The Martyrdom of ʿAmmar ibn Yasir ﵁ at Siffin

On a hot day in Safar of the year 37, on the plain along the Euphrates between Raqqa and Damascus, there fell an old man who in his younger years had belonged to the first handful of believers in Mecca, who in his parental home had had to witness the martyrdom of his father and mother, who had completed the hijra to Medina with the Messenger ﷺ, who had fought in the front lines at Badr, Uhud, Khandaq and Hunayn, and who now, at well over ninety years of age, sank from his horse with a spear-wound in his chest. The man who felled him was called Abu al-Ghadiya, the fallen one was called ʿAmmar ibn Yasir ﵁, and the hadith that the Messenger ﷺ had uttered about him thirty years earlier in Medina became, at that moment, the heaviest juristic stone upon the scale of Siffin.

Who was ʿAmmar ibn Yasir ﵁?

ʿAmmar ﵁ was no born Quraishite and no Meccan of rank. His father Yasir came from Yemen and had attached himself in Mecca as an ally to Banu Makhzum, and there he married Sumayyah ﵂, a woman who stood in a servile bond to Abu Hudhayfa ibn al-Mughirah of Banu Makhzum. From this union ʿAmmar ﵁ was born, presumably around the year 567 CE, which would give him an age of well over ninety at the Battle of Siffin.

ʿAmmar ﵁ and his parents belonged to the very first handful of people who in Mecca accepted the message of the Prophet ﷺ, and in the transmissions he is named among the seven who were the first to declare their Islam openly. It was this open declaration that brought the household of Yasir into the grip of Banu Makhzum, for it was taken by the tribe as a disgrace that its allies had passed over to a new faith that rejected the idols of Mecca and had struck the hierarchy of Quraysh in the very forehead. Abu Jahl, leader of Banu Makhzum and arch-enemy of the Messenger ﷺ, gave the order for torture.

Yasir and Sumayyah ﵂ were brought, in the heat of the Meccan summer, to the glowing stones of al-Bath’a. Their bodies were laid in the sand and weighted with hot stones upon the chest, and under this torture Yasir died of the exhaustion and of the failure of the heart that the sand and the stones had brought on in him. Sumayyah ﵂ refused to abjure her Islam, and Abu Jahl, enraged by her steadfastness, thrust her in her private parts with a spear, so that she died at once. Thereby Sumayyah ﵂ became the first martyress of Islam, and her husband the first male martyr. ʿAmmar ﵁, who as their son was drawn into the same torture, could not endure it and uttered, under the pain, the words of abjuration that his torturers demanded. When he later came in tears to the Messenger ﷺ with the acknowledgment of what he had uttered in pain, Allah ﷻ revealed a verse establishing that whoever utters unbelief under compulsion while his heart rests in faith bears no sin. It was the first of many moments in which the revelation would descend directly upon his person.

ʿAmmar ﵁ made the hijra to Medina, and in Medina he worked as a labourer in the building of the Masjid an-Nabawi, where he carried the stones on his back. It was during this building period that the Messenger ﷺ pronounced over him a word whose consequences for the community could not be foreseen at the moment it was uttered. He ﷺ passed his hand over the dust on ʿAmmar’s ﵁ head and spoke the words preserved in every reliable collection of transmissions:

ʿAmmar ﵁ fought at Badr, at Uhud, at Khandaq, at Khaybar, at Hunayn, in the war against the apostates under Abu Bakr ﵁, and in the conquests under ʿUmar ﵁. ʿUmar ﵁ appointed him governor of Kufa, an office from which he was recalled for disciplinary reasons when complaints from Kufa about his manner of governing reached Medina, complaints that in the transmission concerned his rigid simplicity more than any real incompetence. He was, in short, one of the most esteemed Sahabah ﵃ of the first generation, a believer of the calibre that the Messenger ﷺ repeatedly honoured in his presence.

The prophetic ﷺ saying

The hadith about the rebellious group was no obscure matter in the community of the caliphate. It had been transmitted through several chains and was, in most centres of transmission, Medina, Mecca, Kufa, Basra, known to whoever had occupied himself with the prophetic transmission material. Imam al-Bukhari ﵀ and Imam Muslim ﵀ would include it in their collections through various chains, and in later generations the transmission became one of the most verified transmissions concerning a specific event after the death of the Messenger ﷺ.

The juristic force of the hadith lies in its predictive power. When two parties go to fight one another in battle-array and in one of those parties ʿAmmar ﵁ falls by the act of one who stood against him, then the hadith designates the other party as the rebellious group, the fi’ah baghiyah of which the Qur’an in Surah al-Hujurat had spoken with regard to peace among believers. The designation is not ambiguous in its formulation, and it is unequivocal in its force: whoever finds ʿAmmar ﵁ at war against him is, in his rebellion, against the rightful party.

In the years between the death of the Messenger ﷺ and the Battle of Siffin, the hadith was generally transmitted in the community without it having any political force, because in none of those years had ʿAmmar ﵁ been placed in an internal war of the Muslims. In the war against the apostates under Abu Bakr ﵁ he fought against non-Muslims, and in the Persian and Byzantine conquests under ʿUmar ﵁ and ʿUthman ﵁ he likewise fought against non-Muslims. Only with the first fitna under ʿAli ﵁ did the hadith come into its potential political force. With the Battle of the Camel it had not yet had any force, because in that battle ʿAmmar ﵁ stood on the side of ʿAli ﵁ and the opposing party had no chance to bring about his death. With Siffin the hadith was for the first time activated in its force.

ʿAmmar ﵁ at Siffin

When ʿAli ﵁ set his army in motion from Kufa to Siffin in the summer of 37 AH, ʿAmmar ﵁ was there with his banner. He was well over ninety years of age, the transmission gives figures between ninety-one and ninety-three years, and his body bore the scars of seven decades of warfare and labour. But his bearing was that of a man whose inner direction had been unchanged since the first day of his Islam. He had heard the hadith about himself from the mouth of the Messenger ﷺ, he knew who he was in the history of salvation, and he chose without hesitation the side of ʿAli ﵁ because in ʿAli ﵁ he acknowledged the imam of the believers.

In the camp of Kufa his presence carried a symbolic weight that far exceeded his military contribution. Whoever saw him riding in the front lines knew that the battle was, in its juristic interpretation, already decided the moment ʿAmmar ﵁ should fall by a Syrian sword. The Syrian leaders, Muʿawiya ﵁ and ʿAmr ibn al-ʿAs ﵁, knew this as well, and they had instructed their men to conduct the fight in such a way that ʿAmmar ﵁ would not come into direct confrontation with a Syrian assailant, so as not to activate the hadith in its force. But in the chaos of a battle, with ninety thousand men on both sides in hand-to-hand combat, such an instruction is unenforceable.

In the months of skirmishing between Safar and Rabi, ʿAmmar ﵁ rode out repeatedly with the patrols. He spoke openly, in speeches preserved in later sources, that in this clash he was following the true guidance of the Messenger ﷺ, and he called his fellow fighters to steadfastness. He called toward the Syrian lines for a turning-back and a bayʿah to ʿAli ﵁, and his voice carried across the plain in the desert nights. Whoever heard him heard the voice of a man who had known the Messenger ﷺ in the flesh, and who in his old age could trace the history of salvation as an unbroken line through his life.

Hudhayfa ibn al-Yaman ﵁, another senior Sahabi who in these years enjoyed great authority in matters of fitnah, had already died in 36 AH, on his deathbed in Madaʾin. In his last days, according to what is broadly preserved in the sources, the news of ʿUthman’s ﵁ death had been brought to him, and he had asked whether ʿAli ﵁ had ascended to the caliphate, and on the confirmation he had said that he counted ʿAli ﵁ among his adherents and that whoever supported ʿAli ﵁ was following the right direction. In his lifetime Hudhayfa ﵁ had learned and passed on the fitnah transmissions of the Messenger ﷺ in detail, and his judgment carried an unmistakable weight in Kufa. With his death that authority fell away, but in ʿAmmar ﵁ a similar authority lived on, with the added quality that the hadith about his own death placed him in a unique juristic position.

The death

On the third day of the actual fighting, according to what is recorded in most sources, some transmissions giving the second or fourth day, ʿAmmar ﵁ came into hand-to-hand combat with a Syrian warrior named Abu al-Ghadiya. Abu al-Ghadiya was a man of the tribe Juhayna, who in the transmissions is variously identified as belonging or not belonging to the Sahabah in the strict sense, for some transmissions give him a brief encounter with the Messenger ﷺ as a child, while others deny him that status. In the Islamic tradition he is, in any case, not designated as a Sahabi with an honorific, because his deed marks him as the referent of the “rebellious party” that the Messenger ﷺ had designated in the hadith.

The fight took place in a few moments. Abu al-Ghadiya cast his spear and the point struck ʿAmmar ﵁ in the chest, and a second blow, according to some transmissions with a sword, completed the work. The old man sank from his mount into the sand, and those who rode beside him bore him back to the Iraqi lines, where he died within the hour. His last words, in one of the preserved transmissions, were a renewed shahadah and a request to his fellow fighters to continue in steadfastness. He had asked for water, and whoever brought him water would later relate that he had taken the cup and had said with a smile that the Messenger ﷺ had foretold him that his last drink in this world would be milk. It was a draught of milk that was brought to him; he drank and gave up the spirit.

ʿAli ﵁ learned the news while he surveyed the battle-array from his hill. He dismounted, he walked to the body, and he wept, according to what is broadly preserved in the transmissions, openly and without restraining his tears. He spoke of ʿAmmar ﵁ as a brother who had preceded him in every phase of Islam and who now, in his own caliphate, had paid the highest price, and he had the salat al-janazah led over him. ʿAmmar ﵁ was wrapped in his blood, like the martyrs of Uhud, and buried on the battlefield of Siffin. His grave is visited to this day, in the vicinity of Raqqa, as a place of pilgrimage by those who in that region honour the transmissions of the first generation.

The political weight of his death

The news of ʿAmmar’s ﵁ death spread through both armies that same day. In the camp of Kufa it was received as the confirmation of what all already knew: that the Syrian side in this fitnah was the fi’ah baghiyah of which the Messenger ﷺ had spoken. Whoever had still been in doubt about the correctness of ʿAli’s ﵁ position saw in the hadith an unequivocal designation, and the morale in the Iraqi camp was, at least in the first hours, strengthened. They now fought no longer merely for the bayʿah to a rightful caliph, they fought with a prophetic saying at their back.

In the camp of Sham the effect of the news was more complicated. A considerable number of Syrian fighters knew the hadith, and when the news reached them that ʿAmmar ﵁ had fallen by the act of a man of their own lines, a serious doubt about their position arose in a number of them. Some turned their faces away from the battlefield, a handful, the transmission relates, went over to the Iraqi lines, and others came to Muʿawiya ﵁ with the declaration that they no longer wished to fight in this battle.

Muʿawiya ﵁ called ʿAmr ibn al-ʿAs ﵁ to himself. ʿAmr ﵁ had, in his own ijtihad, an interpretation ready, and he declared in a speech in the Syrian mosque in the camp that the hadith of the Messenger ﷺ about the rebellious group was valuable and verified, but that its interpretation contained no automatic equation of the Syrian side with that group. The interpretation he proposed, broadly preserved in the transmissions, amounted to a rhetorical inversion of the causal relation:

The rhetorical inversion was strained in its logic, for it turned the customary understanding of causality in warfare on its head: in no juristic or moral tradition is the commander who leads his troops to the battlefield held responsible for the death of the troops who are felled by the opponent. When a Meccan killed a Muslim at Uhud, the murderer was the Meccan, not the Messenger ﷺ who had led the Muslim to Uhud. But in the tension of the battle-day, and in the need of the Syrian leaders to hold their army together, the interpretation found enough purchase to contain the moral crisis. Whoever in his own conscience already doubted his position received in it a way out that enabled him to remain in the battle-array, and whoever in his own conscience had no doubt embraced it without question.

In later generations, and in particular in the works of Ibn Taymiyyah ﵀ and his successors, the interpretation of ʿAmr ﵁ was critically evaluated. The Sunni mainstream accepted the hadith about the rebellious group as verified, and at the same time reckoned ʿAmmar’s ﵁ death as weighty evidence in the evaluation of Siffin, without stripping the Syrian side of its Muslimness or excluding its individual members from their status as ahl al-qiblah. The juristic conclusion of the mainstream holds that the Syrian side in this fitnah took the baghi position, the party that was in rebellion against the rightful imam, without this annulling their individual faith or their participation in the history of salvation. Muʿawiya ﵁ remains a Sahabi for whom the Sunni tradition retains the ﵁, and his ijtihad in this matter is judged to be incorrect without his person being stripped of honour.

The juristic principle applied in this evaluation is the principle of the error of ijtihad: a qualified mujtahid who arrives in his ijtihad at an incorrect conclusion bears no sin for the error, bears a single reward for the effort, and is not excluded by the community from its community. The application of this principle to the Sahabah ﵃ in the fitnah is one of the central contributions of the Sunni tradition to the treatment of what was a most painful episode in the history of Islam, and it stands in sharp contrast to the treatment that other movements have given to the same episode.

Burial and legacy

ʿAmmar ﵁ was buried on the battlefield. His grave lies on the western bank of the Euphrates, in the vicinity of present-day Raqqa in northern Syria. Together with the nearby grave of Uways al-Qarni ﵁, who in some transmissions also fell at Siffin on the side of ʿAli ﵁, it has been a place of visitation through the centuries, and in modern times the site has been repeatedly restored. In the wars that befell Syria after 2011 the place was physically damaged, but its memorial significance in the community is unchanged.

In the transmission of the Sahabah ﵃, ʿAmmar ﵁ occupies an exceptional position. He is one of the very few about whom the Messenger ﷺ made, both in life and in death, a prophetic saying that in its force was able to designate historical events. He is one of the very few whose entire life’s trajectory, from the open declaration of Islam in Mecca, through the torture in al-Bath’a and the martyrdom of his parents, the hijra, the battles on the side of the Messenger ﷺ, the campaigns under the first three khulafa, the brief governorship of Kufa, and the death at Siffin, runs as an unbroken line through the first century of Islam. He is one of the very few whose mother, as the first martyress, represents Islam in general, beside him in an honour that no other family shares.

The Sunni tradition has honoured him repeatedly in its transmission sources, its works of moral biography, and its tafsir traditions. His name is placed in the first ranks in every collection of Sahabah biographies, his transmissions about the Messenger ﷺ are included in al-Bukhari and in Muslim, and his military feats are noted in the maghazi works in the first list of the fighters of Badr.

For ʿAli ﵁ himself, his death was a personal loss of a magnitude that he expressed more than once in later sermons. In ʿAmmar ﵁ he lost not only a military ally of great symbolic weight, but also one of his closest brothers in faith, a man whom he had known in his youth in Mecca and with whom, in seven decades of shared history, he had passed through all the phases of Islam. In the evening after the battle, according to what is recorded in a number of transmissions, ʿAli ﵁ spoke of ʿAmmar ﵁ in one of his sermons in the Iraqi camp, and the words he spoke were retained by Khuzayma ibn Thabit ﵁ Dhu ash-Shahadatayn and passed on in later generations. Khuzayma ﵁ himself, honoured by the Messenger ﷺ with the byname Dhu ash-Shahadatayn because his testimony counted as that of two men, would in the same Battle of Siffin a few days later likewise fall on the side of ʿAli ﵁, a further juristic indication for whoever took these two martyrdoms together into the scale of Siffin.

What ʿAmmar’s ﵁ death has left behind in the community in its deepest force is the recognition that the hadith of the Messenger ﷺ was unequivocally borne out in its prophetic character. Whoever studies this history can see in it the hand of Allah ﷻ in the designation of what, in a later generation, would have been impossible to judge without that designation. It is a favour to the ummah that, in the evaluation of Siffin, it is not thrown back upon its own ijtihad, but that it finds in a prophetic saying a fixed point of orientation. The manner in which the Sunni tradition has processed this favour, by drawing the juristic conclusion without stripping the individuals of their Muslimness, is one of the most balanced contributions of the mainstream to the community’s self-evaluation in its own painful episodes.

Sources

• Jalal ad-Din as-Suyuti ﵀, Tarikh al-Khulafa (trans. Abdassamad Clarke, Ta-Ha Publishers, 3rd ed. 1995), pp. 208–215 (chapter on ʿAli ﵁, section on Siffin and the death of ʿAmmar ibn Yasir ﵁; the hadith of the rebellious group; ʿAmr ibn al-ʿAs’s ﵁ rhetorical inversion and Muʿawiya’s ﵁ acceptance of it).
• Sahih al-Bukhari ﵀, Kitab as-Salat (the hadith about ʿAmmar ﵁ and the building of the Masjid an-Nabawi; the prophecy of the rebellious group) and Kitab al-Fitan.
• Sahih Muslim ﵀, Kitab al-Fitan (further chains of the hadith about ʿAmmar ﵁ and the fi’ah baghiyah).
• Ibn Sa’d ﵀, at-Tabaqat al-Kubra (biography of ʿAmmar ibn Yasir ﵁ and of his parents Yasir and Sumayyah ﵂).
• Ibn Taymiyyah ﵀, Minhaj as-Sunnah an-Nabawiyyah (juristic evaluation of Siffin, the hadith of the rebellious party, and the ijtihad error of Muʿawiya ﵁ and ʿAmr ibn al-ʿAs ﵁).