Abu Hudhayfah ibn Utbah

ProfileAbu Hudhayfah ibn Utbah

Abu Hudhayfah (may Allah be pleased with him) was the son of Utbah ibn Rabi'ah, one of the chiefs of the clan of Abd Shams of Quraysh. According to the early biographies, his name was Hashim, and some say Muhashshim, and the sources differ on why he was called Abu Hudhayfah. According to the early biographies, he was tall and handsome, and known for his gentle, humble and generous manners.

According to the early biographies, his father Utbah once went to the Prophet ﷺ as the spokesman of the Quraysh leaders, and offered him wealth, leadership and kingship, and a physician if he was possessed. The Prophet ﷺ listened until he had finished, and then recited the opening of Surah Fussilat to him, until he came to the verse of prostration, and prostrated, and told him that he had heard what he had heard, and that it was for him to decide. According to the early biographies, Utbah went back to Quraysh with a changed face, and told them that what he had heard was not poetry or sorcery, and that they should leave the man alone. They refused. Utbah did not accept Islam.

According to the early biographies, Abu Hudhayfah accepted Islam early, with his wife Sahlah bint Suhayl, the daughter of Suhayl ibn Amr, and with Salim, his freed man, whom he treated as a son. According to the early biographies, his father protected him from harm in Makkah, but the pressure on the family led him to migrate to Abyssinia with Sahlah and Salim, and their son Muhammad was born there. According to the early biographies, he made both migrations to Abyssinia, and then the migration to Madinah.

Aishah told that Abu Hudhayfah ibn Utbah, who had witnessed Badr with the Prophet ﷺ, adopted Salim as a son and married him to his niece Hind bint al-Walid ibn Utbah. Salim had been the freed slave of an Ansari woman, just as the Prophet ﷺ had adopted Zayd. In the days before Islam, if a man adopted a boy, people called him the son of the one who adopted him, and he inherited from him. When Allah revealed the verses telling people to call adopted sons by the names of their fathers, and those whose fathers were not known to be called brothers in religion and freed men, Sahlah came to the Prophet ﷺ and said that they used to consider Salim their son (Sahih al-Bukhari). Aishah also told that Sahlah said she saw something in the face of Abu Hudhayfah when Salim came in to them. The Prophet ﷺ told her to nurse him, and she asked how she could nurse a grown man. He smiled and said that he knew he was a grown man (Sahih Muslim).

According to the early biographies, at Badr his father Utbah, his brother al-Walid and his uncle Shaybah stepped out from the Quraysh ranks to the single combat, and were all killed. According to the early biographies, Abu Hudhayfah had hoped to keep them from the fight, and he wept as he saw them fall. When the Prophet ﷺ came to comfort him, he said that he had no doubt about the truth and did not regret his Islam, but that he had wished his father would have accepted Islam before that day. According to the early biographies, his sister Hind, the wife of Abu Sufyan, was the woman who later chewed the liver of Hamzah at Uhud, and she accepted Islam at the Conquest.

According to the early biographies, he was a quiet man who fought in the battles beside the Prophet ﷺ, and he was killed at Yamamah, against the false prophet Musaylimah, in 12 AH. According to the early biographies, Salim was killed there too.

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