Amr ibn al-As

ProfileAmr ibn al-As

Amr (may Allah be pleased with him) was the son of al-As ibn Wa'il, the chief of the Banu Sahm of Quraysh. According to the early biographies, he was a poet, a horseman and a trader, who had travelled to Syria, Palestine, Egypt, Yemen and Abyssinia and knew their rulers, and was known as one of the shrewdest men of the Arabs. He was a little older than Umar and Khalid, so he stood between the old leaders of Quraysh and the young men. According to the early biographies, his father was one of the bitterest enemies of the Prophet ﷺ, who mocked him and called him a man cut off from descendants, whose name would be forgotten. His younger half-brother Hisham accepted Islam long before him, was beaten and imprisoned in Makkah for years, and was martyred at Yarmuk, and Amr collected his body and buried him. According to the early biographies, Amr fought against the Muslims at Uhud and at the Trench.

According to the early biographies, Quraysh sent him with Abdullah ibn Abi Rabi'ah to Najashi, the king of Abyssinia, to bring back the Muslims who had taken refuge there. He brought gifts for the king and his officials, and told the king that these were troublemakers who were on neither his religion nor theirs. Najashi said he would not give them up without hearing them. Ja'far ibn Abi Talib spoke for the Muslims, and Najashi said that there was nothing in what he said that required him to hand them over. On the second day Amr tried again by saying that they said terrible things about Jesus. Ja'far recited to the king from the Quran about Jesus and Mary, and Najashi and his bishops wept. The king said that Jesus did not exceed what the Muslims said by the width of a stick, and Amr went home with nothing. People in Makkah said that if Amr could not bring back even one of them, there must be something to Muhammad ﷺ, and Amr, according to the early biographies, took out his anger on the Muslims who came back to Makkah, among them his brother.

According to the early biographies, after the Trench, Amr told his friends that Muhammad ﷺ seemed likely to win, and said they should go to Najashi and live under his rule. In Abyssinia he saw the Prophet's ﷺ envoy, Amr ibn Umayyah, and asked Najashi to give him up so that he could kill him. Najashi was angry, and asked how he could ask for the messenger of a man to whom the same angel came as had come to Moses. He told Amr to follow the Prophet ﷺ, and that he would win as Moses had won over Pharaoh. Amr took his pledge of Islam at Najashi's hand, and slipped away from his companions in the night. On the road to Madinah, he met Khalid ibn al-Walid and Uthman ibn Talhah, who were going to Madinah for the same reason. Amr told in his last illness how he went to the Prophet ﷺ and asked him to stretch out his right hand, and then drew back his own, saying that he wanted a condition, that his past sins be forgiven. The Prophet ﷺ asked whether he did not know that Islam wipes out what came before, and that the emigration and the pilgrimage wipe out what came before them. After that, he said, no one was dearer to him than the Prophet ﷺ, and none greater in his eyes, and he could not look him full in the face for awe (Sahih Muslim). The Prophet ﷺ said that the people had submitted and Amr had believed (Sunan at-Tirmidhi, graded hasan).

The Prophet ﷺ soon put him in command of the army sent to Dhat as-Salasil. Amr said that he asked him who was dearest to him, and he said Aishah, and of the men, her father, then Umar, and then named other men, so Amr stopped asking for fear of being last (Sahih al-Bukhari and Sahih Muslim). On a very cold night in the campaign he had a wet dream, and was afraid to wash. He made tayammum instead and led his men in the dawn prayer. When they told the Prophet ﷺ, he asked Amr about it, and Amr said that he had heard Allah say not to kill yourselves, and the Prophet ﷺ laughed and said nothing (Sunan Abi Dawud, graded sahih). According to the early biographies, he told his men not to light fires in the cold, because the enemy was many and they were few, and the Prophet ﷺ approved. According to the early biographies, when Abu Ubaydah came with reinforcements, he accepted Amr's command to avoid dividing the army. According to the early biographies, the Prophet ﷺ made him governor of Oman, and many people there became Muslims, and he stayed there until the Prophet ﷺ died.

According to the early biographies, he fought in Syria under Abu Bakr and Umar alongside Khalid, Abu Ubaydah and Shurahbil, and took the south of Palestine, including Aila and Ramlah, before Umar came to take the keys of Jerusalem. Umar was unwilling to open another front against the Romans, but Amr camped at Rafah on the border and set out for Egypt with a small army, and according to the early biographies, the letter telling him to turn back came when he was already inside it. The Prophet ﷺ had told that the Muslims would conquer Egypt, and that they should treat its people well, for they had a right of kinship over them (Sahih Muslim). According to the early biographies, many of the Copts welcomed the Muslims, because the Romans had mistreated them. He took Alexandria, and Umar told him not to make his base on the sea, so he founded a camp city, Fustat, with a mosque that still bears his name.

He later took part in the fighting among the Companions. In his last illness, he wept for a long time and turned his face to the wall, and when his son asked whether the Prophet ﷺ had not given him good news, he said that the best thing he could rely on was the testimony that there is no god but Allah and that Muhammad is His Messenger. He said that his life had three stages: the first, when no one was more hateful to him than the Prophet ﷺ, and had he died then, he would have been among the people of the Fire; the second, after his pledge, when he would have hoped for Paradise if he had died; and then the third, in which they took on things, and he did not know what would come of them. He asked that no wailing woman or fire follow his bier, that they fill in his grave and stand by it for as long as it takes to slaughter a camel and divide its meat, so that he could take comfort in their company and know what answer to give the angels of his Lord (Sahih Muslim). He died in Egypt.

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