The following year, when the time of the annual pilgrimage again came round, a band of converts, amounting to seventy-three in number, accompanied their heathen fellow-countrymen from Yathrib to Mecca. They were commissioned to invite Muḥammad to take refuge in Yathrib from the fury of his enemies, and had come to swear allegiance to him as their prophet and their leader. All the early converts who had before met the Prophet on the two preceding pilgrimages, returned to Mecca on this important occasion, and Muṣʻab their teacher accompanied them. Immediately on his arrival he hurried to the prophet, and told him of the success that had attended his mission. It is said that his mother, hearing of his arrival, sent a message to him, saying: “Ah, disobedient son, wilt thou enter a city in which thy mother dwelleth, and not first visit her!” “Nay, verily,” he replied, “I will never visit the house of any one before the Prophet of God.” So, after he had greeted and conferred with Muḥammad, he went to his mother, who thus accosted him: “Then I ween thou art still a renegade.” He answered, “I follow the prophet of the Lord and the true faith of Islam.” “Art thou then well satisfied with the miserable way thou hast fared in the land of Abyssinia and now again at Yathrib?” Now he perceived that she was meditating his imprisonment, and exclaimed, “What! wilt thou force a man from his religion? If ye seek to confine me, I will assuredly slay the first person that layeth hands upon me.” His mother said, “Then depart from my presence,” and she began to weep. Muṣʻab was moved, and said, “Oh, my mother! I give thee loving counsel. Testify that there is no God but the Lord and that Muḥammad is His servant and messenger.” But she replied, “By the sparkling stars! I will never make a fool of myself by entering into thy religion. I wash my hands of thee and thy concerns, and cleave steadfastly unto mine own faith.” In order not to excite suspicion and incur the hostility of the Quraysh, a secret meeting was arranged at ʻAqabah, the scene of the former meeting with the converts of the year before. Muḥammad came accompanied only by his uncle ʻAbbās, who, though he was still an idolater, had been admitted into the secret. ʻAbbās opened the solemn conclave, by recommending his nephew as a scion of one of the noblest families of his clan, which had hitherto afforded the Prophet protection, although rejecting his teachings; but now that he wished to take refuge among the people of Yathrib, they should bethink themselves well before undertaking such a charge, and resolve not to go back from their promise, if once they undertook the risk. Then Barā b. Maʻrūr, one of the Banū Khazraj, protesting that they were firm in their resolve to protect the Prophet of God, besought him to declare fully what he wished of them.