The letter of the king of Ghassan to Ka'b ibn Malik

A Nabataean from al-Sham carried to Ka'b a letter from the king of Ghassan inviting him to join him; Ka'b burned it in an oven. ¹

Ka'b said: as I was walking in the market, a Nabataean of the Nabataeans of al-Sham, one of those who had come to sell food in Medina, asked: who will point me to Ka'b ibn Malik? The people kept pointing me out to him until he came to me and handed me a letter from the king of Ghassan — a letter written on a scrap of silk. ¹

In it was: "to proceed: we have heard that your companion has cut you off; God has not made you to be in a house of humiliation or waste — join us and we will care for you." ¹

Ka'b said: when I read it I said — this too is of the trial; my plight has come to the point that a man of the people of idolatry should hope for me. So I took it to an oven and stoked it with it. ¹

• The text names neither the king nor the Nabataean who carried the letter.
• "The people of idolatry" is Ka'b's description of the king on his own tongue (p. 179), not the museum's verdict.
• The editors' linguistic glosses ("the Nabataean", "food" here meaning wheat, "the caring") are not part of the report.