The faithful migrate from Jahilia to Yathrib

The faithful migrate from Jahilia to Yathrib after persecution makes continued life in the city increasingly untenable. In Gibreel Farishta’s dream, the departure is both a practical escape, made possible by Yathrib’s offer of shelter, and a rupture presented as the beginning of a new era. Mahound agrees to leave, but the scene does not settle whether the earlier repudiation of the Satanic Verses was a divine trial or a human compromise: grief, accusation, and uncertainty travel with the emigrants.

Persecution and the offer of refuge

Following the repudiation of the Satanic Verses, Mahound returns home to find his seventy-year-old wife dead beside a stone-latticed window. He withdraws into grief and speaks hardly at all for weeks. Meanwhile, Abu Simbel’s policy against Submission becomes an organized campaign: the faithful are confined to Jahilia’s poorest quarter, placed under curfew, and barred from employment. They also face physical assaults, harassment in shops, attacks by gangs secretly controlled by the Grandee, and fires thrown through windows at night. The persecution fails to extinguish the new religion; its adherents multiply as their conditions worsen.

An offer from Yathrib, an oasis settlement to the north, gives the faithful a way out: those who wish to leave Jahilia will be sheltered. Hamza urges Mahound to accept, arguing that he will not be able to complete his message in a city where Hind wants to silence him. The choice is made amid bereavement and political danger, not as a triumphant conquest. Mahound, alone in his house, gives his consent, and the faithful begin making plans to depart.

Consent, doubt, and bitter irony

As the preparations begin, Khalid the watercarrier hangs back to speak with Mahound. He confesses that he doubted him, recounting how the faithful first thought Mahound would never compromise, then believed he had betrayed them. Khalid now interprets the disputed revelation as a way for the believers to witness the Devil’s workings and their overthrow by the Right; in his view, the episode has enriched their faith. His apology shows how the community has absorbed the crisis into a sustaining account of religious trial and insight.

Mahound’s brief response unsettles that explanation. Moving away from the sunlight at the window, he answers with bitterness and cynicism, sarcastically accepting Khalid’s description of the episode as a profound achievement. The exchange does not disclose a definitive alternative account of the revelation. Instead, it places the faithful’s renewed confidence beside Mahound’s apparent refusal to endorse their consoling interpretation, leaving the migration shadowed by unresolved doubt.

The departure and a new beginning

From the peak of Mount Cone, Gibreel Farishta watches the faithful leave Jahilia in small groups, almost empty-handed. They travel from a city of aridity toward Yathrib, associated with cool palms and water. The movement is rendered as a collective crossing: the emigrants pass through the sun’s empire while the old order recedes behind them and a new one waits ahead. The departure takes place on the first day of the first year of a newly begun Time, making the migration a break not only with the city but with the era left behind.

Mahound does not leave in the same visible procession. He slips away later, and his escape is discovered only after the fact. Baal responds by composing a valedictory ode that asks what Submission will mean now. His response turns the migration into a public and ideological departure as well as a physical one: the faithful leave Jahilia, while the poet who has opposed Mahound gives the movement a final, questioning commentary.

Narrative significance

The dream’s account holds practical flight and religious transformation together without making them identical. The migration follows explicit persecution and a concrete offer of shelter, yet its placement at the beginning of a new measure of Time gives it a foundational significance. The emigrants’ near-emptiness emphasizes the cost of leaving; the destination’s palms and water contrast with Jahilia’s aridity, while the unresolved exchange between Khalid and Mahound prevents the journey from serving as a simple confirmation of faith.

The departure also changes the balance between the persecuted community and the city that tried to contain it. Jahilia’s coercive measures have not prevented Submission from growing, and they ultimately help make departure necessary. In Gibreel Farishta’s dream, the faithful’s movement toward Yathrib therefore marks both loss and continuation: they abandon the place of persecution, carry their disputed history with them, and enter a new era whose meaning remains open to question.