Abdullah ibn Abbas

ProfileAbdullah ibn Abbas

Abdullah (may Allah be pleased with him) was the son of al-Abbas, the Prophet's ﷺ uncle, and of Lubabah bint al-Harith, one of the first women to become Muslim, whose sister Maymunah later became the Prophet's ﷺ wife. According to the early biographies, he was born in Makkah about three years before the Hijrah, in the time of the boycott of the Banu Hashim in the valley, a time when the Prophet ﷺ was under great strain. According to the early biographies, he was brought to the Prophet ﷺ as a newborn, and since there was no date to chew for him, the Prophet ﷺ put a little of his own saliva in the child's mouth, and the baby swallowed it. According to the early biographies, he and his mother stayed in Makkah as Muslims and prayed there, and he said that he and his mother were among the weak in Makkah. According to the early biographies, he met the Prophet ﷺ again when he entered Makkah at the conquest, when the family of al-Abbas emigrated to Madinah and the Prophet ﷺ is said to have told them that they were the last of the emigrants, as he was the last of the prophets.

He wasted no time in attaching himself to the Prophet ﷺ in Madinah. He told how he stayed the night at his aunt Maymunah's house while the Prophet ﷺ was there. The Prophet ﷺ prayed the night prayer, and he stood on the Prophet's ﷺ left, and the Prophet ﷺ made him stand on his right (Sahih al-Bukhari). According to the early biographies, the Prophet ﷺ then embraced him. Once, when he put out water for the Prophet ﷺ's ablution, the Prophet ﷺ asked who had put it, and prayed that Allah make him learned in religion (Sahih al-Bukhari). Another time the Prophet ﷺ embraced him and prayed that Allah teach him the Book (Sahih al-Bukhari). According to the early biographies, the Prophet ﷺ made this prayer for him many times, and he took the Prophet's ﷺ words and the places where each verse had come down by asking about them all the time. He told how he rode behind the Prophet ﷺ one day, and the Prophet ﷺ told him to be mindful of Allah so that Allah would protect him, to ask Allah when he asked, to seek help from Allah, and to know that if all of creation joined together to benefit him or to harm him, it could do so only by what Allah had already written, for the pens were lifted and the pages dry (Jami at-Tirmidhi, graded hasan). He was a boy of about ten when the Prophet ﷺ died, and he had already learned the Muhkam, the shorter surahs (Sahih al-Bukhari). He told how he rode a she-ass and passed in front of some of the rows at Mina when the Prophet ﷺ was praying, and nobody objected (Sahih al-Bukhari). He was among those who washed the Prophet ﷺ and laid him in his grave, according to the early biographies. A report that he saw Jibril twice and that the Prophet ﷺ foretold that he would go blind is graded da'if (Jami at-Tirmidhi), as is a report about the milk and Khalid ibn al-Walid, and neither is used here.

After the Prophet's ﷺ death, he said to a friend among the Ansar that the Companions were all in Madinah, and this was the chance to learn from them, and his friend replied that he should play instead. According to the early biographies, he went from door to door, and laid his cloak on the ground at their thresholds and waited there, covered in dust, until they came out. They said that he should have sent for them, and he answered that knowledge is sought, and does not come. His friend, who had kept to his games, used to say later, when there were crowds at Ibn Abbas's house, that the boy had been wiser than him. According to the early biographies, he wrote down what they told him, and the story of Salman's search for the truth was written down because he went and asked.

Umar brought him close, and sat him with the old men who had fought at Badr. Some of them objected and said that they had sons like him. One day Umar asked them what Surat an-Nasr meant. Some said it told them to praise Allah and ask forgiveness when help and conquest came, and others were silent. Umar asked Ibn Abbas, and he said that it was the sign of the death of the Messenger of Allah ﷺ, which Allah had told him of (Sahih al-Bukhari). According to the early biographies, Umar said the same, and added that Ibn Abbas was a young man with an enquiring tongue and an understanding heart. According to the early biographies, his father al-Abbas told him to keep three things in mind with the caliph: never to give away a secret, never to backbite in his presence, and never to lie to him. According to the early biographies, Umar was angry at him for disagreeing about memorising the Quran too quickly without understanding, then went to his house that night and asked what had upset him, and Ibn Abbas answered that this would lead them to split up and fight each other. On the day Umar was stabbed, no one stood between him and Umar except Ibn Abbas (Sahih al-Bukhari).

According to the early biographies, he turned his house into the first university of Islam, with a day for the Quran, a day for hadith, a day for law, a day for poetry and a day for history, and his brother paid for the food. According to the early biographies, he was known as the ocean, for the breadth of his knowledge, the interpreter of the Quran, and the scholar of the community. According to the early biographies, when asked by two men whether a murderer could repent, he told one yes and the other no, since the first was obviously regretful and the second was asking for permission to kill. According to the early biographies, he left the mosque in the last ten nights of Ramadan to help a man in debt, and said that he had heard the Prophet ﷺ say that helping a brother is better than ten years in seclusion; he was moved to tears at the mention of the grave. The report of that saying is not graded here.

According to the early biographies, in the time of Uthman he led the Hajj. Ali made him governor of Basra, and, according to the early biographies, when Abu Ayyub al-Ansari came there, in debt and tired, Ibn Abbas gave him his own house and forty thousand dinars, which was all he had, saying that Abu Ayyub had received the Prophet ﷺ in this way. According to the early biographies, when the Khawarij left Ali's army, Ali was afraid for him, but Ibn Abbas went to them in his best clothes at midday, and asked what they held against Ali: that he had agreed to arbitration, that he did not take captives and spoils from his enemies, and that he had given up his title. He answered the first from the Quran, which allows arbitrators between a husband and wife; the second by asking whether they would have wanted to take the wife of the Prophet ﷺ, Aishah, as spoils; and the third by the treaty of Hudaybiyyah, where the Prophet ﷺ himself had the words 'Messenger of Allah' wiped out. According to the early biographies, two thousand of them repented. He stayed out of the fighting after that, and lived at Ta'if, where he died, and his cousin Muhammad ibn al-Hanafiyyah led the funeral prayer. According to the early biographies, he lost his sight in old age, and said that Allah had taken the light from his eyes but there was light in his tongue and heart. According to the early biographies, his freed slaves became the greatest scholars of the next generation.

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