Abu Ayyub al-Ansari

ProfileAbu Ayyub al-Ansari

Abu Ayyub (may Allah be pleased with him) was named Khalid ibn Zayd, of the clan of Najjar, the maternal relatives of the Prophet's ﷺ family in Madinah. The books say almost nothing about his life before Islam. According to the early biographies, he was among the Ansar who pledged themselves to the Prophet ﷺ at Aqabah. When the Prophet ﷺ rode into Madinah, people on all sides asked him to stay with them. He told them to let his camel go where it was commanded, and according to the early biographies it knelt in front of Abu Ayyub's house, which was in the quarter where the Prophet's ﷺ great-grandmother's family had lived. The Prophet ﷺ stayed with him for about seven months, while the mosque and the rooms beside it were built, and then Abu Ayyub stayed on as his neighbour.

According to the early biographies, Abu Ayyub and his wife were so shy of sleeping above the Prophet ﷺ that they moved away from the middle of the floor, and when some water spilled they were afraid it would drip on him, until he agreed to change places with them. Abu Ayyub reported that food was sent to the Prophet ﷺ and the leftovers came back to him, and he would look to see where the Prophet ﷺ had eaten from. One day it came back untouched because it had garlic in it. When he asked whether it was forbidden, the Prophet ﷺ said it was not, but that he did not like its smell. Abu Ayyub said that he did not like what the Prophet ﷺ did not like (Sahih Muslim). He also reported the Prophet's ﷺ instruction not to face the qiblah or turn one's back to it when relieving oneself in the open (Sahih al-Bukhari).

According to the early biographies, he fought in all the Prophet's ﷺ battles and in the later campaigns, and when Ali went to Iraq he left Abu Ayyub in charge of Madinah. He kept out of the fighting at Siffin and the Camel. According to the early biographies, when he came to Basra, Ibn Abbas, who was its governor, gave him his own house, with all that was in it, and paid his debts, saying that he wanted to treat him as he had treated the Prophet ﷺ.

He went with the army against Constantinople. Once, when a Muslim charged alone into the Roman line and some said he was throwing himself into destruction, Abu Ayyub told them that the verse about not casting oneself into destruction had been revealed about the Ansar, when some of them thought of staying with their wealth instead of fighting. He kept on fighting for Allah until he was buried in Roman land (Sunan at-Tirmidhi, graded sahih, and Sunan Abi Dawud, graded sahih). According to the early biographies, he was in his eighties and ill when he asked to be taken as far as the army could go and buried at the walls of the city, and his grave is in Istanbul today.

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