Sold for a joke

Nu'ayman and Suwaybit ibn Harmalah were travelling together, and provisions had run short. Suwaybit, it is reported, had food and would not readily share it.

Nu'ayman went to a group of Bedouin they passed and offered to sell them a slave — a clever, well-spoken one, he said, except for one flaw: he would insist, loudly, that he was in fact a free man and not a slave at all. They should pay him no attention when he did.

They agreed a price, took Suwaybit, and put a rope on him. He protested, exactly as Nu'ayman had described, and exactly as warned they did not believe a word of it.

Suwaybit was led away until the misunderstanding was cleared up and he was released.

The story circulated afterward as one of the more elaborate jokes attributed to Nu'ayman, and the reports have the Prophet ﷺ laughing about it for a long time whenever it came up.

The sources vary in small points of detail — how the price was settled, exactly what was said — and this account gives only what they agree on.