At-Tufayl ibn Amr ad-Dawsi

At-Tufayl ibn Amr was a poet and the chief of Daws, a tribe well to the south of Makkah. When he arrived in Makkah, men of Quraysh met him and warned him about the Prophet ﷺ, describing his speech as something that split a man from his father, his brother and his wife, and urged him not to go near him or listen to a word.

At-Tufayl took the warning seriously enough to stop his own ears with cotton before going to the Kaabah, so that he would not hear anything even by accident.

It did not last. He reasoned with himself that he was a sensible man and a poet besides, well able to judge good speech from bad on his own account without anyone else deciding it for him. He took the cotton out, listened to what the Prophet ﷺ recited, and was moved by it. He went to him privately afterwards, was taught, and accepted Islam.

At-Tufayl returned to his tribe to call them to Islam. Daws did not respond quickly, and he came back to the Prophet ﷺ discouraged, asking him to invoke a curse on them for their refusal.

Instead the Prophet ﷺ raised his hands and prayed for Daws to be guided and brought to Islam — a report carried in Sahih al-Bukhari. At-Tufayl went back to try again, and in time a group of Daws did come to Madinah.

He went on to take part in the later campaigns, and was killed fighting at Yamamah during the Riddah wars. The accounts of that campaign differ in their detail and this record does not narrate them.