the moment of the first revelation in the Cave of Hira, the conquest of Makkah. Each of these events carried strong symbolic weight. Yet Umar ﵁ and the Companions ﵃ unanimously chose the Hijrah as the starting point. The reasoning was clear: the Hijrah marked the moment at which Islam transitioned from a private faith, practiced in secrecy, to a public governance, carried by a community. It was the moment at which faith and sovereignty converged.
The Islamic calendar begins at 1 Muharram of the year in which the Hijrah took place, which corresponds to approximately July 16, 622 CE. Since then, every Islamic year is designated with the letters AH, “after the Hijrah” (Anno Hegirae). The calendar is a lunar calendar of twelve months, with each year being approximately eleven days shorter than the solar year. This means that Islamic holidays and commemorations shift through the seasons, a characteristic that emphasizes the universality of the Islamic calendar, independent of climate or geography.
What began as a nighttime flight from persecution, two men and a guide on uncharted paths through the desert, became the founding moment of an entire civilization. The Hijrah reminds every generation that the great turning points in history do not always take place on battlefields or in palaces, but sometimes on a deserted desert path, in the trust that Allah ﷻ guides the way to what is yet to come.