The Concealment of the Tree

Significance

Al-Bukhārī narrated that the people went back the following year to the place of the Pledge of Riḍwān and disagreed as to which tree it was; Ibn ʿUmar ﭬ said: It was a mercy from Allah. When ʿUmar ibn al-Khaṭṭāb ﭬ saw people going to some tree to pray there, claiming it was the tree, he ordered it cut down to block the path to shirk. Ṭāriq ibn ʿAbd al-Raḥmān said: I set out for ḥajj and passed people praying. I asked what this was; they said: 'This is the tree under which the Messenger of Allah ﷺ took the Pledge of Riḍwān.' I came to Saʿīd ibn al-Musayyab and told him. He said: My father told me — he was among those who pledged under it — that when we came out the next year we forgot it and could not find it. And he said: 'The Companions of Muḥammad ﷺ did not know it, and you know it? Are you more learned than they?'