Al-Bara' ibn Azib

ProfileAl-Bara' ibn Azib

Al-Bara' (may Allah be pleased with him) was the son of Azib, of the Banu Haritha of the Aws, among the Ansar of Madinah, and was known as Abu Umarah (Sahih al-Bukhari). According to the early biographies, his father was also a Companion. He was a boy when the Prophet ﷺ came to Madinah, and he told in Sahih al-Bukhari what that day was like. The first to come to them were Mus'ab ibn Umayr and Ibn Umm Maktum, who were teaching the Qur'an. Then came Bilal, Sa'd and Ammar ibn Yasir, then Umar ibn al-Khattab with twenty other Companions, and then the Prophet ﷺ himself. He said that he had never seen the people of Madinah so joyful as they were on his arrival, and even the slave-girls were saying that the Messenger of Allah ﷺ had come. He added that before the Prophet ﷺ came, he had already read Surah al-A'la and other surahs of al-Mufassal (Sahih al-Bukhari).

He also told how he first heard the story of the Hijrah. Abu Bakr came to his father and bought a saddle from him, and asked Azib to tell his son to carry it with him. Al-Bara' carried it, and his father followed them to take the price, and asked Abu Bakr to tell him what happened on his night journey with the Messenger of Allah ﷺ. Abu Bakr told of the night and the day of travel, until the heat of noon, when they found a long rock with shade under it, and he levelled the ground and spread a skin so that the Prophet ﷺ could sleep (Sahih al-Bukhari).

He was too young to fight at Badr, as was Ibn Umar. He told that the Emigrant fighters were over sixty and the Ansar over two hundred and forty-nine, and that the men of Badr told him that their number was that of the companions of Talut who crossed the river with him, over three hundred and ten (Sahih al-Bukhari). He said that he fought fifteen campaigns with the Prophet ﷺ (Sahih al-Bukhari). He told that the Prophet ﷺ placed Abdullah ibn Jubayr over the archers at Uhud, and told them to hold their place even if they saw birds snatching them away, until he sent for them (Sahih al-Bukhari). At the Trench, he saw the Prophet ﷺ carrying earth out, so that the dust covered the skin of his belly, since he was a hairy man, and heard him reciting the verses of Ibn Rawahah that said that without Allah they would not have been guided, nor given in charity nor prayed, and asking Allah to send down calm on them and make their feet firm (Sahih al-Bukhari). At Hunayn, when a man asked him whether he had fled, he said that the Prophet ﷺ did not flee, but that the hasty ones turned back and the archers of Hawazin shot at them, and Abu Sufyan ibn al-Harith was holding the Prophet's ﷺ white mule by the head as the Prophet ﷺ said that he was truly the Prophet, and the son of Abd al-Muttalib (Sahih al-Bukhari). He told that the Prophet ﷺ sent him to Yemen with Khalid ibn al-Walid, and later sent Ali in his place and told Ali to let Khalid's men choose whether to stay or go back, and he stayed (Sahih al-Bukhari).

He described the Prophet ﷺ as of moderate height, broad in the shoulders, with hair to his ear-lobes, and said that he once saw him in a red cloak and never saw anyone more handsome (Sahih al-Bukhari). He told that when the Prophet ﷺ first came to Madinah he prayed towards Jerusalem for sixteen or seventeen months, and wished to face the Ka'bah. The first prayer he offered towards the Ka'bah was the Asr prayer, and a man who had prayed it passed some people bowing in a mosque towards Jerusalem and told them, and they turned at once. Before the change, some Muslims had died or been killed, and the people did not know what to say about their prayers, and Allah revealed a verse that He would never let their faith be lost (Sahih al-Bukhari).

He narrated many hadith of the Prophet ﷺ. He told that the Prophet ﷺ commanded them to do seven things and forbade seven. He commanded them to follow funerals, visit the sick, accept invitations, help the oppressed, fulfil oaths, return the greeting and reply to a sneezer who has praised Allah, and forbade silver vessels, gold rings and the kinds of silk (Sahih al-Bukhari). He told that the Prophet ﷺ taught him what to say on going to bed, after wudu and lying on his right side, in words of surrender and trust in Allah, and when Al-Bara' repeated it and said "messenger" where the Prophet ﷺ had said "prophet," the Prophet ﷺ told him to say it as he had taught it (Sahih al-Bukhari). He told that the Prophet ﷺ said that two Muslims who meet and shake hands are forgiven before they part (Sunan Abi Dawud, graded sahih by al-Albani). He told the long hadith of the funeral of an Ansari at which the Prophet ﷺ sat by the grave and the Companions sat around him as if birds were on their heads, and described the questioning in the grave (Sunan Abi Dawud, graded sahih by al-Albani).

According to the early biographies, he moved to Kufa and taught there, and fought in the campaigns against Persia, and died in Kufa in the time of Mus'ab ibn az-Zubayr's governorship. According to the early biographies, he was among those who pledged under the tree.

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