Episode in the early history of Islam, where the first Muslims fled from Mecca to the Christian Kingdom of Aksum, due to persecution
The First Hijra established a precedent of Muslim asylum-seeking and marked the first contact between early Islam and a Christian kingdom.
Key Facts
- First migration year
- 613 CE (9 BH) or 615 CE (7 BH)
- First group size
- 11 men and 4 women
- Second migration group size
- 83 men plus wives and children
- Host kingdom
- Kingdom of Aksum (Christian state)
- Leader of second migration
- Ja'far ibn Abi Talib
- Return to Medina
- 628 CE for those who remained in Aksum
By the Numbers
Location
Cause → Event → Consequence
The early followers of Muhammad faced persecution at the hands of the Quraysh, the ruling tribal confederation of Mecca. The hostility forced many of the Sahabah (companions of the Prophet) to seek safety outside Arabia, as they could no longer practice their faith or live securely in their homeland.
In two waves—the first led by Uthman ibn Mazun with fifteen individuals, the second led by Ja'far ibn Abi Talib with over eighty men plus families—early Muslims migrated to the Kingdom of Aksum. The Aksumite ruler, identified in Islamic sources as the Najashi (Negus), granted them refuge in his Christian kingdom in what is now northern Ethiopia and Eritrea.
Some migrants returned to Mecca upon a false report of mass conversion there, then departed again in a larger second group. Those who remained in Aksum eventually joined the Muslim community in Medina in 628 CE. The episode established a formative relationship between early Islam and Aksumite Christianity and is remembered as the First Hijra in Islamic historical tradition.