The Firsts (Sahaba Stories) | The Forerunners of Islam
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44
Life of the Prophet (seerah)
Khawla Bint Hakim & Uthman Ibn Madhun: The Righteous Couple | The Firsts
52
Life of the Prophet (seerah)
Al-Shifa bint Abdullah (ra): The Healer and Scholar | The Firsts Shorts
58
Life of the Prophet (seerah)
Shurahbil Ibn Hasana (ra): The Scribe and Commander | The Firsts Shorts
125
Life of the Prophet (seerah)
Khalid ibn al-Walid (ra): The Legendary Military General | The Firsts
126
Life of the Prophet (seerah)
Amr ibn al-As (ra): His Wicked Father and “Better” Brother | The Firsts
146
Life of the Prophet (seerah)
Tulayha ibn Khuwaylid (ra): From False Prophet to Shaheed | The Firsts
147
Life of the Prophet (seerah)
Zayd ibn al-Khattab (ra): The Quiet Brother of Omar (ra) | The Firsts
Abdullah ibn Hudhafah (ra): The Man Who Wouldn't Flinch | The Firsts Shorts
Abdullah ibn Hudhafah was chosen by the Prophet ﷺ to face the most brutal emperor of his time. He was known for being unfazed by tyrants.
Transcript
This transcript was auto-generated using AI and may contain misspellings. As-salamu alaykum wa rahmatullahi wa barakatuh, dear brothers and sisters. Welcome back to the first short batch that we're doing inshaAllah ta'ala at the end, where we are covering some of those companions that embraced Islam very early on, but we only have a few details about their lives so that we can revive their memory bi'ibn Allah ta'ala. Now, as I said last time, this is actually one of my favorite incidents, not because the incident that he is famous for takes place in early Islam, but subhanAllah, because it is one of those turning points in Islamic history that shows you just what the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam was able to generate in these young men and women around him that faced all sorts of persecution for their faith and refused to turn back on their heels. So we find today Abdullah ibn Hudhafa As-Sahmi radiAllahu ta'ala Anhu. He is the brother of Khunais radiAllahu ta'ala Anhu, who we spoke about last time. And as we mentioned, Abdullah ibn Hudhafa was too young to partake in the battles alongside the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam. He was brought to embrace Islam by his older brother, then taken on the migration with his older brother Khunais. And so everything that he does is inevitably and undoubtedly part of the credit of Khunais as well. But he didn't get a chance to show that devotion to the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam until later on in life as he grew a bit older. And so with Abdullah ibn Hudhafa not having the ability to fight in Badr, despite again, being someone who had already made the hijrah, because he wasn't old enough, or to fight in Uhud. We find that the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam used him for a very specific incident. And the two types of incidents or the two incidents that he is most famous for, both involve his stance in the face of a tyrant. And this is what I want to weave together inshallah
ta'ala in this short episode. That when the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam says, the greatest jihad, the greatest striving in the path of Allah is kareematu haqq and the sultanan ja'al, to speak a word of truth in the face of a tyrant. This is the man that spoke a word of truth in the face of the two greatest tyrants of his day, the tyrant of the Persians and the tyrant of the Romans. In the time of the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam, he was the person who the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam ordered to take the letter to Kisra of Persia, calling him to Islam. And when the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam appoints you to take a letter to Kisra, calling him to Islam, and also, you know, this letter is a letter that has major consequences politically for him as well, right? So sending him to the most arrogant tyrant of the day in Kisra is dangerous for Abdullah. There is a chance that Abdullah might even be killed in this mission. And the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam told him, I want you to take the letter and deliver it to him by hand. Your order is to take this letter and to stand in front of Kisra and to deliver it to him by hand. Now who narrates this incident? Al-Shifa' bint Abdullah Al-Adawiyya radiAllahu ta'ala anha. So Abdullah bin Hudhafa radiAllahu ta'ala anhu, he goes to Kisra completely unfazed and he goes up to him and, you know, Kisra has a messenger to receive the letter from Abdullah. He says, no, my Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam commanded me to deliver the letter to the hand of Kisra. So he insisted that he will hand the letter directly to Kisra. When Kisra reads the letter from the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam saying to him from Muhammad, the messenger of Allah to Kisra, the great one of Persia. And he says to him, Aslim taslim, become Muslim, accept Islam, you will find Salam and you would have the reward
of the belief of all of your people. And if you refuse, then you would have the disbelief, the punishment, you would bear the burden of the disbelief of all of your people. Now, Kisra did not like the letter. So he tore the letter up in front of Abdullah bin Hudhafa. He threatened him and he threatened the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam and of course would also go on to even try to plot the assassination of the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam. So when Abdullah bin Hudhafa radiAllahu ta'ala anhu got back to the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam and told him what happened, he was not fazed, he did not lose his composure in the face of that tyrant. The Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam said, mazzaqallahu mulka, may Allah tear up his kingdom the way he tore up that letter. And SubhanAllah, from there it was, you know, coup after coup, assassination after assassination, sisters assassinating brothers, children assassinating parents and the Persian empire went through complete internal disarray and that was from the dua of the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam and this was the stance that we found from Abdullah bin Hudhafa radiAllahu ta'ala anhu in the face of Kisra. So I wanted to give that incident as a pretext for the incident he is really famous for, which is actually with the Byzantines, okay, with the Romans. When he was sent out in the battles against the Byzantines and this was in the time of Umar al-Khattab radiAllahu ta'ala anhu, Khunais radiAllahu anhu, his father-in-law, and he arrives at the Byzantines, he was captured. And when this group of Muslims was captured, Heraclius says that I want you to bring to me a captive amongst them who is considered a leader amongst them, most noble and is considered senior to the rest of them. So they said Abdullah bin Hudhafa is your man.
So they went and they brought Abdullah bin Hudhafa from his cell and he stood him in front of him and he said to him, listen, tanassar, he said to him, renounce your religion, become Christian. He says, usharikuka fee mulki, I will give you half of my kingdom. So he's testing his faith first and foremost before he even persecutes him because he sees that there is a mind game to be played here and there is a way to break the Muslims in a different way as hundreds of them are being held captive. So he says, I will let you free and give you half of my empire so long as you renounce Islam, your religion, and embrace our religion of Christianity. So Abdullah responded to him and he said, wallahi, if you gave me everything that you had, forget about half of your empire, you give me your whole empire, the entire Roman empire, and you give me everything that the Arabs possess as well. Give me your empire and give me the empire of the Arabs. I will not renounce my religion of Islam even for the blink of an eye. SubhanAllah, look at that strength, right? You're standing in front of the leader of his people, the leader of a brutal empire, and absolutely no fear. So Heraclius says, let me try something else with him then. So he says, put him back in his jail cell. And then he says, I want you to send him the most beautiful woman to seduce him in his cell. Let's see if we can break him that way, okay? So he refused the empire, half of the empire, to leave his religion of Islam which would have had serious implications in the morale of the Muslims, right? Those that were captive and those that would hear about what happened to Abdullah ibn Hudhafa radiAllahu ta'ala anhum. So he said, send him the most beautiful woman in his cell and let her seduce him. So Abdullah ibn Hudhafa is in his cell and they push this woman to seduce him in his cell and he turned away from her with whatever
direction she came at him from. So if she came to his right, he turned to his left, and if she came to his left, he turned to his right, he wouldn't even look at her, completely unmoved. And she tried all sorts of things to seduce him. But subhanAllah, he maintained his faith even in that regard. So he fought the different temptations that were being given to him. And this woman came out after completely giving up and she said, I've never seen anything like this man. It's like he's made of stone. It's like he's a statue or something. He's completely unmoved by anything that I did to seduce him. Like he didn't flinch, subhanAllah, with that type of temptation. So the admiration is growing in Heraclius, even though he's trying to break him. He says, you know what, then starve him and don't give him any water for three days. Let's see what happens to him then. So let's starve him and dehydrate him for three days. So they left him in a cell, no food, no drink for three days. And then at the end of the three days, look at the next tactic, torture tactic. He says, take him some pork and some wine. Let's see if he eats pork and he drinks wine. Now, from an Islamic perspective, he actually could do that, right? I mean, he has the excuse to consume alcohol at that point. And he has the excuse to eat that pork. But this is not about fiqh here in terms of halal and haram and dharoorah and what's necessity. And no, this is a different type of game that is being played here. So he refuses as well. And Heraclius, he says, doesn't your religion allow you to consume this in hardship? He said, yes, but I didn't want to give you the pleasure of a companion of the messenger of Allah, salAllahu alayhi wa sallam, eating and drinking pork and alcohol and wine so that you could mock the religion of the messenger, salAllahu alayhi wa sallam. So he refused the temptation of empire. He refused the temptation of seduction. He refused the temptation of eating and drinking even when he was starving,
and it would have been halal for him to do so. So he says, you know what? Put him in the position of crucifixion. So put him in the position of crucifixion. So they hang him up to be crucified. And then he says, bring forth the warriors and throw spears and shoot arrows at him all around his face, all around his body parts so that he feels the pressure in every direction. So subhanAllah just imagine he's strung up and they're shooting the arrows and they're throwing the spears at him and they're just missing every part of his body, including his head. And he doesn't flinch. Who is this man? What are you made of? You know, subhanAllah, this is a man that became Muslim as a child with the prophet, salAllahu alayhi wa sallam. And there was a different type of iman and yaqeen that was cultivated inside of him, faith and certainty that was cultivated inside of him. So he doesn't flinch. And Heraclius says, bring him down. So because he didn't do anything at that point, he makes him an offer again. He says to him, listen, leave your religion, embrace mine. I will give you half of my empire and I will marry you to my daughter. He says, no, absolutely not. There's nothing that would cause me to leave my religion. So then Abdullah bin Hudhafi radiAllahu anhu narrates something actually very painful. And it shows you the mindset of these tyrants. He said that he then ordered for a container of boiling oil, hot boiling oil to be brought in front of him. And then he called for another one of the Muslim prisoners. And he took that Muslim prisoner and he had him thrown into the container of boiling oil right in front of Abdullah bin Hudhafi. And he said that as soon as that man was thrown in, he started to shout frantically. And it was only a matter of seconds, subhanAllah, that his flesh was burnt off of his body and his
bones rose to the top. I mean, that is another level of torture and cruelty. And that is something that could truly break a person, right? Even a person who is seemingly unbreakable to see that happening in front of your eyes with that brutality and to know that what's being said to you is that you're next if you don't comply. SubhanAllah, what a test. So after that happened, Heraclius then says, pick him up and throw him in the container as well. As Abdullah bin Hudhafi is picked up and he's about to be thrown into it, he starts to cry. So what is he thinking? He's thinking that I finally got him. I broke him. OK, he's about to cry. Clearly, he's afraid now that what's going to happen to him is what happened to his companion. So he says, bring him down, bring him back to me. So as he is brought back to him, he says to him that, you know, once again, except half of my empire, renounce your religion. He said, no. He said, well, why did you cry? I mean, aren't you afraid of what I'm going to do to you? He said, no, that's not why I was crying. He said, then why were you crying? He says, SubhanAllah, I wished I had a hundred souls. And each one of those one hundred souls would be sacrificed for the sake of Allah Subhanahu wa ta'ala. I wasn't crying because I was afraid. I was crying because I knew this was the end. This was shahada. This was that martyrdom that we had seen so many of our companions go through. And I had wished that I could give everything for Allah Subhanahu wa ta'ala a hundred times over. So he said, SubhanAllah, what is this man? You know, ajiba minhu. He was so shocked by him. So he's come to this realization that I tried to break him in every way and he's refusing to be broken. Right. So what does he say? He says, you know, I've got to do something now to salvage my own tactics in front of my
people. Right. So he says to Abdullah, he says, kiss my forehead and you can go free. All you have to do now is kiss my forehead and you can go free. Abdullah said, I don't want to kiss your head and I don't want you to kiss my head. Even that's not happening. He said to him, if you kiss my forehead, I'll let 60 of you go. So he's negotiating now how many prisoners will be released in return for him just doing this, kissing his forehead to affirm his superiority after refusing to be broken by his tactics. So he says to him, he said, no, wa li jamee'an muslimeen. He said, if you want me to kiss your head, you don't just free 60 captives, you free all of the Muslims. I'll kiss your forehead if you free all of the Muslims. He said, fine, li jamee'an muslimeen. All 300 of them can go free if you kiss my head. So Abdullah finally went up to him and he kissed his forehead and then he took those sahaba and those tabi'een back to Medina. And when they got to Medina, look what Umar bin Khattab radiAllahu ta'ala anhu did. Umar radiAllahu ta'ala anhu went up to Abdullah and he kissed him on the forehead as he had kissed the emperor's forehead. And then he ordered all of the Muslims to also go up to Abdullah and to kiss his forehead radiAllahu ta'ala anhu because subhanAllah he did not do that. He did not hold back the saving of the Muslims because of his ego. This was all for Allah subhanAllah ta'ala. So honor and humbling yourself is for Allah subhanAllah ta'ala. And that was something that's demonstrated by Abdullah. And that was something that was demonstrated by Umar and Abdullah bin Hudhafa radiAllahu ta'ala anhu continued to strive in the path of Allah subhanAllah ta'ala until the khilafah of Uthman radiAllahu ta'ala anhu where he would die in Egypt in the year 33 after hijrah radiAllahu ta'ala anhu. So another one of as-sabiqun al-awwalun the first who we did not really get to see shine though he embraced Islam very early on. We didn't
get to see shine until the khilafah of Umar radiAllahu ta'ala anhu wa'anhum ajma'een. JazakumAllahu khayran I'll see you all next time inshaAllah. Wasalamualikoum wa rahmatollahi wa barakato.
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