Shurahbil ibn Hasanah

ProfileShurahbil ibn Hasanah

Shurahbil (may Allah be pleased with him) is known by his mother's name, Hasanah, and Abu Dawud says in his collection that Hasanah was his mother. The sources differ about his father and even his name, and some name Abdullah ibn al-Muta' of Kindah or Tamim. According to the early biographies, his mother raised him, and she accepted Islam early too. He is not to be confused with the Ghassanid chief Shurahbil, who killed the Prophet's ﷺ envoy al-Harith ibn Umayr and so led to the expedition of Mu'tah.

According to the early biographies, nothing is told of him before the migration to Abyssinia, where he went in the second migration with his mother. She had married Sufyan ibn Ma'mar, who became a Muslim with his sons Jabir and Junadah, Shurahbil's stepbrothers, and they all went together. According to the early biographies, he stayed there until he was called to Madinah.

Umm Habibah told that she had been married to a man who died in Abyssinia, so the Negus married her to the Prophet ﷺ, giving her a dowry of four thousand dirhams on his behalf, and sent her to the Messenger of Allah ﷺ with Shurahbil ibn Hasanah (Sunan Abi Dawud, graded sahih by al-Albani). So he was trusted with the safety of the woman who was to be the Prophet's ﷺ wife, on a long journey from a foreign land. According to the early biographies, when he reached Madinah he was one of those who wrote down the revelation for the Prophet ﷺ, because he could write, which few could in those days, and because of all he had already given up.

According to the early biographies, he did not take part in many of the Prophet's ﷺ battles. Under Abu Bakr he was made a commander in the war against those who had left Islam, and at Yamamah he was second in command to Khalid ibn al-Walid. After that Abu Bakr sent out armies against the Byzantines in Ash-Sham, under four commanders, Amr ibn al-As, Abu Ubaydah ibn al-Jarrah, Yazid ibn Abi Sufyan and Shurahbil. He took part in the fall of Busra, and in the battle of Ajnadayn, where the Byzantines were driven back to Damascus, and according to the early biographies he is credited with the opening of much of what is now Jordan and of parts of Palestine. When Umar replaced Khalid with Abu Ubaydah, Abu Ubaydah left Shurahbil as his deputy, and he stayed in that place until his death.

In 18 AH the plague of Amwas came to Ash-Sham. Aishah told that the Prophet ﷺ said that plague was a punishment which Allah sent on whom He wished, and that He made it a mercy for the believers, and that anyone who stays patient in a land where it has broken out, believing that nothing will befall him but what Allah has written, will have a reward like that of a martyr (Sahih al-Bukhari). According to the early biographies, Amr ibn al-As wanted the people to scatter in the hills to get away from the plague, and Shurahbil answered him that he had been a companion of the Messenger of Allah ﷺ when Amr was still more astray than his family's camel, and Amr said that he was right. He said of the plague that it was the mercy of their Lord, the prayer of their Prophet ﷺ, and the death of the righteous before them. According to the early biographies, he died of it that year, at about sixty-seven, in the same plague that took Abu Ubaydah.

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