Muhammad ibn Maslamah

ProfileMuhammad ibn Maslamah

Muhammad (may Allah be pleased with him) was the son of Maslamah, of the Aws of the Ansar. According to the early biographies, his name was Muhammad before the Prophet ﷺ received revelation, which is very rare, since only a handful of Arabs were so named, perhaps because the people of the earlier scriptures spoke of a coming prophet. According to the early biographies, he accepted Islam at the hands of Mus'ab ibn Umayr, before Sa'd ibn Mu'adh and Usayd ibn Hudayr did. He was tall, dark and very strong, with great presence, and a man of few words, so that people felt shy to speak in front of him. According to the early biographies, the Prophet ﷺ paired him as a brother with Abu Ubaydah ibn al-Jarrah, who stayed in his house. They were alike in character, and he named his children after the early Emigrants. According to the early biographies, he brought his brother Mahmud and his sisters to Islam.

According to the early biographies, he was a rider who never turned back in battle, and was skilled on horseback and on foot, and he had a gift for reading a battlefield, and counting an enemy force. His work from the first was keeping watch. The Prophet ﷺ made him the watchman of Madinah, and he would patrol the city, and watch the Prophet's ﷺ back. According to the early biographies, he fought in every battle except Tabuk, for the Prophet ﷺ left him in charge of Madinah while he was away. He fought at Badr. After Badr, the Prophet ﷺ said that he would deal with Ka'b ibn al-Ashraf, who had hurt Allah and His Messenger, and Muhammad ibn Maslamah stood and asked if he wished him to kill him. He said yes, and Muhammad asked leave to say something untrue to get close to him, and was given it. He went with another man, his own companion, and Ka'b's foster brother, Abu Nailah, by night, and they killed Ka'b (Sahih al-Bukhari). According to the early biographies, Ka'b had gone to Makkah after Badr, and urged Quraysh to take revenge, and written insulting verses about the Muslim women, and was turning the Jewish tribes against the Prophet ﷺ.

According to the early biographies, on the night before Uhud, he walked round the camp with a party of men to guard it, and when Khalid ibn al-Walid attacked from the rear, he was one of those who ran to the Prophet ﷺ and took many wounds shielding him. At the Trench he patrolled the rear of Madinah while the others held the ditch. He scouted the ground at Khaybar, where his brother Mahmud was killed. At Hudaybiyyah, according to the early biographies, he went ahead with horsemen to hold the wells and watched the camp at night, and was said to have caught a party of men who were coming to attack. After the treaty he led a patrol that took a party at al-Qurata, among them Thumamah ibn Uthal, the chief of the Banu Hanifah, who became a Muslim. When Makkah was conquered, the Prophet ﷺ sent him ahead with a body of horsemen, and told the Makkans through him that they had not come to fight, and when the Prophet ﷺ went round the Kaaba, Muhammad walked ahead, holding the reins of his camel.

The Prophet ﷺ told him that tribulation would come, and when it did, to take his sword to Uhud and strike it until it broke, and to sit in his house until the hand of a wrongdoer or a decreed death came to him (Sunan Ibn Majah, graded hasan). Hudhayfah said that he feared the trial for everyone but Muhammad ibn Maslamah, because he heard the Prophet ﷺ say that trial would not harm him (Sunan Abi Dawud, graded sahih). According to the early biographies, Umar loved and trusted him, and often sent him to investigate complaints against governors, so that Companions liked to have him beside them in battle and disliked having him come to inspect them. Umar sent him with reinforcements to help Amr ibn al-As in Egypt. According to the early biographies, when Muhammad came to inspect Amr's goods, he ate bread from his own pocket instead of Amr's table, and when Amr complained, he told him that Umar had not forbidden him to eat his food, but had not told him to eat it either, and held him to account to the last sandal. According to the early biographies, he also went to Kufa and burned the gate that Sa'd ibn Abi Waqqas had put up, and Sa'd made no objection. When the people of Kufa complained of Sa'd, Umar sent men to ask in every mosque there. They all praised him, until a man named Usamah ibn Qatadah said that Sa'd did not go out with the army, did not divide fairly and did not judge justly, and Sa'd prayed that if the man lied, Allah would give him a long life and poverty and trials, and that happened (Sahih al-Bukhari). According to the early biographies, it was Muhammad ibn Maslamah who was sent to ask. According to the early biographies, he once forgot a poor woman when he went to collect and divide the zakat. She met Umar, who did not know her, and told him of it, and Umar called Muhammad and rebuked him for forgetting how poor they once were, and Muhammad wept and said that he had not meant to. Umar sent her what she needed, and told Muhammad to give her her share and what she had missed. According to the early biographies, Umar once asked him what he thought of him, and Muhammad said that he saw him as he would wish, strong in gathering wealth and clear of it, and just in dividing it, and that if he went crooked, they would straighten him as an arrow is straightened. Umar thanked Allah that he had set him among people who would do so.

According to the early biographies, he tried to defend Uthman in the troubles at the end of his rule. When the Muslims began to fight each other, he took the sword that the Prophet ﷺ had given him to Uhud and broke it, and went to live at Rabadhah, on the road to Makkah, in a worn tent, and kept only a wooden sword, in case someone broke in. When people said that he should come out and enjoin good and forbid evil, he said that the Prophet ﷺ had told him to break his sword and stay in his house (Sunan Ibn Majah, graded hasan). According to the early biographies, a man from Jordan, angry that he had kept out of the fighting, came to his house and killed him, and he was buried in Madinah.

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