Sirah

The Orchard Wall at Ta'if

Shelter at the vineyard's edge after the rejection at Ta'if, c. 619-620 CE

c. 619-620 CE

Imagined 360° reconstruction of The Orchard Wall at Ta'if

Educational historical reconstruction

Where

Ta'if, the hill-town and its orchards south-east of Makkah

21.2667, 40.4167 · View on OpenStreetMap

Background

In the period of greatest hardship at Makkah, traditionally the tenth year of the mission, roughly 619-620 CE, in the months after the Year of Sorrow in which both his wife Khadijah (radiyallahu 'anha) and his uncle and protector Abu Talib died, the Prophet Muhammad (peace and blessings be upon him) travelled the some sixty miles south-east to the highland town of Ta'if, seeking support and a hearing from the chiefs of the tribe of Thaqif. According to Ibn Ishaq's Sira, the leaders of Ta'if refused him and, as he left, the town's youths and slaves were set on to pelt him from the place. Wounded and grieved, he took shelter at the edge of a walled orchard belonging, the sources say, to 'Utba and Shayba ibn Rabi'a, two Makkan men of the Quraysh; there he rested and made the supplication of the powerless that the tradition preserves, complaining of his weakness only to his Lord and seeking only His pleasure. The episode is among the most severe trials of the Makkan period and is treated in the Sira as the low point before the turning of the tide, it is followed in the traditional sequence by the Night Journey and then by the first pledges of the people of Yathrib that would open the way to the Hijrah. This scene depicts the place rather than the harm: the green orchard country of Ta'if, the low orchard wall and the walled vineyard where shelter was found, and the road leading back down toward the distant valley of Makkah. It shows no act of violence and no figure. In keeping with the strictest visual ethics, the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) is not depicted in any form.

What you see

A green, cultivated upland of orchards and vineyards on cooler high ground, a fertile hill-country town markedly unlike the bare valley of Makkah, the kind of watered highland for which Ta'if was famous as the orchard of the Hijaz.

A low fieldstone orchard wall and the edge of a walled vineyard with a simple garden shelter, the kind of private cultivated estate on the town's outskirts where a traveller might be given quiet refuge.

Trained grape-vines and fruit trees within the enclosure, with the tools and furniture of a working orchard; a cluster of grapes set out on a leaf is the kind of small hospitality the sources attach to the place.

A track leads from the orchard's edge back down out of the highland toward the distant lower valley, the road back to Makkah, taken after the mission to the town's leaders had failed.

The subject is a place of rejection and quiet refuge: the edge of an orchard at the margin of a town that turned the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) away, where he rested before the road home. No incident of harm is depicted, only the place and its stillness.

The dating is the period of greatest hardship at Makkah, traditionally about the tenth year of the mission, roughly 619-620 CE, in the months after the deaths of Khadijah (RA) and Abu Talib.

Primary sources

Ibn Ishaq / Ibn Hisham, Sirat Rasul Allah (compiled 8th-9th c.): The narrative of the journey to Ta'if, the refusal of the chiefs of Thaqif, the pelting, the shelter at the orchard of 'Utba and Shayba, and the supplication. The principal source.

Ibn Sa'd, al-Tabaqat al-Kubra (9th c.): Places the journey to Ta'if in the late Makkan period after the deaths of Khadijah (RA) and Abu Talib and corroborates the broad sequence.

al-Tabari, Tarikh al-Rusul wa-al-Muluk (early 10th c.): Compiles the accounts and fixes the episode in the tenth year of the mission, before the Night Journey.

Sahih al-Bukhari and Sahih Muslim (3rd c. AH): Contain the report (the hadith of 'A'isha, RA, on the hardest day) in which the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) recalls the rejection at Ta'if and the angel of the mountains, corroborating the episode and its severity within the canonical tradition.

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