Abu Bakr ﵁ before the khilafah

His full name is: Abu Bakr ʿAbdullah ibn Abi Quhafah ʿUthman ibn ʿAmir ibn ʿAmr ibn Kaʿb ibn Saʿd ibn Taym ibn Murrah ibn Kaʿb ibn Luʾayy ibn Ghalib al-Qurashi at-Taymi. Banu Taym was not the greatest branch of Quraysh. Banu Hashim had the care of the food and drink of the pilgrims, Banu ʿAbd ad-Dar guarded the Kaʿbah and bound the banner of war when Quraysh marched to battle. Banu Taym had none of these ceremonial posts; they were known for their trade and the settling of disputes.

His father was Abu Quhafah ʿUthman ﵁, who would not die until the fourteenth year of the Hijra, at the age of 97. His mother was Salma bint Sakhr ibn ʿAmir ibn Kaʿb ﵂, a woman of the same Banu Taym. She bore the byname Umm al-Khayr, the Mother of the Good, a name that summed up her life before her son had lived his own.

ʿAbdullah Who Became ʿAteeq

ʿAteeq means literally the Freed One, the Manumitted, he who has been brought out of slavery. How he received that name, the scholars differ. The strongest account, which Suyuti ﵀ gathers from several chains of transmission, goes back to the Prophet ﷺ himself: that he ﷺ looked round at his companion ﵁ and said: “You are ʿAteeq, freed by Allah ﷻ from the Fire.” That moment gave him a name no man could take from him. Freed from the Fire. Not because in his youth he had refused wine, not because he had wedded his daughter to the Prophet ﷺ, not because he had spent his wealth on the manumission of slaves, but freed because the Prophet ﷺ had pronounced it on the authority of the Revelation that spoke through him.

The other explanation, which ʿAʾishah ﵂ relates and which Suyuti ﵀ does not exclude, is that ʿAteeq was simply the oldest name by which Banu Taym knew him, because he descended from a long unbroken line of free Arabs. But the stronger reading, the reading that the centuries have passed down, is that of the Prophet ﷺ.

After the Night of al-Isra’ he received a third name, and that name was not from a human mouth. When the Prophet ﷺ returned after the Night Journey and told his people that in one night he had been brought to Bayt al-Maqdis and from there ascended to the heavens, Quraysh laughed at him. Some of the new converts wavered. They sought out ʿAbdullah ibn Abi Quhafah ﵁ to confront him with the extravagance of the story, in the conviction that he, the deliberate one, the calm one, would surely hesitate here. He did not hesitate. He asked only whether the Prophet ﷺ had truly said this. When they confirmed it, he answered that if the Prophet ﷺ had said it, then it was true.

From that day Allah ﷻ named him, on the tongue of Jibril ﵇ and on the tongue of the Prophet ﷺ, as-Siddiq, the Witness to the Truth, the Affirmer, he whose word upholds the truthfulness of another. No other human being in the whole Islamic tradition would ever be honored with that title. Suyuti ﵀ emphasizes that ash-Shaʿbi ﵀ even says that this is one of four qualities by which Allah ﷻ singled him out alone, alongside his companionship in the cave, his nearness on the Hijra, and his appointment to lead the prayers in the final illness.

The Young Years in Jahiliyya

He grew up in a Makkah that did not yet know it stood at the turning point of its history. A Makkah of idols, of wine, of blood-feuds and trading caravans that departed for al-Sham and Yemen. A Makkah in which a young man of family and honor was expected to take his share of the ritual and the company, to drink with the pilgrims, to compose poetry with the poets, to laugh with the fools. He did none of these things.

It is related that Abu Bakr ﵁ never spoke a line of poetry, neither in the Jahiliyya nor in Islam, and that he and ʿUthman ﵁ had given up the drinking of wine in the Jahiliyya.

The question was even once put to him in a company of companions, years later, when the whole matter of wine and Jahiliyya belonged to the past. Someone said to him: “Did you drink wine in the Jahiliyya?” He answered: “I seek refuge with Allah ﷻ.” Someone asked: “Why?” He said:

When this reached the Prophet ﷺ, he said twice: “Abu Bakr ﵁ has spoken the truth, Abu Bakr ﵁ has spoken the truth.”

He kept himself far from what debased the men around him, because he felt that a man is not made for debasement. He was, in his own words, not a hanif out of a religious impulse but out of a deeper instinct of reverence for himself and for what was preserved within him. And that is, in the wisdom of the tradition, precisely the preparation by which he could later take into himself the whole idea of Islam without hesitation.

He was a merchant by trade, and even after he had been appointed khalifah, even on the morning after the baiʿah, he had the habit of loading his bolts of cloth onto his back and setting off toward the market. ʿUmar ﵁ addressed him on this, with the words that the Muslims now needed him for other matters. A merchant in cloth, a man whose fingers knew the wool and the silk, whose reputation in Makkah was that of a trader with whom one need not haggle, because his first price was also his last.

Ibn Saʿd ﵀ relates from ʿAʾishah ﵂ a physical description that is remarkably detailed: a fair-skinned man, slenderly built, with hollow cheeks and a slight stoop of the shoulders; he could not keep his lower garment above his hips, it kept slipping down; gaunt of face, with deep-set eyes, a prominent forehead, and hands whose backs were nearly without flesh. No warrior in appearance, no giant in stature. A slight man, without finery, with hands that worked and a gaze that was far.

He later dyed, Anas ﵁ relates, his hair and beard with henna and katam, the indigo of the Arabs, because he was going grey and the Prophet ﷺ encouraged this practice. A detail that makes the man visible. A man in his forties with white hair, dyed in henna and indigo, walking through the dusty streets to the cloth-souk, his bolts of cloth under his arm.

The First Who Believed

When the first revelation came in the cave of Hira, Abu Bakr ﵁ was not in the cave. He was in Makkah, in his house, or in his shop, or at the home of Khadijah ﵂, for he was a friend of the household of his kinsman Muhammad ﷺ. When the Prophet ﷺ shared his experience with Khadijah ﵂, and she brought him to Waraqah ibn Nawfal, and the message began to spread in the quietest circle, the second who believed came from his own circle of friends.

The Prophet ﷺ later said it himself, and Ibn Ishaq ﵀ relates it from Muhammad ibn ʿAbd ar-Rahman ibn ʿAbdullah ibn al-Husayn at-Tamimi ﵀:

Al-Bayhaqi ﵀ explains why: because he had already seen the proofs of the prophethood of the Messenger of Allah ﷺ, and had already heard the traces of it before the invitation, so that when he was invited he had already reflected and considered, and he submitted and accepted Islam at once.

Suyuti ﵀ names a second tradition that makes the matter more personal. Abu Maysarah ﵀ relates that the Prophet ﷺ, before prophethood was granted to him, sometimes heard a voice that called him: “Muhammad!” when he walked in a secluded place. He would then flee back, and the only heart to which he told this in confidence was that of Abu Bakr ﵁, his friend from the Jahiliyya. The one man had already been disclosed to the other before the revelation fell.

Ibn ʿAbbas ﵁ relates from the Prophet ﷺ himself: “I never spoke to anyone about Islam but that they refused me and rejected my words, except the son of Abu Quhafah. I never spoke to him about anything but that he accepted it and stood firm in it.” And in the well-known hadith of Abu’d-Darda’ ﵁, related by Al-Bukhari ﵀, the Prophet ﷺ himself cited in a quarrel among his companions ﵃: “Will you leave me my companion? I said, ‘People, I am the Messenger of Allah ﷻ to all of you,’ and you said, ‘You lie.’ Abu Bakr ﵁ said, ‘You have spoken the truth.’”

Whether he was the very first, the scholars have taken different positions, which Suyuti ﵀ carefully sets side by side. Some said ʿAli ﵁, some Khadijah ﵂, some Abu Bakr ﵁. Suyuti ﵀ adopts what Imam Abu Hanifah ﵀ is said to have first formulated: Khadijah ﵂ was the first woman who believed, ʿAli ﵁ the first of the children, and Abu Bakr ﵁ the first of the free adult men. That reconciliation held because it carried the facts and did no injustice to any of the testimonies.

But one testimony cuts through all the disputes, and Suyuti ﵀ places it at the center. It is from Muhammad ibn al-Hanafiyyah ﵀, the son of ʿAli ﵁, who was asked by Salim ibn Abi’l-Jaʿd: “Was Abu Bakr ﵁ the first who accepted Islam?” He answered: “No.” Salim asked: “How is it then that Abu Bakr ﵁ so excelled and surpassed the others that none but he is named?” He said:

Therein lies the whole secret. Not when he began, but how he ended. Not the chronology of conversion, but the steadfastness of a life that knew no breaks, no hesitations, no second thoughts.

The Early Da’wa and the Conversion of the Seven

In the first days after his conversion he did not sit at home. He was, Suyuti ﵀ writes, a man whose reputation was so established in Makkah that his word opened doors that were still closed to the Prophet ﷺ himself. He was loved, he was trusted, he knew which friend he could approach about what, which house he could step into at which hour. And he used that knowledge as a weapon for what he had newly accepted.

Suyuti ﵀ mentions in the opening pages of his account a list that forms the history of early Islam. He enumerates that by Abu Bakr ﵁ there were led to Islam: ʿUthman ibn ʿAffan ﵁, az-Zubayr ibn al-ʿAwwam ﵁, Talha ibn ʿUbaydillah ﵁, ʿAbd ar-Rahman ibn ʿAwf ﵁, Saʿd ibn Abi Waqqas ﵁.

Five men, and what a five. The later third khalifah, the cousin of the Prophet ﷺ who would yet play great roles at Badr and at al-Jamal, the man who would in the end become the son-in-law of the Prophet ﷺ and be the first of the ten promised the Garden. Five of the ten promised the Garden in one life, nurtured by one pair of hands. This is what a friend of Makkah could do once he had chosen for the truth: he brought his friends with him.

Ibn ʿAsakir ﵀ relates from ʿAli ﵁ himself: “When Abu Bakr ﵁ accepted Islam, he was open about his Islam and he invited people to Allah ﷻ and to His Messenger ﷺ.” He was not the secret believer, he was not the conformist merchant who went on praying in silence. He spoke. And when the number of the Muslims had grown to thirty-eight, ʿAʾishah ﵂ writes, Abu Bakr ﵁ pressed the Prophet ﷺ to go public. The Prophet ﷺ said: “Abu Bakr ﵁, we are few.” But Abu Bakr ﵁ did not relent, until the Prophet ﷺ consented.

The Muslims then entered every corner of the Mosque of Makkah, each man among his own kin, and Abu Bakr ﵁ stood up among the people and addressed them, so that he became the first public speaker who invited people to Allah ﷻ and His Messenger ﷺ. The idolaters then leapt upon Abu Bakr ﵁ and upon the Muslims, and they beat them in every corner of the Mosque, most severely.

The first public khutbah in the history of Islam was not the Prophet’s ﷺ. It was Abu Bakr’s ﵁. The first man who stood before it, who received the blows, whose face was bloodied by the fists of Quraysh in the Sacred Mosque itself, was the slight merchant with the hollow cheeks.

But his da’wa did not stop with free men of Quraysh. It went deeper, to the people whom the society of Makkah would rather not have seen.

The Ransomed

One day, Ibn Jarir ﵀ relates through ʿAmir ibn ʿAbdullah ibn az-Zubayr ﵀, Abu Quhafah ﵁, the old father of Abu Bakr ﵁, came to his son and said to him:

A father who thought in terms of commerce. A son who thought in terms of eternity. And between those two perspectives lay the whole drama of the Hijaz.

Suyuti ﵀ names the amount Abu Bakr ﵁ possessed at his conversion: forty thousand dinars, or in another version forty thousand dirhams. By the time he emigrated to Medina, only five thousand dirhams remained to him. He had spent the difference on the ransom of slaves and on the support of the cause of Islam. Thirty-five thousand dirhams that had passed through his hands, not toward trading profit, not toward palaces, not toward extensions of his own house, but toward the liberation of people whom Makkah no longer treated as people.

ʿUrwah ﵀ relates that Abu Bakr ﵁ ransomed seven slaves, each of whom was tortured for the sake of Allah ﷻ. Suyuti ﵀ names no full list in the opening pages, but the tradition has preserved the names. The first was Bilal ibn Rabah ﵁, the Abyssinian slave of Umayyah ibn Khalaf, who on the hot sand of Makkah was bound with a boulder on his chest, burning under the sun, and who nonetheless kept repeating: “Ahad, Ahad.” One, One. One God. One Lord. Abu Bakr ﵁ came by, saw what was happening, and ransomed him at once. Ibn Masʿud ﵁ relates that he bought Bilal ﵁ from Umayyah ibn Khalaf and Ubayy ibn Khalaf for a cloak and ten pieces of silver (about an ounce each). Then he set him free for the sake of Allah ﷻ.

Then there was revealed concerning them, Ibn Masʿud ﵁ relates: “By the night when it covers…” to the words: “…truly your efforts are diverse,” referring to the efforts of Abu Bakr ﵁, Umayyah, and Ubayy. It is the end of Surah al-Layl, which also contains the richest tribute to his generosity:

Ibn al-Jawzi ﵀ writes: they agree unanimously that this was revealed concerning Abu Bakr ﵁. A verse in the Qur’an. A verse that will be recited about him until the Hour, that names him forever without naming his name, that designates him with a definite article, al-Atqā, the Most Godfearing.

Besides Bilal ﵁ he ransomed the one the tradition knows as ʿAmir ibn Fuhayrah ﵁, the shepherd who would later drive the sheep along the tracks on the Hijra to erase the footprints. And the women Zinnirah ﵂, Umm ʿUbays ﵂, and al-Nahdiyyah ﵂ with her daughter, women who had never resisted a man in the street, who were now tortured by their masters for their faith. He ransomed them, gave them back their name, and sent them to the house of Allah ﷻ.

The Courage in the Shadow of the Prophet ﷺ

When in a company of companions ﵃ the question later arose who was the bravest of men, ʿAli ﵁ asked them outright to say who in their view deserved that title. They said: “You, Abu’l-Hasan.” He answered:

Suyuti ﵀ continues these words of ʿAli ﵁ with a second testimony: “I saw the Messenger of Allah ﷺ, and Quraysh seized him. One held him fast and another threw him down and they said, ‘Are you the one who has made the gods into one god?’ By Allah ﷻ, none of us drew near except Abu Bakr ﵁, who struck the one and held back the other and threw down yet another, saying, ‘Woe to you! Will you kill a man because he says: My Lord ﷻ is Allah?’” Then, ʿAli ﵁ continues, he lifted a cloak he was wearing and wept until his beard was wet, and said: “I adjure you by Allah ﷻ, is the believer of the people of Firʿawn better, or Abu Bakr ﵁?” The people were silent. ʿAli ﵁ said: “Will you not answer? By Allah ﷻ, one hour of Abu Bakr ﵁ is better than a thousand hours of the believer of the people of Firʿawn. He was a man who concealed his iman, and this was a man who openly professed his iman.”

Two scenes in one testimony. A shelter of branches at Badr, where the Prophet ﷺ rested while Abu Bakr ﵁ stood with drawn sword between him and the desert. And a street in Makkah where the Prophet ﷺ was seized by the throat by his own kin, and where that same slight merchant with the hollow cheeks threw himself between their hands and his friend. He was the man who on the Day of Uhud, when everyone fled, was the first to return, as he himself related in a hadith with al-Haytham ibn Kulayb ﵀: “On the Day of Uhud everyone fled from the Messenger of Allah ﷺ, and I was the first to return.”

The angels, Abu Hurayrah ﵁ relates, rejoiced with one another on the Day of Badr and said to each other: “Do you not see as-Siddiq with the Messenger of Allah ﷺ in the shelter?” And the Prophet ﷺ himself said to ʿAli ﵁ and Abu Bakr ﵁ on the Day of Badr: “With one of you is Jibril ﵇ and with the other is Mikaʾil ﵇.” The courage of Abu Bakr ﵁ was no wild courage, no warrior’s courage of the old Arab who wielded the sword of his forefathers. It was the courage of one who knew what he was protecting and why, and who without raising his voice stood before his friend as a wall stands before a treasure.

The Wealth He Gave

What ʿAli ﵁ said of his courage, the whole umma repeated in the centuries after about his generosity. The Prophet ﷺ himself would say of him, as Ahmad ﵀ relates from Abu Hurayrah ﵁: “No wealth has ever brought me so much as the wealth of Abu Bakr ﵁.” Abu Bakr ﵁ wept and said: “Are I and my wealth for anyone other than you, Messenger of Allah ﷺ?”

The most famous scene of his generosity takes place on the evening before the departure for Tabuk, in the ninth year of the Hijra, when the Prophet ﷺ calls upon his followers to contribute to the equipping of the army that would march to the Byzantine frontier. ʿUmar ibn al-Khattab ﵁ related it himself, in a hadith classified as hasan sahih by Abu Dawud ﵀ and at-Tirmidhi ﵀:

Here is everything. Here is what the whole biography wished to arrive at in this sentence. A man who hands over his whole wealth at once to the cause of Islam, and who, when asked what he has left for his wife and his children, does not hesitate, does not preach, does not explain. He gives the only true accounting he knows. Allah ﷻ and His Messenger ﷺ. A fortune that cannot be given away, an inheritance that cannot be inherited by thieves, cannot be robbed by time. For his family that was enough.

In another tradition from al-Hasan al-Basri ﵀ through Abu Nuʿaym ﵀ in al-Hilyah, Abu Bakr ﵁ comes with his sadaqah and conceals it, and says: “Messenger of Allah ﷺ, this is my sadaqah, and Allah ﷻ may return to me for more.” ʿUmar ﵁ comes openly and says: “Messenger of Allah ﷺ, this is my sadaqah, and I may return to Allah ﷻ for more.” The Prophet ﷺ said: “The difference between your two sadaqahs is the same as the difference between your words.”

And in a touching detail that Ibn Shahin ﵀ relates from Ibn ʿUmar ﵁: there came a day when Jibril ﵇ descended to the Prophet ﷺ and saw Abu Bakr ﵁ in a coarse cloak of goat-hair, fastened on his chest with a skewer because he no longer had a clasp. Jibril ﵇ asked why Abu Bakr ﵁ looked so. The Prophet ﷺ said: “Jibril ﵇, he has spent his wealth on me for the Opening (of Makkah).” Jibril ﵇ said: “Allah ﷻ sends greetings of peace to him and says to him: ‘Are you content with Me in this poverty of yours, or discontent?’” Abu Bakr ﵁ answered, as though he himself heard the Divine address through the throat of Jibril ﵇:

Suyuti ﵀ notes that the isnad is weak, but that the tradition has many paths and that it renders entirely faithfully the spirit of what is known about Abu Bakr ﵁. A man whose poverty was his glory, because he had bought that poverty with his wealth, and had spent that wealth on the Messenger of Allah ﷺ.

The Knowledge and the Interpretation of Dreams

His generosity and his courage were known to everyone who saw him. His knowledge was known to the Prophet ﷺ alone. Suyuti ﵀ devotes a whole section to the truth that Abu Bakr ﵁ was the most learned of the companions ﵃, and that his knowledge was broader and deeper than his sparing speech would suggest.

An-Nawawi ﵀ gathers it in his Tahdhib: the companions ﵃ came to him for fatwa. When a dispute was put to him, Abu Bakr ﵁ looked first in the Book of Allah ﷻ. If he found there a basis for a ruling, he ruled on that basis. If he found no indication in the Book but knew a Sunnah of the Messenger of Allah ﷺ on that matter, he ruled on that basis. If he could find no way, he went out and asked the Muslims: “Such and such has been put to me. Do you know whether the Messenger of Allah ﷺ gave a ruling on it?” Sometimes a group would gather around him, each of them naming a ruling of the Messenger of Allah ﷺ. Abu Bakr ﵁ would then say: “Praise be to Allah ﷻ, Who has placed among us those who preserve and remember what comes from our Prophet ﷺ.”

He was the most learned of the Arabs in genealogy, especially of Quraysh. He was the most skilled in the interpretation of dreams. Muhammad ibn Sirin ﵀, who would himself be the greatest dream-interpreter of the next generation, testified by general consensus: “Abu Bakr ﵁ was the most skilled of this umma after the Prophet ﷺ in drawing a meaning from a dream.”

The Prophet ﷺ himself said, as ad-Daylami ﵀ relates from Samurah ﵁: “I have been commanded to interpret the dream and to teach it to Abu Bakr ﵁.” A teaching from Prophet to companion ﵁, not in some marginal science but in a branch of insight that in the Qur’an itself is bound up with Yusuf ﵇ and the prison. That the Prophet ﷺ taught him was itself a teaching for the whole umma about who Abu Bakr ﵁ was.

At Hudaybiyyah, when ʿUmar ﵁ went full of concern to the Prophet ﷺ to ask why the Muslims had to accept an apparent humiliation, and the Prophet ﷺ had answered him, ʿUmar ﵁ then went to Abu Bakr ﵁ and put to him the same question. Abu Bakr ﵁ answered him exactly as the Prophet ﷺ had answered him, word for word. He had not heard what the Prophet ﷺ had said; he knew it from the same source. Not that he received the revelation, but that his heart was so attuned to the Prophet ﷺ that the same water came from two different taps.

And An-Nawawi ﵀ concludes with the most moving detail. When the Prophet ﷺ in his last sermon told of “a slave to whom Allah ﷻ has given the choice between the world and that which is with Him, and that slave has chosen that which is with Allah ﷻ,” only Abu Bakr ﵁ wept. The other companions ﵃ were astonished at his tears, for they thought the Prophet ﷺ spoke of some arbitrary slave. But Abu Bakr ﵁ had understood that the Prophet ﷺ himself was the slave, and that he ﷺ was choosing to meet Allah ﷻ. He was the only one who had understood it.

The Cave of Thawr

And then came the Hijra. When Quraysh decided that the Messenger of Allah ﷺ must die, and the young men of every tribe were called together to deal the blow jointly so that no single clan would bear the guilt, Jibril ﵇ told the Prophet ﷺ that the time to leave Makkah had come. He went to the house of Abu Bakr ﵁ at an unusual hour. Abu Bakr ﵁ saw from his face that there must be an important occasion, and he knew it when he heard what it was.

What happened in that night and in the days after is known to every child who learns Islam. Two men, one Prophet ﷺ and one companion ﵁, who left behind the palace-bastion of Quraysh and hid in the cave of Thawr to the south of Makkah, in the direction opposite to Medina, to mislead the expected flight-route. Three nights long in a narrow hollow. The course of events Suyuti ﵀ does not relate in detail, for he cites the Qur’an itself as his primary source for what took place there:

The Muslims, Suyuti ﵀ writes, are unanimously agreed that the companion ﵁ named here is Abu Bakr ﵁, and there exists a tradition from Ibn Abi Hatim ﵀ through Ibn ʿAbbas ﵁ on the words of Allah ﷻ “then Allah sent down His tranquillity upon him”: that this referred to Abu Bakr ﵁, for as for the Prophet ﷺ, the tranquillity was always upon him.

In this verse, one verse in all the Qur’an, a man who is no prophet is caught up in a divine designation. “His companion.” Sāhibihi. A word that encompasses kinship and nearness and partnership. Ibn ʿAsakir ﵀ mentions that adherents of Ibn ʿUyaynah ﵀ draw this inference: Allah ﷻ rebuked all the Muslims concerning the Messenger of Allah ﷺ, except Abu Bakr ﵁ alone, for he is expressly excluded from the rebuke. Then he recited: “If you do not aid the Prophet - Allah has already aided him when those who disbelieved had driven him out, as one of two, when they were both in the cave.”

Hassan ibn Thabit ﵁ captured it in poetry, and the Prophet ﷺ himself, Ibn Saʿd ﵀ relates from az-Zuhri ﵀, laughed at it until his back teeth showed, and said to Hassan ﵁: “You have spoken the truth, Hassan; he is as you say.” The verses, which Suyuti ﵀ renders in translation, read:

The Prophet ﷺ would later, as Ibn al-Musayyab ﵀ relates through al-Hakim ﵀, name Abu Bakr ﵁ as his second in everything: second in Islam, second in the Cave, second in the shelter on the Day of Badr, second in the grave. Four times second to the same man, and in each of those four scenes he was none other than Abu Bakr ﵁.

The Hajj of the Ninth Year and the Choice for the Salat

The years in Medina passed in war, in peace, in revelation, in silence. Badr, Uhud, the Trench, Bani Quraydhah, Hudaybiyya, Khaybar, the Opening of Makkah, Hunayn, Tabuk. In all these trials Abu Bakr ﵁ was present, as Suyuti ﵀ sums up in a long passage: “He accompanied the Prophet ﷺ from the moment he accepted Islam to his death, not leaving him on journey nor in residence, except for that for which he ﷺ authorized him to go out, such as the Hajj and the military expeditions. He was present at all the battles with him, emigrated with him, leaving behind his family and his children, longing for Allah ﷻ and His Messenger ﷺ.”

In the ninth year after the Hijra, the year that would become known as the Year of the Delegations, the Prophet ﷺ chose not to journey to Makkah himself for the Hajj. The Kaʿbah had been cleansed of idols, the city was in Muslim hands, and the time had come to Islamize the whole Arab Hajj. But he ﷺ remained in Medina and sent Abu Bakr ﵁ ahead as leader of the Hajj.

Suyuti ﵀ mentions it in his summary of Abu Bakr’s caliphal career: “When the Messenger of Allah ﷺ died and Abu Bakr ﵁ was appointed khalifah, he placed ʿUmar ﵁ at the head of the leadership of the Hajj, and the following year Abu Bakr ﵁ performed the Hajj himself.” But what happened earlier, in the ninth year, Suyuti ﵀ recalls in other places: that Abu Bakr ﵁ in that year led the whole Muslim Hajj by command of the Prophet ﷺ. It was the first Hajj in the history of Islam at which the public proclamation of Surah at-Tawbah took place, with ʿAli ﵁ as the herald who recited the opening verses on behalf of the Prophet ﷺ.

That moment, a handful of months before the Farewell Hajj, placed Abu Bakr ﵁ in the position of a kind of representative. He spoke on behalf of the Prophet ﷺ, he led the believers at the sacred places on behalf of the Prophet ﷺ. And when the following year, in the tenth year, the Prophet ﷺ went to Makkah himself for his Hajj al-Wada’, the tone had already been set. The umma had already seen what it was to have Abu Bakr ﵁ at its head in a ceremonial-religious context.

The definitive designation, however, came not from a Hajj, but from a sickroom. In the last ten days of his life, when the fever no longer allowed him to lead the community in person, the Prophet ﷺ sent Bilal ﵁ to Abu Bakr ﵁ with the command that he should lead the salat. ʿAʾishah ﵂, herself the daughter of Abu Bakr ﵁ and the woman who identified most directly with his trials, objected out of concern. She wished to spare her father that burden, because she knew he would weep before the mihrab, and because she knew that if he took the place of the Prophet ﷺ, the people could never afterward have the same feelings for that place. Abu Musa al-Ashʿari ﵁ relates that the Prophet ﷺ interrupted her answer:

Three times. And the third time with a comparison that must have struck ʿAʾishah ﵂ as a censure: you are like the women around Yusuf ﵇, clinging to an outward fear while the reality is otherwise. Suyuti ﵀ classifies this hadith as mutawatir, related by ʿAʾishah ﵂, Ibn Masʿud ﵁, Ibn ʿAbbas ﵁, Ibn ʿUmar ﵁, ʿAbdullah ibn Zamʿah ﵁, Abu Saʿid ﵁, ʿAli ﵁, and Hafsah ﵂. One of the most carefully transmitted traditions in all of Islamic history.

In a variant from Ibn Zamʿah ﵁: when Abu Bakr ﵁ was not present and ʿUmar ﵁ stepped forward to lead the salat, the Prophet ﷺ heard his takbir, raised his head in anger, and said: “Where is Ibn Abi Quhafah? No, no, no. Allah ﷻ and the Muslims refuse anyone but Abu Bakr ﵁. Let Abu Bakr ﵁ lead the people in prayer.”

The scholars have read in this moment the clearest indication of the caliphate. Not because the Prophet ﷺ dictated a testament, not because he ﷺ openly appointed Abu Bakr ﵁, but because in his last days he ﷺ entrusted to him the one office that would encompass all others: the office of the man who stands before the people in the meeting with Allah ﷻ. Whoever led the salat led the community; whoever led the community in its most important act was fit to lead it in everything.

The Hour of the Farewell and the Breaking of the Tribe

Eight days before he ﷺ passed on to that which is with Allah ﷻ, Abu Bakr ﵁ was the Imam of the Muslims in the Prophetic Mosque itself. The Prophet ﷺ listened to his recitation from his room. He ﷺ had made the choice of which he had spoken in his second-to-last sermon, the choice of a slave to whom Allah ﷻ had given the choice between this world and that which is with Him. He chose the place with his Lord ﷻ. And Abu Bakr ﵁, alone among the companions ﵃, had wept at that sermon because he knew what he was hearing.

When the Prophet ﷺ came to pass away in the arms of ʿAʾishah ﵂, on a Monday in Rabīʿ al-Awwal of the eleventh year, Abu Bakr ﵁ was not in the mosque. He was in his house in as-Sunh, on the edge of Medina. A messenger fetched him. When he rode into the city, he saw the Muslims standing in groups, full of bewilderment, not knowing what they should believe. ʿUmar ﵁ was speaking by the mosque, furious at whoever dared to say that the Prophet ﷺ had died. He swore that he would cut out the tongue of whoever said such a thing, for Allah ﷻ would not take away His Messenger ﷺ before he had triumphed over them as Musa ﵇ had triumphed over his people.

Abu Bakr ﵁ went first to the house of ʿAʾishah ﵂. He uncovered the cloth over the face of the Prophet ﷺ, kissed his forehead, and said: “By my father and my mother, you were good in life and you are good in death.” He covered him again and came out, and walked past ʿUmar ﵁ who was still speaking to the crowd. He asked ʿUmar ﵁ to be silent. ʿUmar ﵁ went on. Then Abu Bakr ﵁ climbed to the place where he usually addressed the people, praised Allah ﷻ, and spoke words that gave the whole umma its breath back and that would form the bridge between the time of prophethood and the time of the caliphate that would follow hereafter. They were not his words alone. They were the words with which he brought the Qur’an itself into a crisis that threatened to break the whole Arab soul:

He continued, in words that are recorded in every collection of sahih and that Suyuti ﵀ sums up in his own formulations about this night: “Whoever of you worshipped Muhammad ﷺ: Muhammad ﷺ has died. Whoever of you worships Allah ﷻ: Allah ﷻ lives and does not die.”

ʿUmar ﵁ would later say that it was as though he had never heard that verse before. It was there, it had stood in the Qur’an for years, but it came to him on that day for the first time as though it had just been revealed. His legs could no longer carry him and he sank to the ground. All the Muslims heard the same verse, and all the Muslims knew at that same moment that the Prophet ﷺ had indeed passed on, and that history had now become their affair.

Beneath the gate of that transition stood Abu Bakr ﵁. Not as a candidate for the caliphate, not as a pretender to a throne, not as a man with a plan. As the second of two, for the last time in that capacity, while the body of the first had not yet been washed. He stood there as he had stood in the cave of Thawr, as he had stood in the shelter of Badr, as he had stood beside the Prophet ﷺ through all the years of revelation. And he spoke the one word that could be spoken in that hour: the word of the Qur’an itself.

The umma listened. The Saqifah lay a few hundred meters away, in the quarter of the Banu Saʿidah. There, within a few hours, the men of Medina would gather to determine the future of Islam, and there Abu Bakr ﵁ would have his hands stretched out within that same day by ʿUmar ﵁ and by the Muhajirun and by the Ansar, and he would earn the second half of his name.

But this moment, this moment before the mosque while the body lay waiting in the room, is the last moment of his life before the caliphate. He stood here still as the companion, not as the leader. He stood here as the man who knew what he must say because he had learned it from the mouth of the one who would henceforth rest in the earth of Medina. He stood here as the man whose whole life, from the moment he had been ʿAbdullah in a house of Banu Taym, from the moment he had refused the wine in the Jahiliyya, from the moment he had folded his cloths in his shop and not composed poetry, from the moment he had taken Bilal ﵁ from the hot stones, from the moment he had reassured the Prophet ﷺ in the cave of Thawr that Allah ﷻ was with them, from the moment he had wielded the sword above the head of the sleeping Prophet ﷺ in the shelter of Badr, from the moment he had left everything behind at Tabuk except Allah ﷻ and His Messenger ﷺ, from the moment he had led the Hajj of the ninth year, from the moment he had led the salat in the last ten days, had formed a long novitiate for this one minute.

He had waited his whole life for this minute without knowing it. And when the minute came, he was ready. The history of Islam tilted over the shoulder of a slight man with hollow cheeks, a beard dyed in henna and katam, and a heart that, as az-Zuhri ﵀ has said, never doubted about Allah ﷻ for an hour.

The caliphate was about to reveal itself to him. The Saqifah waited. But his life-history up to that threshold, all that is recorded in the pages of Suyuti ﵀ from page one to page fifty, was now complete. The son of Abu Quhafah ﵁ stood in the full armor of a life that had known no breaks, no hesitations, no second thoughts. The umma had its second father.

Sources

• Jalal ad-Din as-Suyuti ﵀, Tarikh al-Khulafa (tr. Abdassamad Clarke, Ta-Ha Publishers, 3rd ed. 1995), pp. 1–50.