Zayd ibn Amr ibn Nufayl

ProfileZayd ibn Amr ibn Nufayl

Zayd was of the clan of Adi of Quraysh, the son of Amr ibn Nufayl. His uncle al-Khattab was the father of Umar, so Umar was his first cousin. According to the early biographies, he was one of four men of Makkah who turned away from the idols and set out to find the religion of Ibrahim, the hunafa: Zayd, Waraqah ibn Nawfal, Ubaydullah ibn Jahsh and Uthman ibn al-Huwayrith. Three of them became Christians. Uthman went to the Romans and rose in their service. Waraqah became a Christian priest. Ubaydullah became a Christian, then accepted Islam and went to Abyssinia, and some reports say he went back to Christianity there, though the report is not firmly established. Zayd would not follow them, and insisted that he was a follower of Ibrahim.

Abdullah ibn Umar told that the Prophet ﷺ met Zayd ibn Amr ibn Nufayl at the bottom of the valley of Baldah, before any revelation had come to the Prophet ﷺ. A meal was put before the Prophet ﷺ, who would not eat from it, and then it was offered to Zayd, who said, "I do not eat anything that you slaughter for your stone idols. I eat only what Allah's name has been mentioned over." Zayd used to criticise how Quraysh slaughtered their animals, saying that Allah had created the sheep, sent down the water for it from the sky and grown the grass for it from the earth, and yet they slaughtered it in a name other than Allah's (Sahih al-Bukhari). According to another report, the Prophet ﷺ was serving the food, and Zayd told him, "Son of my brother, do not eat from this," and from that day the Prophet ﷺ never ate the meat of Quraysh's sacrifices.

Asma bint Abi Bakr told that she saw Zayd ibn Amr ibn Nufayl standing with his back against the Kaaba and saying, "People of Quraysh, by Allah, none of you is on the religion of Ibrahim except me." He used to save the lives of little girls: if a man wanted to kill his daughter, Zayd would say, "Do not kill her, I will feed her in your place." He would take the girl, and when she had grown up, he would say to her father that if he wanted her, he would give her back, and if not, he would keep on supporting her (Sahih al-Bukhari). According to the early biographies, people took him for a madman. Asma also told how he prostrated towards the Kaaba and wept, and said, "O Allah, if I knew which way is dearest to You, I would worship You by it, but I do not know." According to the early biographies, he never drank wine or committed adultery, and he used to say, "Beware of adultery, for it brings poverty." His saying was, "My Lord is the Lord of Ibrahim, and my religion is the religion of Ibrahim."

According to the early biographies, his uncle al-Khattab cursed him, spat at him and beat him, and told the foolish among Quraysh to beat him if he came back, until Zayd could enter Makkah only in secret. His wife was afraid whenever he left to go to Ash-Sham, since he went not to trade but to learn. Ibn Umar told that Zayd went to Ash-Sham asking about the true religion. A Jewish scholar told him that he would not become a Jew unless he took his share of Allah's anger, and a Christian scholar told him that he would not become a Christian unless he took his share of Allah's curse. Zayd said that he would not run from Allah's anger or curse only to bear them, and asked whether there was another religion, and each answered that he knew of none except the hanif, the religion of Ibrahim, who was neither a Jew nor a Christian and worshipped Allah alone. When Zayd heard what they said about Ibrahim, he went out and raised his hands and said, "O Allah, I make You my witness that I am on the religion of Ibrahim" (Sahih al-Bukhari). According to the early biographies, he also went to Mosul, and the most learned monk he met told him that the prophet he was looking for was about to come out of the very land he had left. He turned back for Makkah, and in Balqa, close to home, robbers took everything he had and killed him. According to the early biographies, as they were about to kill him he prayed, "O Allah, if You have kept me from the company of Your prophet, do not keep my son Sa'id from it."

He had two children, a son and a daughter, and the prayer was answered. Sa'id ibn Zayd was one of the first to accept Islam, and one of the ten promised Paradise, and Atikah was married in turn to five of the first generation. According to the early biographies, Waraqah mourned him in verse, saying that he had been rightly guided and had saved himself from a blazing fire by choosing a Lord who has no equal and by leaving the idols, and that the mercy of his Lord reaches a man even if he lies sixty valleys beneath the earth.

According to the early biographies, a man who had sat with Zayd, and accepted Islam in the fourth year of the call, came to the Prophet ﷺ weeping, and told him that Zayd had said that he was waiting for a prophet from the descendants of Ismail, who would follow the way of Ibrahim and pray towards the Kaaba, and that Zayd had said that if he lived to see him he would believe, but he feared that he would die first, and had asked him to give the prophet his greeting. The Prophet ﷺ returned the greeting, prayed for mercy for Zayd, and said that he had seen him in Paradise dragging his garments. According to the early biographies, Sa'id and Umar once asked the Prophet ﷺ whether they could ask forgiveness for Zayd, and he said yes, and that Zayd would be raised on the Day of Resurrection as a community by himself. The Quran says of Ibrahim that he was a community in himself (Surah an-Nahl, 16:120).

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