Abu Hudhayfa ibn Utba

Abu Hudhayfa ibn Utba ibn Rabi'a ibn Abd Shams (d. 11 or 12 AH / 632 or 633 CE) was one of the earliest Muslims of Mecca, an emigrant to Abyssinia in both of the migrations made there, a veteran of the Battle of Badr, and a commander of one wing of the Muslim army at the Battle of Yamamah, where he was killed. He belonged to the Banu Abd Shams, one of the leading houses of the Quraysh, and his father Utba ibn Rabi'a was among the foremost men of the Meccan opposition to Prophet Muhammad ﷺ. His sister Hind was the wife of Abu Sufyan ibn Harb and the mother of Muawiyah.

Two things set his life apart from those of the other early Companions of his generation. The first is that the division Islam produced inside Mecca ran directly through his own household: he stood in the Muslim line at Badr while his father, his uncle and his brother stood opposite in the Quraysh line, and all three of them were killed there. The second is his relationship with Salim, the man he freed and then adopted as a son, who became one of the four Companions the Prophet named as teachers of Qur'anic recitation. Their household is the setting of the reports through which the Qur'an's abolition of adoptive filiation entered Islamic law, and the two men were killed on the same field in the same battle a decade later.

Name, Lineage and Household

He is known almost entirely by his kunya. The entry on him in the Diyanet İslâm Ansiklopedisi states plainly that because he was known by the kunya, his given name is not established with certainty: most of the sources give it as Mihsham, while some give Hashim and some Hushaym.

His lineage is recorded in the soundest collections rather than only in the biographical dictionaries. Aisha's narration in Sahih al-Bukhari names him as "Abu Hudhayfa ibn Utba ibn Rabi'a ibn Abd Shams" and identifies him in the same breath as one of those who fought at Badr with the Prophet. Abd Shams was a son of Abd Manaf, and the Diyanet entry on his father notes that Utba's descent meets the Prophet's own line at that ancestor — so Abu Hudhayfa and Muhammad were kin within the Quraysh, through the generation above Hashim.

The household he was born into was a considerable one. His father, Utba ibn Rabi'a, lost his own father young and was brought up under the guardianship of Harb ibn Umayya; he became one of the men of Mecca whose opinion carried weight, and is described in the Diyanet entry as generous, an orator and a poet. He was one of those who held the cloth on which the Black Stone was carried when the Kaaba was rebuilt, and he was the father-in-law of Abu Sufyan. When the Prophet, driven out of Ta'if and wounded, took shelter in an orchard at the edge of the cultivated land, the orchard belonged to Utba and his brother Shayba, and it was they who sent their Christian slave Addas to him with a plate of grapes.

Utba's conduct towards the Prophet is recorded as having been of a particular kind, and it matters for understanding his son. He was one of the Quraysh deputation that went to Abu Talib to press him to restrain his nephew, and he opposed the new religion; but the Diyanet entry states that he did not persecute the Prophet and tried instead to turn him from his mission by gentleness. It records the episode in which he came with proposals meant to buy the Prophet off, and returned to his companions having achieved nothing, affected by the verses the Prophet recited to him — the opening passage of Surah Fussilat (Quran 41:1-13) — and it adds the report that Utba used to listen secretly to the Prophet's recitation of the Qur'an. This is a man who came close and did not cross, which is the situation his son's grief at Badr presupposes.

His siblings appear repeatedly in the narrative of the Prophet's life. His brother al-Walid ibn Utba was killed at Badr. His sister Hind bint Utba, the wife of Abu Sufyan, is the woman who procured the killing of Hamza ibn Abd al-Muttalib at the Battle of Uhud in revenge for her father, brother and uncle; as-Sallabi records her, after her acceptance of Islam, borrowing from the public treasury under Umar to trade, and then travelling to her son Muawiyah. Another sister, Fatima bint Utba, narrated her own pledge of allegiance to the Prophet, which she made in Hind's company and at Abu Hudhayfa's own prompting.

Mecca: Early Islam

The Diyanet entry records the report that Abu Hudhayfa was the forty-fourth person to accept Islam, and describes him as one of the seventeen Companions who could read and write in the early years of the religion — a detail drawn there from Muhammad Mustafa al-A'zami's study of the Prophet's scribes. Literacy of that kind was uncommon enough in the Hijaz to be worth counting, and it places him among a very small group.

His acceptance of Islam set him against the interests of his own clan and the position of his own father. The sources do not preserve an account of persecution directed at him personally, and it is not asserted here; what they do preserve is the persecution of the Meccan Muslims in general, which reached the point at which the Prophet permitted those who could leave to leave.

He married Sahla bint Suhayl ibn Amr, whose full name is given in Sunan Abi Dawud as Sahla bint Suhayl ibn Amr al-Qurashi al-Amiri. Her family was itself divided by the new religion in the way his was. Her father, Suhayl ibn Amr, was the man who negotiated and signed the Treaty of Hudaybiyyah on behalf of the Quraysh and came to Islam only late; her brothers Abdullah and Abu Jandal, and her sister Umm Kulthum, were among the early Muslims. It was her brother Abu Jandal ibn Suhayl who, as Sahih al-Bukhari records in its Book of Conditions, came staggering out of the valley of Mecca in his fetters at the very moment the clause requiring the return of Meccan converts was being agreed, and fell down among the Muslims — an episode that brought the negotiation to the point of crisis and drew Umar's protest. Sahla is also remembered in the literature of jurisprudence in her own right: she put to the Prophet the question of prolonged bleeding beyond the menstrual period (istihada), and Great Women of Islam lists her among the women Companions whose recorded juristic verdicts are extensive.

The Migrations to Abyssinia

When the Prophet permitted emigration to Abyssinia, Abu Hudhayfa and Sahla went with the first party. Ibn Kathir, transmitting Ibn Ishaq, gives the names of the first Muslims to leave, beginning with Uthman ibn Affan and his wife Ruqayyah, and continuing: "Abu Hudhayfa b. Utba and his wife Sahla, daughter of Suhayl b. Amr; and in Abyssinia she bore him a son, Muhammad b. Abi Hudhayfa." The remainder of the list names al-Zubayr ibn al-Awwam, Mus'ab ibn Umayr, Abd al-Rahman ibn Awf, Abu Salama ibn Abd al-Asad with his wife Umm Salama, Uthman ibn Maz'un, Amir ibn Rabi'a with his wife Layla bint Abi Hathma, Abu Sabra ibn Abi Ruhm with his wife Umm Kulthum bint Suhayl ibn Amr, and Suhayl ibn Bayda. Ibn Ishaq counts ten men, and Ibn Hisham adds that some scholars put Uthman ibn Maz'un in command of them.

History of Islam places the departure in Rajab of the fifth year of the prophethood, gives the party as eleven men and four women, names "Hudhaifah bin Utbah" among them, and notes that they reached the port of Shu'aybah and found a ship at anchor there. It makes the point that the emigrants came from the renowned and powerful clans, which shows that the persecution had reached beyond the poor and unprotected — Abu Hudhayfa, the son of one of Mecca's principal men, is himself an instance of it.

The Abyssinian years are the setting of his son's birth. Muhammad ibn Abi Hudhayfa, who was to have a turbulent later career in Egypt, was born there, and both Diyanet entries record the fact.

The emigrants' return is one of the points on which the sources differ, and the difference is reported rather than resolved. The entry on Sahla states that while they were in Abyssinia a report spread that the Meccans had accepted Islam, on which she and her husband returned to Mecca; when the report proved false they migrated to Abyssinia again, and from there to Medina. The same entry records a second account, in which the two of them came back from Abyssinia to Mecca and did not go a second time, but stayed at Mecca beside the Prophet. The entry on Abu Hudhayfa gives the latter shape to his movements — that he returned from Abyssinia to Mecca and did not leave the Prophet's side until the hijra — while stating in the same paragraph that he took part in both of the migrations to Abyssinia with his wife. What is not in dispute is that he made the hijra to Medina and was there from the beginning of the Medinan community.

Medina

The brotherhood with Abbad ibn Bishr

On reaching Medina he lodged, together with his freedman Salim, in the house of Abbad ibn Bishr of the Ansar, and the Diyanet entry records that it was because they were his hosts that the Prophet established the bond of brotherhood (mu'akhat) between Abu Hudhayfa and Abbad. The pairing of each emigrant with a man of Medina was the mechanism by which the Muhajirun were settled in the city, and this is the notice of how it worked in his case. Abbad ibn Bishr was himself killed at Yamamah, in the same battle as his Meccan brother.

Salim leading the prayer at Quba

Before the Prophet himself arrived at Medina, the emigrants who had preceded him were already gathered at Quba, and Sahih al-Bukhari records, in its Book of Adhan, that the man who led them in prayer was Salim, the client of Abu Hudhayfa, who knew the Qur'an better than the rest of them. The report is brief and its implication is not: in the first Muslim congregation formed at Medina, before the Prophet's arrival, the prayer was led by a freed slave, on the sole ground that he had most of the Qur'an. The Muslim 500 observes that the epithet by which Salim was known — "the former slave of Abu Hudhayfa" — was not in that society a mark of disparagement but the notice of a new standing, and that his role as prayer-leader in the Prophet's absence gave him an effective seniority in the community that his origin would never have allowed.

Salim's standing in recitation was fixed by a report transmitted from Abdullah ibn Amr in Sahih al-Bukhari, in which the Prophet directed: "Learn the recitation of the Qur'an from four persons: Abdullah ibn Mas'ud, Salim the freed slave of Abu Hudhayfa, Ubayy ibn Ka'b, and Mu'adh ibn Jabal." The report appears at several places in the collection, and Abdullah ibn Amr prefaces it by saying of Abdullah ibn Mas'ud that he was a man he continued to love because he had heard the Prophet say it. Aisha's narration in Hayatus Sahabah adds a scene from the same years: returning late to the Prophet one night after the evening prayer, she explained that she had been listening to one of his Companions reciting in the mosque, and that she had never heard such a voice or such recitation from any of the others; the Prophet rose, listened, and told her, "That is Salim, the freed slave of Abu Hudhayfa." Ma'ariful Quran lists him among the Companions who had committed the whole Qur'an flawlessly to memory — a group that, besides the four caliphs, it names as Talha, Sa'd, Ibn Mas'ud, Hudhayfa ibn al-Yaman, Salim the client of Abu Hudhayfa, Abu Hurayra, Abdullah ibn Umar and Abdullah ibn Abbas.

The adoption of Salim

The relationship between the two men is set out in a single narration of Aisha's that appears in Sahih al-Bukhari, in Sunan Abi Dawud and in Sunan an-Nasa'i, in substantially the same words. Abu Hudhayfa ibn Utba ibn Rabi'a ibn Abd Shams, who had been present at Badr with the Prophet, adopted Salim as his son, exactly as the Prophet had adopted Zayd ibn Harithah; and he married Salim to his own niece, Hind bint al-Walid ibn Utba ibn Rabi'a — the daughter of the brother killed at Badr. Salim was the freed slave of a woman of the Ansar. An-Nasa'i's version adds that Hind bint al-Walid was among the first of the emigrant women and was at that time reckoned among the best of the unmarried women of Quraysh, which is the measure of what the marriage meant: a leading house of Abd Shams gave one of its daughters to a freedman of unknown parentage.

Salim's own origins are given differently in different places. An editorial note in Sahih Muslim names him Salim ibn Ubayd ibn Rabi'a and states that he was adopted by Abu Hudhayfa as was the custom of the Arabs, and brought up in the care of Abu Hudhayfa and his wife as though he were their son. The Muslim 500 records that when Salim was asked about his origins he would answer that he did not know his father's name. The relation of servitude is also described in two ways: Aisha's narration in the canonical collections states that Salim was the freed slave of a woman of the Ansar, whereas the Diyanet entry has him as Abu Hudhayfa's own slave, whom Abu Hudhayfa freed and then adopted. In every later report he is Abu Hudhayfa's mawla, and it is that attachment, rather than the route by which it arose, that the sources are interested in.

The Expedition to Batn Nakhla

His first recorded appearance in the field is not Badr but the small reconnaissance party sent out shortly before it. Ibn Kathir's commentary on Surah al-Anfal preserves Ibn Ishaq's account of the expedition the Prophet sent under Abdullah ibn Jahsh in Rajab, with eight men, all of them Muhajirun and none from the Ansar, carrying sealed written instructions he was not to open until he had marched for two days. Ibn Ishaq's list of the party opens with the men of Banu Abd Shams ibn Abd Manaf, and the first name in it is Abu Hudhayfa ibn Utba ibn Rabi'a ibn Abd Shams. The others named are Abdullah ibn Jahsh himself as commander, Ukkasha ibn Mihsan, Utba ibn Ghazwan, Sa'd ibn Abi Waqqas, Adi ibn Amr, Waqid ibn Abdullah, Khalid ibn Bukayr and Suhayl ibn Bayda.

Badr

Father and son on opposite sides

Utba had not wanted the battle. The Diyanet entry records that he joined the preparations unwillingly, standing in for Abu Sufyan, who was not in Mecca; that his kinship with the Prophet and his own closeness to the emigrant Muslims made him unwilling to see a clash; and that when Hakim ibn Hizam proposed that the Quraysh turn back without fighting, Utba supported him — and was charged with cowardice by Abu Jahl for it. He went into the fight, on that account, as a man who had argued against it.

At Badr the two lines therefore contained the same family. The Quraysh champions who stepped forward for the customary opening duels were Utba ibn Rabi'a, his brother Shayba and Utba's son al-Walid — Abu Hudhayfa's father, uncle and brother. Three men of the Ansar answered the challenge and were refused; Utba called for men of his own standing, and the Prophet sent out Hamza ibn Abd al-Muttalib against Utba's brother Shayba, Ubayda ibn al-Harith against Utba, and Ali ibn Abi Talib against al-Walid. All three of the Quraysh champions were killed. The Diyanet entry on Utba, following the same narration, has Ubayda and Utba wound one another, with Hamza and Ali coming to Ubayda's aid and killing Utba, who was about seventy years old.

The Diyanet entry on Abu Hudhayfa states that he loved his father and hoped he would one day accept Islam; that seeing him in the enemy ranks at Badr grieved him deeply, and that he called him out to a duel himself, which the Prophet prevented. Hayatus Sahabah preserves a report from Abu Zinad to the same effect — that he called his father Utba out to single combat — and notes that the same narration carries the verses his sister Hind composed about the episode. The Diyanet entry records the satire directly: Hind, afterwards known for what she did to Hamza at Uhud, lampooned her brother in a poem for the stand he had taken against their father at Badr.

The well of Badr

The most-transmitted incident involving him at Badr belongs to the evening after the fighting. On the Prophet's instruction the bodies of the Quraysh dead were dragged to a disused well and thrown into it. Aisha's narration, given in Hayatus Sahabah, has the Prophet stand beside the well and call out to its dead: "O people of this well! Have you found the promise of your Lord to be true? I have indeed found the promise of my Lord to be true." When the Companions asked whether he was addressing dead men, he answered that they knew well that the promise of their Lord was true.

The Prophet then noticed the expression on Abu Hudhayfa's face as he watched his father's body being dragged to the well. "O Abu Hudhayfa," he said, "it seems that you dislike what you are seeing?" Abu Hudhayfa answered:

"O Messenger of Allah! Because my father was a leader of his people, I hoped that his Lord would guide him to Islam. However, it depressed me to see how he has fallen."

The Prophet then made supplication for him. Haykal gives the same exchange in fuller direct speech: that the Prophet looked him in the face and saw that he was pale, and that Abu Hudhayfa replied that he had neither censured his father nor bemoaned his fate, but had known him to be a wise and good man and had hoped that his wisdom and virtue would one day lead him to Islam — and that, seeing what had befallen him, he remembered his idolatry in spite of all the hope he had entertained, and was sorry for him.

The words about al-Abbas

The other Badr episode in which he appears is a lapse of his own, and the sources report it without softening it because he made so much of it himself. Before the fighting the Prophet told the Muslims that some of the Banu Hashim had been compelled to march with the Quraysh and had no wish to fight, and that whoever met a man of Banu Hashim should not kill him; he named Abu al-Bukhtari ibn Hisham and his own uncle al-Abbas ibn Abd al-Muttalib specifically. Abu Hudhayfa objected in the hearing of others:

"Should we kill our fathers, our sons and our brothers, and leave al-Abbas? By Allah! If I happen to confront al-Abbas, I shall cut him to pieces with my sword."

The remark reached the Prophet, who turned to Umar ibn al-Khattab with the words, "O Abu Hafs" — and Umar's own comment on the moment, preserved in the narration, is that this was the first time the Prophet had ever addressed him by that title — and asked, "Will the face of the Messenger of Allah's uncle be smitten with a sword?" Umar answered by asking permission to behead Abu Hudhayfa, saying that he had turned hypocrite.

Abu Hudhayfa was never easy about it again. The words attributed to him afterwards, transmitted by Ibn Abbas and recorded both in Hayatus Sahabah and in Ibn Kathir's commentary on Surah al-Anfal, are: "By Allah! I do not feel safe from this statement coming back to haunt me, and I will continue to fear its repercussions, unless Allah forgives me for it through martyrdom." Both sources close the report in the same way — that he was killed at Yamamah — and The Sealed Nectar and History of Islam carry the episode in the same terms, the latter noting simply that he was deeply repentant of his words and expressed great regret. His fear was thus a settled feature of the rest of his life, and the sources present his death in battle as the answer to it.

The Later Campaigns and the Verse on Adopted Sons

The Diyanet entry states that after Batn Nakhla he took part in all the campaigns, Badr, Uhud and Khandaq foremost among them. The material in the approved library does not separately record his presence at the Battle of Uhud or the Battle of Khandaq, and the statement rests on the encyclopaedia entry and the biographical dictionaries it draws on rather than on a narrative of either day.

Quran 33:4-5

The Medinan years brought the revelation that reorganised his household. Surah al-Ahzab abolished the pre-Islamic institution by which an adopted son took his adoptive father's name and inherited from him as a son:

"And He has not made your claimed [i.e., adopted] sons your [true] sons. That is [merely] your saying by your mouths, but Allah says the truth, and He guides to the [right] way." (Quran 33:4)

"Call them by [the names of] their fathers; it is more just in the sight of Allah. But if you do not know their fathers — then they are [still] your brothers in religion and those entrusted to you." (Quran 33:5)

The effect of the verse is recorded in the same narration of Aisha's that describes the adoption. In the days of ignorance an adopted boy was called by his adoptive father's name and inherited from him; when the verse came down, the adopted were called by their fathers' names again, and the one whose father was not known became a mawla and a brother in religion. Salim, whose father's name he did not know, therefore ceased to be called Salim ibn Abi Hudhayfa and became Salim, the client of Abu Hudhayfa — the form in which his name stands in every subsequent report. Quran 30 for 30 sets the change beside Zayd ibn Harithah's, who likewise stopped going by the name Zayd ibn Muhammad, and treats both as marks of the two men's submission to the ruling.

The question Sahla put to the Prophet

The legal consequence of the verse created a practical difficulty in the house, and the way it was resolved is among the most discussed reports in the law of fosterage. Salim had been adopted as a boy and brought up by the couple as their son, and he was now a grown man entering and leaving their single-roomed house as he always had, on a footing that the revelation had removed.

Sahla came to the Prophet. The narrations in Sahih Muslim preserve several forms of what she said. In one she reports that she saw signs of displeasure on Abu Hudhayfa's face when Salim came in. In another she states that Salim had reached what men reach and understood what they understand, that he entered upon them, and that she thought Abu Hudhayfa felt something in his heart because of it. The Prophet's instruction in each case was that she should suckle him, and that he would then be unlawful for her and what Abu Hudhayfa felt in his heart would go. She objected that Salim was a grown man, and in one narration that he had a beard; the Prophet smiled — in another report, laughed — and said, "I know that he is a grown man." When she came back she said that she had done it and that what Abu Hudhayfa had felt in his heart was gone; in the narration where she had spoken of his face, she said that she never saw it there again. Ibn Kathir's commentary on Surah al-Nisa records a report of Sahla's that the Prophet ordered her to suckle Salim with five sucklings, and Sunan Abi Dawud states the number in the body of the narration.

The scope of the permission was contested among the Companions themselves, and the disagreement is transmitted in the collections rather than tidied away. Zaynab bint Abi Salama narrated that her mother Umm Salama said to Aisha that she did not like a boy past the age of suckling to see her, and that Aisha answered by asking whether she did not have a good example in the Messenger of Allah. Sunan Abi Dawud records the practical outcome: Aisha acted on the ruling and would direct her nieces to suckle five times any man she wished to be able to visit her, even an adult, after which he would visit; Umm Salama and the rest of the Prophet's wives refused to admit anyone on that basis unless he had been suckled as an infant, and said to Aisha, "By Allah, we do not know; this might have been a concession from the Prophet to Salim specifically, and not for anyone else." Ibn Kathir notes that Aisha's position was also held by Ata ibn Abi Rabah and Layth ibn Sa'd, and that the majority of scholars took the other view; the Diyanet entries state the same conclusion, that the dispensation is accepted as particular to that case.

The same passage of Surah al-Ahzab bears on a second matter. Because the wife of an adopted son is not the wife of a son, the abrogation of adoptive filiation made lawful the Prophet's marriage to Zaynab bint Jahsh, whom Zayd ibn Harithah had divorced — and Ibn Kathir treats the two consequences of the verse together.

The Pledge of His Sisters

Fatima bint Utba's own narration, preserved in Hayatus Sahabah, records that Abu Hudhayfa took her and her sister Hind bint Utba to the Prophet so that they could pledge their allegiance to him. The Prophet took their promises and set conditions with them, and Fatima interrupted to ask, "O my cousin! Have you noticed any of these evils or deficiencies in your people?" Abu Hudhayfa told her to be quiet and make her pledge, since it was with those words and those conditions that the pledge was made. Hind then said that she would not pledge to abstain from stealing, because she took from her husband; the matter was held until the Prophet sent to Abu Sufyan, who gave her leave to take from the foodstuffs but not from money, clothing or luxuries. Both women then pledged.

Fatima's closing words in the narration are the substance of the episode. She told the Prophet that there had been no tent she hated more than his, and that she had wished God would destroy it and everything in it; and that she now wished for his tent more than for any other that God should make it prosperous and full of blessings. The Prophet answered that this was how it ought to be, since none of them could have true faith until he was more beloved to them than their own children and parents. The scene shows Abu Hudhayfa in the role the whole of his life had prepared: the one Muslim of his father's house, bringing his sisters across.

Yamamah

The last year of his life was the first of Abu Bakr's caliphate, and it was taken up by the Ridda Wars. The decisive engagement was against Musailamah ibn Habib and the Banu Hanifah at al-Yamamah in central Arabia, and Abu Hudhayfa went out with Khalid ibn al-Walid's army in senior command.

As-Sallabi's account of the order of battle names him twice, and not identically. In one passage Khalid appointed Shurahbil ibn Hasana to lead the front of the army and set Zayd ibn al-Khattab and Abu Hudhayfa ibn Utba ibn Rabi'a over the two wings. In another, describing the final preparations, Khalid divided the army into five divisions and appointed Khalid al-Makhzumi to the front, Abu Hudhayfa to the right wing, Shuja' to the left, Zayd ibn al-Khattab to the centre and Usama ibn Zayd to the cavalry, giving the banner of the army first to Abdullah ibn Hafs ibn Ghanim and afterwards to Salim, the freed slave of Abu Hudhayfa. A. I. Akram's Sword of Allah has Khalid lead the charge of the centre himself while "Abu Hudaifa and Zaid led the charge of the wings", and in listing the dead identifies Abu Hudhayfa as commander of the left wing and Zayd as commander of the right. That he commanded a wing is common to all of these; which wing it was is not settled, and it is left unsettled here.

The battle opened, on Akram's dating from al-Tabari, early on a cold morning in the third week of December 632, at the beginning of Shawwal 11 AH. Khalid ordered a general attack and the Muslim line went forward; the Banu Hanifah did not break, counter-attacked, and drove the Muslims back until the pressure reached the rear of their own camp.

It was at that point in the fighting that the banner of the Muhajirun changed hands. Zayd ibn al-Khattab — Umar's elder brother, an early convert and a veteran of Badr — carried it forward until he was killed. Salim, the freed slave of Abu Hudhayfa, took it up. The narration in Hayatus Sahabah, from a son of Zayd, records what was said to him when he did: the Muslims told him that they feared the enemy would attack them from his side, and he answered, "I would be a terrible bearer of the Qur'an if the enemy attacks from my side." Two further narrations in the same collection describe what he did next. In one, he and Thabit ibn Qais ibn Shammas said to each other, "This was not how we fought during the time of the Messenger of Allah", and dug a foxhole, got into it and fought until both were killed. In the other, from Thabit's son, Salim said the same words, dug a foxhole for himself, stood in it carrying the flag of the Muhajirun, and fought until he was killed.

Abu Hudhayfa was killed in the same battle. Al-Suyuti's roll of the Companions who died at Yamamah names, in immediate succession, "Abu Hudhayfa ibn Utba, Salim the freed slave of Abu Hudhayfa" — the two men listed together, as the sources habitually name them. The Diyanet entry states that he was martyred at Yamamah together with his freedman Salim, at about fifty-four years of age. The words he had repeated since Badr, that he would go on fearing the repercussions of what he had said unless martyrdom washed its effects away, are reported in their final form in the same breath as the notice of his death.

The scale of the loss at Yamamah is what gave the day its place in Islamic history. Akram records twelve hundred Muslim dead, half of them from among the Ansar and the Muhajirun, and states that the martyrs are said to have included three hundred men who knew the whole Qur'an by heart. Salim was one of the four the Prophet had named as teachers of recitation, and the loss of men of that standing in a single engagement is the fact that set Umar's proposal to collect the Qur'an in motion.

After Him

Salim remembered

Umar did not forget the man who had died with his own brother. History of Islam records his statement, made in the last moments of his life, that "had Salim, the slave of Abu Hudhayfa, been alive, I would have appointed him my successor"; and, in the account of the nomination of the council of six, his answer that if he were to nominate a caliph it would be Abu Ubayda ibn al-Jarrah, who had died before him, or Salim the slave of Abu Hudhayfa, who had also died before him. Al-Suyuti gives the same from the Musnad on the authority of Abu Rafi': that of two men, had either reached him, he would have entrusted the command to him with confidence — Salim the freed slave of Abu Hudhayfa and Abu Ubayda ibn al-Jarrah. As-Sallabi preserves a further saying of Umar's, that he wished a house might be filled with men like Abu Ubayda ibn al-Jarrah, Mu'adh ibn Jabal, Salim the freed slave of Abu Hudhayfa and Hudhayfa ibn al-Yaman, so that he might employ them in the service of God.

That a freedman of unknown parentage should be named by the second caliph as a man he would have entrusted with the command of the Muslims is the clearest measure of what the household of Abu Hudhayfa had produced. Abu Hudhayfa took him into it as a son, married him to a daughter of his own house, and died beside him on the same field.

Sahla bint Suhayl

Her later life is recorded in the Diyanet entry. Widowed at Yamamah in 12 AH, she married Shammakh ibn Sa'id al-Sulami, then Abdullah ibn al-Aswad al-Qurashi, and then Abd al-Rahman ibn Awf, bearing a son to each; the son by Abd al-Rahman was named Salim. She transmitted two hadiths from the Prophet, received from her by al-Qasim ibn Muhammad ibn Abi Bakr, and both are found in the Musnad of Ahmad ibn Hanbal and in al-Tabarani's al-Mu'jam al-Kabir.

Muhammad ibn Abi Hudhayfa

The son born in Abyssinia grew up an orphan of Yamamah, and the sources describe him as Uthman's stepson. As-Sallabi's biography of Uthman puts him forward as the test case against the charge that the caliph favoured his relatives: had Uthman wished to prefer a kinsman, Muhammad ibn Abi Hudhayfa would have been the likeliest candidate, and the caliph declined to appoint him to an office for which he was not qualified — not out of dislike, since he helped him at his own expense and gave him a mount and provisions when he asked leave to go to Egypt.

In Egypt he became one of those who rose against Uthman. As-Sallabi records that he seized control of Egypt, displacing the governor Abdullah ibn Sa'd ibn Abi Sarh, who was away and who on his return found himself shut out and withdrew to Palestine, remaining there until he died. History of Islam places the seizure at about the time of Uthman's death and notes his earlier open opposition, in company with Muhammad ibn Abi Bakr, to the governor's conduct of affairs.

What followed is reported in two forms. As-Sallabi's biography of Ali states that after Uthman's death Ali confirmed Muhammad ibn Abi Hudhayfa as governor of Egypt, and that Muawiyah not long afterwards sent an army which defeated and captured him, after which he was imprisoned and executed; and it records the alternative, that Ali did not appoint him at all but left him in his post until he was killed, appointing Qays ibn Sa'd in his place. The two accounts of the appointment are given as they stand.

Standing in the Transmission of Hadith

Abu Hudhayfa's name occurs in a number of hadiths, but he is not among the transmitters of them. The Diyanet entry states the position exactly: although his name appears in various hadiths, no hadith is narrated from him by sound chains. What the collections preserve is his presence — in Aisha's narration of the adoption, in the narrations of the well of Badr, in the exchange over al-Abbas — rather than his testimony. His place in the literature is as a figure in the reports of others, and in the household from which two enduring questions of law arose.

Historiographical Note

Four matters bearing on this article are unsettled in the sources, and are reported rather than resolved.

His given name. He is known by his kunya, and the Diyanet entry says plainly that his name is not known with certainty: most sources give Mihsham, some Hashim, some Hushaym. No reason is offered for preferring one, and none is offered here.

Two men of the same kunya, and a third. The name Abu Hudhayfa attaches to more than one man of the period, and the reports are easily confused. Abu Hudhayfa ibn al-Mughira, of the Banu Makhzum, is a different Meccan altogether: he was the patron of Yasir ibn Amir and of Sumayyah bint Khayyat, and so stands in the background of the early life of Ammar ibn Yasir; he is also named, in History of Islam, among the four men most deeply involved in the dispute over the Black Stone. Separately, Haykal's account of Uhud records the killing by mistake of Husayl ibn Jabir, who bore the same kunya and was the father of the Companion Hudhayfa ibn al-Yaman. Neither man is the subject of this article, and reports naming an "Abu Hudhayfa" have to be read for their context before being attributed to him.

Salim's wife. The hadith collections are consistent that Abu Hudhayfa married Salim to his niece Hind bint al-Walid ibn Utba ibn Rabi'a, and Sahih al-Bukhari, Sunan Abi Dawud and Sunan an-Nasa'i all give that name. The Diyanet entry instead names the niece Fatima bint al-Walid. The hadith narrations are the stronger authority for the name and are followed above; the divergence is recorded because it exists.

The second migration and the date of Yamamah. Whether Abu Hudhayfa and Sahla went to Abyssinia twice or once, returning to remain with the Prophet at Mecca, is reported both ways in the Diyanet entry on Sahla, and its entry on Abu Hudhayfa does not settle it either. The year of his death is likewise given differently: Sword of Allah, citing al-Tabari, dates the opening of Yamamah to the beginning of Shawwal 11 AH, in the third week of December 632, while Hayatus Sahabah, al-Suyuti and both Diyanet entries place the battle and the deaths in 12 AH / 633 CE. The variance is a matter of how the campaigns of the first caliphate are reckoned across the turn of the year, and the article gives both.

References and Further Reading

Primary Islamic Sources

• Quran, Surah al-Ahzab (33:4) — "And He has not made your claimed [i.e., adopted] sons your [true] sons", the verse abolishing adoptive filiation.
• Quran, Surah al-Ahzab (33:5) — "Call them by [the names of] their fathers", with the provision for those whose fathers are unknown, on which Salim's change of name turned.
• Quran, Surah al-Anfal (8:70-71) — the passage in whose commentary Ibn Kathir preserves both the Batn Nakhla expedition list and the exchange over al-Abbas at Badr.
• Quran, Surah al-Nisa (4:23) — the degrees of prohibited marriage, in whose commentary the report of the five sucklings is given.
• Sahih al-Bukhari 5088, Book of Nikah, chapter that husband and wife should have the same religion, and 4000, Book of al-Maghazi, both from Aisha — his full lineage, his presence at Badr, the adoption of Salim, and the marriage of Salim to Hind bint al-Walid ibn Utba.
• Sahih al-Bukhari 692, Book of Adhan — Salim, the client of Abu Hudhayfa, leading the emigrants in prayer at Quba before the Prophet's arrival, because he knew the Qur'an better than the rest.
• Sahih al-Bukhari 3758, 3760, 3806 and 3808, from Abdullah ibn Amr — "Learn the recitation of the Qur'an from four persons: Abdullah ibn Mas'ud, Salim the freed slave of Abu Hudhayfa, Ubayy ibn Ka'b, and Mu'adh ibn Jabal."
• Sahih Muslim 1453 and 1454, Book of Breastfeeding, chapter on breastfeeding an adult — the several narrations of Sahla bint Suhayl's approach to the Prophet concerning Salim, and Umm Salama's report that the other wives of the Prophet held the concession to be Salim's alone.
• Sunan Abi Dawud 2061-2062, Book of Marriage, chapter on who was made prohibited through adult fosterage — the fullest narrative form, including the revelation of Quran 33:5, the five sucklings, and the divergence between Aisha's practice and that of Umm Salama and the other wives.
• Sunan an-Nasa'i 3225-3226, Book of Marriage — the same account, with the note that Hind bint al-Walid was among the first of the emigrant women and among the best unmarried women of Quraysh.

Classical Islamic Sources

• Ibn Ishaq, Sirat Rasul Allah, in the recension of Ibn Hisham — the original narration of the first emigration to Abyssinia, of the Batn Nakhla expedition and of the Badr episodes, on which the later accounts used here depend.
• Ibn Kathir, Ismail ibn Umar. Al-Sira al-Nabawiyya, 4 vols., trans. Trevor Le Gassick. Consulted in the approved library — Ibn Ishaq's list of the first ten emigrants to Abyssinia, naming Abu Hudhayfa and Sahla and the birth of Muhammad ibn Abi Hudhayfa there; and the opening duels at Badr.
• Ibn Kathir, Ismail ibn Umar. Tafsir al-Qur'an al-Azim. Consulted in the approved library — on Quran 8:70-71 for the Batn Nakhla party and the al-Abbas episode; on Quran 2:233 and 4:23 for the fosterage question and the majority position; on Quran 33:5 for Sahla's words and the consequences of the abrogation.
• Al-Suyuti, Jalal al-Din. Tarikh al-Khulafa (The History of the Khalifahs). Consulted in the approved library — the roll of Companions killed at Yamamah, and Umar's statement about Salim and Abu Ubayda at his death.
• Kandhlawi, Muhammad Yusuf. Hayatus Sahabah, Vols 1-3. Consulted in the approved library — Fatima bint Utba's narration of the pledge, the well of Badr, Abu Zinad's report of the challenge to his father, the fullest form of the al-Abbas episode, Salim at the banner and in the foxhole, and Aisha's account of Salim's recitation.
• Ibn Sa'd, Muhammad. Al-Tabaqat al-Kubra, and Ibn Abd al-Barr, al-Isti'ab; Ibn al-Athir, Usd al-Ghaba; al-Dhahabi, Siyar A'lam al-Nubala; Ibn Hajar al-Asqalani, al-Isaba fi Tamyiz al-Sahaba — the biographical dictionaries carrying his notice, cited here through the references assembled in the Diyanet İslâm Ansiklopedisi rather than consulted directly.

Academic and Scholarly Sources

• BAŞARAN, Selman. "EBÛ HUZEYFE." TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi, vol. 10. Istanbul: Türkiye Diyanet Vakfı, 1994, p. 159. https://islamansiklopedisi.org.tr/ebu-huzeyfe — the only dedicated encyclopaedia treatment consulted, and the source for the variants of his given name, the report of his being the forty-fourth Muslim, his literacy, the brotherhood with Abbad ibn Bishr, his participation in the campaigns, Hind's satire, and his age at death.
• EFENDİOĞLU, Mehmet. "SEHLE bint SÜHEYL." TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi, vol. 36. Istanbul: Türkiye Diyanet Vakfı, 2009, p. 323. https://islamansiklopedisi.org.tr/sehle-bint-suheyl — her family, the two accounts of the return from Abyssinia, and her later marriages.
• ÇUBUKÇU, Asri. "UTBE b. REBÎA." TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi. https://islamansiklopedisi.org.tr/utbe-b-rebia — Utba's standing at Mecca, his conduct before and at Badr, his death and the casting of his body into the well.
• As-Sallabi, Ali Muhammad. The Biography of Abu Bakr As-Siddeeq — Khalid ibn al-Walid's order of battle at Yamamah and the two accounts of Abu Hudhayfa's command, and the notice of Zayd ibn al-Khattab and the banner.
• As-Sallabi, Ali Muhammad. 'Uthman Ibn 'Affan: Dhun-Noorayn, and 'Ali ibn Abi Talib, vol. 1 — Muhammad ibn Abi Hudhayfa as Uthman's stepson, his seizure of Egypt, and the divergent reports of his governorship and death.
• As-Sallabi, Ali Muhammad. 'Umar ibn al-Khattab, vol. 1 — Umar's wish concerning men like Salim, and Hind bint Utba as the wife of Abu Sufyan and mother of Muawiyah.
• Akram, A. I. Sword of Allah: Khalid bin Al-Waleed, His Life and Campaigns — the date and opening of Yamamah, the charge of the wings, the identification of Abu Hudhayfa as commander of the left wing, and the casualty figures.
• Al-Mubarakpuri, Safi-ur-Rahman. Ar-Raheeq al-Makhtum (The Sealed Nectar) — the Badr instruction concerning Banu Hashim and Abu Hudhayfa's protest.
• Haykal, Muhammad Husayn. The Life of Muhammad, trans. Isma'il Razi A. al-Faruqi — the exchange at the well of Badr in direct speech, and the killing at Uhud of Husayl ibn Jabir, who bore the same kunya.
• History of Islam, vol. 1 — the first emigration to Abyssinia and its party, the Badr narrative, and Umar's statements about Salim.
• Usmani, Mufti Muhammad Shafi. Ma'ariful Quran, vols 1 and 3 — Salim among the Companions who had memorised the whole Qur'an, and among the poor believers named in the commentary on Quran 6:52.
• The Muslim 500 (2021 edition) — the essay discussing Salim's standing as prayer-leader at Quba and the meaning of the epithet by which he was known.

Further Reading

• Guillaume, Alfred, trans. The Life of Muhammad: A Translation of Ibn Ishaq's Sirat Rasul Allah. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1955. The standard English translation of the narration underlying the Abyssinian emigration lists and the Badr episodes.
• Al-Nawawi, Yahya ibn Sharaf. Tahdhib al-Asma wa'l-Lughat — the classical biographical notice of Abu Hudhayfa, for readers following the tabaqat tradition.
• Ibn Hajar al-Asqalani. al-Isaba fi Tamyiz al-Sahaba. The fullest classical compendium of Companion biographies, with the notices on Abu Hudhayfa, Sahla bint Suhayl and Salim.
• Al-A'zami, Muhammad Mustafa. Kuttab al-Nabi. Riyadh, 1981. The study of the Prophet's scribes and of literacy among the early Muslims, from which the count of seventeen literate Companions of the early years is drawn.