Abu Sufyan's Mission to Madinah

With no resolution reached, Abu Sufyan (with Quraysh's approval) travelled alone to Madinah to try to renegotiate the Treaty of Hudaybiyyah. Accounts differ on the order of his visits: Ibn Ishaq has him go first to the Prophet ﷺ, who gave him no response at all, and only then to Abu Bakr, Umar ibn al-Khattab, and Ali ibn Abi Talib in turn; Ibn Sa'd instead has him visit Abu Bakr, Umar, and Ali first, going to the Prophet ﷺ last (Sh. Yasir Qadhi favors Ibn Ishaq's version). Abu Bakr, his old friend from the days of Jahiliyyah, refused to help him. Umar, his former business partner, refused even more bluntly. Ali, his third cousin and the closest relative to him in Madinah, would not intervene with the Prophet ﷺ's decision either, though he heard Abu Sufyan out and, when Abu Sufyan tried appealing through Ali's young son Hasan and then through Fatima directly, advised him as a last resort to make a public plea for protection in the mosque; protection which, under Arab custom, any Muslim (male, female, young, or unable to fight) had standing to grant. Abu Sufyan did so, but no one came forward, since the Prophet ﷺ himself had said nothing. Before leaving Madinah, Abu Sufyan visited his daughter Umm Habiba, a wife of the Prophet ﷺ whom he had not seen in over 13 years since her emigration to Abyssinia; she refused to let him, a mushrik, sit on the Prophet ﷺ's own bedding. Abu Sufyan returned to Makkah empty-handed and was mocked by the Quraysh for having had to beg publicly in the mosque.