Abu Bakrah

ProfileAbu Bakrah

Abu Bakrah (may Allah be pleased with him) was named Nufay, the son of al-Harith, according to the early biographies, and was a slave of the people of Ta'if. He is a different man from Abu Bakr as-Siddiq, and the two names are easy to confuse, since his has one more letter at the end. According to the early biographies, his mother was Sumayyah, a slave-girl of al-Harith ibn Kaladah, and he was thought to be al-Harith's son, though he did not like to be called by that.

When the Prophet ﷺ was besieging Ta'if, he called out that any slave who came out to him would be free. Abu Uthman an-Nahdi told that he heard Sa'd, the first to shoot an arrow in the cause of Allah, and Abu Bakrah, who jumped over the wall of the fort of Ta'if with some others and came to the Prophet ﷺ, and both of them said that they had heard the Prophet ﷺ say that whoever claims to be the son of someone other than his father, knowing that he is not, Paradise is forbidden to him. One report says that thirty-three came to the Prophet ﷺ from Ta'if (Sahih al-Bukhari). According to the early biographies, he let himself down from the wall in the pulley of a well, which is called a bakrah, and this is why he was called Abu Bakrah. According to the early biographies, he would say that he was the freed slave of the Messenger of Allah ﷺ, and that if people would not trace him to a father, they could call him that. According to the early biographies, when the delegation of Thaqif came to the Prophet ﷺ and asked for their slaves back, he said that they were the freed slaves of Allah and of His Messenger.

Abu Bakrah told that he came to the Prophet ﷺ in the mosque while he was bowing, and bowed before he reached the row. He told the Prophet ﷺ, and the Prophet ﷺ said, "May Allah increase your love for the good, but do not do it again" (Sahih al-Bukhari).

He is the narrator of many reports in Sahih al-Bukhari. He told that the sun eclipsed while they were with the Prophet ﷺ, who stood up, dragging his cloak, entered the mosque and led them in two rak'ahs until the sun cleared, and said that the sun and the moon do not eclipse for the death of anyone, so when they see it, they should pray and call on Allah until it passes. He told that the Prophet ﷺ asked three times whether he should tell them the greatest of the great sins, and named joining others with Allah and being undutiful to parents, and then sat up from leaning, and warned against false witness, and kept saying it until they thought he would not stop. He told that he wrote to his son in Sijistan not to judge between two people while angry, for he had heard the Prophet ﷺ say that no judge should. Al-Hasan al-Basri heard him say that he saw the Messenger of Allah ﷺ on the pulpit with al-Hasan ibn Ali beside him, and he looked at the people and then at al-Hasan, and said that this son of his is a sayyid, and that Allah would make peace through him between two great groups of Muslims. Al-Ahnaf ibn Qays told that he was going to help Ali, and Abu Bakrah met him and told him to go back, for he had heard the Prophet ﷺ say that when two Muslims meet with their swords, the killer and the killed are both in the Fire, and when he asked about the killed, the Prophet ﷺ said that he had meant to kill his companion (Sahih al-Bukhari).

According to the early biographies, he settled in Basra, where he was a teacher of hadith, and was counted among its great men, and his children were narrators and officials, and his son Ubaydullah governed in Sijistan. According to the early biographies, he stayed out of the fighting among the Muslims all his life. According to the early biographies, he died in Basra, after an injury he had in the grave of one of his wives, and, as he lay dying, he told his children not to weep, and said that he longed to die before he saw a time in which he could not command the good and forbid the evil. According to the early biographies, Abu Barzah al-Aslami, the one the Prophet ﷺ had made his brother, prayed over him.

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