Jabir ibn Abdullah

ProfileJabir ibn Abdullah

Jabir (may Allah be pleased with him) was of the Banu Salimah of the Khazraj in Madinah. According to the early biographies, his father Abdullah ibn Amr ibn Haram was one of the leaders at Aqabah, and his mother, Unaysah, his mother's brother Tha'labah ibn Anamah and his sisters all became Muslim. His father left behind seven or nine girls and one son (Sahih al-Bukhari). According to the early biographies, when he was a boy his father took him to the second pledge at Aqabah, and he said that he was the youngest there. He and the other young men of the clan learned from Mus'ab ibn Umayr, and Mu'adh ibn Jabal was of the same clan. The Banu Salimah wanted to sell their houses and move beside the new mosque, and the Prophet ﷺ told them to stay where they were, because their steps toward the mosque were recorded (Sahih Muslim).

He did not fight at Badr or Uhud, because his father kept him back. The night before Uhud, his father called him and said that he thought he would be the first of the Prophet's ﷺ Companions to be killed. He said that he was leaving no one dearer to him than Jabir, except the Prophet ﷺ himself, and that he owed a debt that Jabir should repay and that he should be kind to his sisters. In the morning he was the first to be killed, and he was buried with another martyr (Sahih al-Bukhari). His body had been mutilated, and Jabir lifted the sheet from his face and wept. His people stopped him, but the Prophet ﷺ did not. When his father's sister Fatimah wept, the Prophet ﷺ said that the angels had been shading him with their wings until he was moved (Sahih al-Bukhari). Jabir could not bear to leave his father in a grave with another man, and after six months he took him out and found him as on the day of burial, except for a slight change near his ear (Sahih al-Bukhari).

The Prophet ﷺ met him afterwards and asked why he looked so broken. Jabir told him of his father's death and his debts. The Prophet ﷺ told him that Allah never speaks to anyone except from behind a veil, but that He spoke to Jabir's father directly and told him to ask for anything. He asked to be brought back to life to be killed again for Allah's sake, but Allah told him that it was decreed that the dead do not return. He then asked that his message be passed to those he had left behind, and the verse about the martyrs being alive with their Lord and given provision was revealed (Sunan Ibn Majah, graded hasan; Jami at-Tirmidhi, graded hasan).

When his father's creditors pressed him, the Prophet ﷺ asked them to take less, and when they refused, he told Jabir to sort his dates into their different kinds and call him. He sat beside the heaps and measured out to each creditor what he was owed, until all the debts were paid, and Jabir's dates remained as if nothing had been taken from them (Sahih al-Bukhari). Jabir had married an older woman, so that she could look after his sisters, comb their hair and bring them up. When the Prophet ﷺ asked why he had not married a young woman, he told him this, and the Prophet ﷺ prayed that Allah bless him (Sahih al-Bukhari).

On a journey, his camel was slow and tired and he was behind the others. The Prophet ﷺ came back and asked what was the matter, then got down, struck the camel with his stick, and told him to ride. It went so fast that Jabir had to hold it back. The Prophet ﷺ asked to buy it, and Jabir did not want to sell, but he did, for an uqiyah of gold, with the right to ride it to Madinah. When they reached Madinah the Prophet ﷺ told him to pray two rak'ahs, had Bilal weigh the gold and give a little extra, and then sent for him and told him to take the camel as well as its price (Sahih al-Bukhari). After that he never missed a battle with the Prophet ﷺ. He said that he fought in nineteen of them, apart from Badr and Uhud (Sahih Muslim).

He saw the Prophet's ﷺ miracles with his own eyes. During the digging of the Trench, the Prophet ﷺ had a stone tied to his stomach for hunger, and when Jabir saw it he went home and asked his wife what they had. They had barley and a young goat, which they cooked, and he told the Prophet ﷺ that he had a little food and that he and a man or two should come. The Prophet ﷺ called the Muhajirun and the Ansar, and Jabir was afraid that he would be shamed. The Prophet ﷺ told them not to crowd in, and served the food himself from the pot and the oven, which stayed covered, until they all ate their fill and food was left over, and he told Jabir's wife to eat and give gifts, as people were hungry (Sahih al-Bukhari). At Hudaybiyyah, when the people had no water, the Prophet ﷺ put his hand in a small vessel, and water gushed from between his fingers, and they drank and made ablution. Jabir said that they were some fifteen hundred, but that it would have sufficed even if they had been a hundred thousand (Sahih al-Bukhari). When Jabir was ill and unconscious, the Prophet ﷺ visited him, made ablution and sprinkled the water on him, and he recovered. He asked who would inherit from him, and the verses on inheritance were revealed (Sahih al-Bukhari). He also reported that the Prophet ﷺ once asked his household for something to eat with bread, and they had only vinegar, and he ate and said that vinegar was a good relish (Sahih Muslim), and that food for one is enough for two, and food for two is enough for four (Sahih Muslim).

Jabir narrated more than most of the Companions, and the fullest account of the Farewell Hajj from start to finish. He told it to Muhammad ibn Ali ibn al-Husayn when he was already blind, as he led them in prayer in a short cloak (Sahih Muslim). He once heard that Abdullah ibn Unays had a hadith that he had not heard, and he bought a camel and rode it for a month to Syria to hear it from him, fearing that one of them might die. Abdullah came out and embraced him, and he heard the Prophet ﷺ say that people would be gathered bare, and that Allah would call to them in a voice heard from near and far, saying that He is the King, and that no one would enter Paradise or the Fire while another had a claim of injustice on him. Jabir asked how that could be, when they would come with nothing, and was told that it would be settled in good deeds and bad (al-Adab al-Mufrad).

According to the early biographies, he stayed beside Ali in the troubles and served in the armies in Syria, and he lived long enough to see the divisions of the Muslims, and when he went blind said that he wished his hearing would go as well, so as not to hear of them. According to the early biographies, he taught in the Prophet's ﷺ mosque, and the scholars of the next generation learned from him, among them Sa'id ibn al-Musayyib. According to the early biographies, he died in Madinah at about ninety-four, among the last of the Prophet's ﷺ Companions there, and Aban ibn Uthman led the funeral prayer. According to a report in al-Muwatta, about forty-six years after Uhud, when a flood opened his father's grave, the body was found unchanged.

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