Abu Bakr as-Siddiq ﵁

A name that outlasted time

Before he became caliph, before he became as-Siddiq, before he became ʿAteeq, he was a boy in Makkah. A boy of the Banu Taym, a handful of years younger than the son of ʿAbdullah from the Banu Hashim who would later become the Messenger of Allah ﷻ. He grew up in the same dusty streets, drank from the same wells, knew the same summers in which the sun heated the stones until one could no longer touch them. Yet while Makkah around him lived on idolatry, poetry and wine, he carried within himself something that could not be placed. He did not know what it was. He knew only that the world around him did not quite hold him.

What is written about him in the pages of Jalal ad-Din as-Suyuti ﵀, in his Tarikh al-Khulafa, fills the first fifty pages of the book, and those fifty pages are no dry biography. They are a mosaic of testimonies, of isnads, of scattered moments in which a Companion remembers something, a woman relates something, a scholar makes a remark that has outlasted the centuries.

His full name, as Suyuti ﵀ sets it down in the opening line of the chapter, 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. A name like a chain. Each link a tribe, each tribe a memory, and all those links run back to Murrah ibn Kaʿb, where his line joins that of the Prophet ﷺ. Two cousins, generations apart, who would meet in a single lifetime in a manner the Arabs had never seen before.

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Banu Taym was not the largest branch of Quraysh, not the richest, not the loudest. Banu Hashim had the care of giving the pilgrims to drink, Banu ʿAbd ad-Dar guarded the Kaʿbah and bound the banner of war when Quraysh went forth to battle. Banu Taym held none of these ceremonial offices. What they had was a reputation for honour and gentleness, a house that stood open, a merchant whose word weighed so heavily that a handshake was a contract.

His father was Abu Quhafah ʿUthman ﵁, a man who would outlive his son, a man who at ninety-seven would still be alive to see his son take up the leadership of the Muslims and, six months later, be buried beside the Prophet ﷺ. Suyuti ﵀ writes that Abu Quhafah himself would not die until Muharram of the fourteenth year of the Hijra, at the age of ninety-seven. His mother was Salma bint Sakhr ibn ʿAmir ibn Kaʿb ﵂, a woman from the same Banu Taym as her husband, for she was his cousin on his father’s side. She bore the byname Umm al-Khayr, the Mother of the Good, and Suyuti ﵀ relates that name with the isnad of Az-Zuhri ﵀ through Ibn ʿAsakir ﵀. A name that summed up her life before her son had lived his own.

ʿAbdullah who became ʿAteeq

At his birth he received the name ʿAbdullah. So he was called in his childhood, so he kept his father Abu Quhafah company through the streets of Makkah, so he was entered in the trading ledgers of his young adulthood. But the name by which the world would come to know him came later, from another mouth.

ʿAteeq, writes Suyuti ﵀, means literally the Freed One, the Set-Free, he who has been drawn out of slavery. As to how he acquired that name, the scholars bring forward several narrations. The strongest, which Suyuti ﵀ gathers from several isnads, goes back to the Prophet ﷺ himself: that he ﷺ turned to his Companion ﵁ and said, “You are ʿAteeq, freed by Allah ﷻ from the Fire.” That moment, whether it took place on the mountain in an instant of rest or in a house where the revelation was still fresh, 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 given his daughter in marriage to the Prophet ﷺ, not because he had spent his wealth on freeing slaves. 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 rule out, 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 the centuries have handed down, is the prophetic one.

And yet even ʿAteeq would not be the name that would stand upon his grave, not the name by which the Muslims would utter their supplications for him in every corner of the future ummah. For 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 a single night he had been brought to Bayt al-Maqdis and from there raised up to the heavens, Quraysh mocked him. Some of the new converts wavered. People sought out ʿAbdullah ibn Abi Quhafah ﵁ to confront him with the extravagance of the story, convinced that he, the deliberate, 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, upon the tongue of Jibril ﵇ and upon the tongue of the Prophet ﷺ, as-Siddiq, the Witness of the Truth, the Affirmer, he whose word upholds the truthfulness of another. No other man in the whole Islamic tradition would ever be honoured with that title. Suyuti ﵀ stresses that ash-Shaʿbi ﵀ even says 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.

Three names, then, and not one of them his birth name. ʿAbdullah, ʿAteeq, as-Siddiq. Three times renamed by history, because no single name alone sufficed to carry him.

The early 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-jars, of blood feuds and trading caravans that set out for Syria and Yemen. A Makkah in which a young man of family and honour was expected to take his share of the ritual and the company, to drink with the pilgrims, to compose verse with the poets, to laugh with the fools. He did none of these things.

On pages seven and eight of his account, Suyuti ﵀ gathers a striking series of testimonies. Ibn ʿAsakir ﵀ relates with a sahih isnad from ʿAʾishah ﵂: “By Allah ﷻ, Abu Bakr ﵁ never spoke a line of poetry, neither in the Jahiliyya nor in Islam, and he and ʿUthman ﵁ had given up the drinking of wine in the Jahiliyya.” Abu Nuʿaym ﵀ likewise records that she said: “Abu Bakr ﵁ had forbidden himself wine in the Jahiliyya.” And ʿAbdullah ibn az-Zubayr ﵁ relates: “Abu Bakr ﵁ never once spoke poetry.”

The question was even put to him once in a gathering 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.”

Suyuti ﵀ does not write that he was a pious seeker like the hunafa of his time, nor that he gave voice to a longing for Ibrahim ﵇ as Zayd ibn ʿAmr ibn Nufayl did. What is related about him is something more imperfect and, for that very reason, more human: he kept himself far from what debased the men around him, because he felt that a human being was not made for debasement. He was, in his own words, hanif not out of any religious impulse but out of a deeper instinct of reverence for himself and for what was being preserved within him. And that, in the wisdom of the narration, is precisely the preparation by which he could later take into himself the whole edifice of Islam without hesitation.

His trade was commerce. Suyuti ﵀ mentions later, in the passage on his appointment as caliph, that even on the morning after the baiʿah he had out of habit loaded his bolts of cloth onto his back and set off towards the market, before ʿUmar ﵁ stopped him 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 did not need to 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, slightly built, with hollow cheeks and a slight stoop of the shoulders; he could not keep his lower garment above his waist, for it kept slipping down; lean of face, with deep-set eyes, a jutting forehead and hands whose backs were almost without flesh. No warrior in appearance, no giant in stature. A slender man, without finery, with hands that worked and a gaze that was far.

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

The first to believe

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 cousin 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 to believe came from his own circle of friends.

The Prophet ﷺ himself said it later, 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 its traces before the invitation, so that when he was invited he had already reflected and pondered, and he submitted and accepted Islam at once.

Suyuti ﵀ mentions a second narration as well, which makes the matter more personal. Abu Maysarah ﵀ relates that the Prophet ﷺ, before prophethood was granted to him, would sometimes hear a voice calling to him, “Muhammad!” when he walked in a remote place. He would then flee back, and the only heart to which he confided this was that of Abu Bakr ﵁, his friend from the Jahiliyya. The one man had already been unveiled to the other before the revelation descended.

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 dispute among his Companions ﵃: “Will you leave me my companion? I said, ‘O people, I am the Messenger of Allah ﷻ to you all,’ and you said, ‘You lie.’ Abu Bakr ﵁ said, ‘You have spoken the truth.’”

As to 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 to believe, ʿAli ﵁ the first of the children, and Abu Bakr ﵁ the first of the free adult men. That reconciliation held firm because it bore all 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 centre. 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 to accept Islam?” He answered: “No.” Salim asked: “How then is it that Abu Bakr ﵁ so excelled and surpassed the others that none but he is mentioned?” 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, writes Suyuti ﵀, 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 beloved. He was trusted. He knew which friend he could address on which matter, which house he could enter at which hour. And he used that knowledge as a weapon for what he had newly accepted.

In the opening pages of his account Suyuti ﵀ mentions a list that forms the history of early Islam. He enumerates that through Abu Bakr ﵁ the following 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 caliph, the cousin of the Prophet ﷺ who would still 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 the first of the ten promised the Garden. Five of the ten promised the Garden in a single lifetime, nurtured by a single pair of hands. This is what a friend of Makkah could do once he had chosen 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 adapted merchant who went on praying in silence. He spoke. And when the number of the Muslims had grown to thirty-eight, writes ʿAʾishah ﵂, Abu Bakr ﵁ pressed the Prophet ﷺ to come out openly. The Prophet ﷺ said: “Abu Bakr ﵁, we are few.” But Abu Bakr ﵁ did not relent, until the Prophet ﷺ agreed.

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 to invite people to Allah ﷻ and His Messenger ﷺ. The idolaters then sprang 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 from the Prophet ﷺ. It was from Abu Bakr ﵁. The first man to stand before it, who received the blows, whose face was bloodied by the fists of Quraysh in the Sacred Mosque itself, was the slender merchant with the hollow cheeks.

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

The ransomed

One day, Ibn Jarir ﵀ records 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 sum that 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 freeing slaves and on supporting the cause of Islam. Thirty-five thousand dirhams that had passed through his hands, not towards trading profit, not towards palaces, not towards extensions of his own house, but towards the liberation of people whom Makkah no longer treated as people.

ʿUrwah ﵀ records that Abu Bakr ﵁ ransomed seven slaves, each of whom was tortured for the sake of Allah ﷻ. Suyuti ﵀ gives no complete 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 was bound to the hot sand of Makkah with a boulder upon his chest, burning beneath the sun, and who nonetheless kept repeating: “Ahad, Ahad.” One, One. One God. One Lord. Abu Bakr ﵁ passed 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 it was revealed concerning them, relates Ibn Masʿud ﵁: “By the night when it covers…” up to the words: “…indeed 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 concerning him until the Hour, that names him forever without naming him, that designates him with a definite article, al-Atqā, the Most God-fearing.

Besides Bilal ﵁ he ransomed the one whom the tradition knows as ʿAmir ibn Fuhayrah ﵁, the shepherd who would later drive the sheep along the tracks on the Hijra with them, to wipe out 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 being tortured by their masters for their faith. He ransomed them, gave them back their names, and sent them to the house of Allah ﷻ.

The courage in the shadow of the Prophet ﷺ

When in a gathering of Companions ﵃ the question later arose as to who was the bravest of men, ʿAli ﵁ asked them to say plainly 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 a single 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! Would you kill a man because he says: My Lord ﷻ is Allah?’” Then, ʿAli ﵁ goes on, he raised 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 proclaimed his iman.”

Two scenes in a single 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 kinsmen, and where that same slender 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, records Abu Hurayrah ﵁, rejoiced over 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 brandished 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 ummah repeated in the centuries that followed about his generosity. The Prophet ﷺ himself would say of him, as Ahmad ﵀ relates from Abu Hurayrah ﵁: “No wealth has ever brought me as 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 unfolds on the eve of the departure for Tabuk, in the ninth year of the Hijra, when the Prophet ﷺ called upon his followers to contribute for the equipping of the army that would march to the Byzantine frontier. ʿUmar ibn al-Khattab ﵁ himself related, 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 one sentence. A man who hands over his entire 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 plundered by time. For his family that was enough.

In another narration 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’s hair, fastened on his chest with a skewer because he no longer had a clasp. Jibril ﵇ asked why Abu Bakr ﵁ looked thus. 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 narration has many paths and that it faithfully renders the whole 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 mouth would suggest.

An-Nawawi ﵀ gathers it in his Tahdhib: the Companions ﵃ came to him for fatwa. When a dispute was put before him, Abu Bakr ﵁ first looked in the Book of Allah ﷻ. If he found in it 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 then gather around him, each of them mentioning 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 that 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 following generation, testified by general consensus: “Abu Bakr ﵁ was the most skilled of this ummah 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 it to him was itself a teaching for the whole ummah 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 the same question to him. 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 ﵀ closes with the most moving detail. When the Prophet ﷺ in his final sermon spoke of “a slave to whom Allah ﷻ has given the choice between this 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 was speaking of some random slave. But Abu Bakr ﵁ had understood that the Prophet ﷺ was himself the slave, and that he ﷺ was choosing to meet Allah ﷻ. He was the only one who had understood.

The cave of Thawr

And then came the Hijra. When Quraysh resolved that the Messenger of Allah ﷺ must die, and the young men of every tribe were summoned 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 some weighty cause, and he knew it when he heard what it was.

What happened that night and in the days that followed 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 south of Makkah, in the opposite direction from Medina, to deceive the expected escape route. Three nights long in a narrow hollow. Suyuti ﵀ does not record the consequence in detail, for he cites the Qur’an itself as his primary source for what took place there:

The Muslims, writes Suyuti ﵀, are unanimously agreed that the companion ﵁ named here is Abu Bakr ﵁, and there exists a narration from Ibn Abi Hatim ﵀ through Ibn ʿAbbas ﵁ concerning 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, a single verse in the whole Qur’an, a human being who is no prophet is captured in a divine designation. “His companion.” Sāhibihi. A word that encompasses kinship and nearness and partnership. Ibn ʿAsakir ﵀ records that the followers of Ibn ʿUyaynah ﵀ draw this conclusion: 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 him, 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, records Ibn Saʿd ﵀ 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, run:

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 until his death, not leaving him on journey nor in residence, except for that which he ﷺ authorised him to go out for, such as the Hajj and the war expeditions. He was present at all the battles with him, emigrated with him, leaving behind his family and his children, desiring 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 travel to Makkah himself for the Hajj. The Kaʿbah had been purified of idols, the city was in Muslim hands, and the time had come to Islamise the whole Arabian 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 caliph, he put 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, is recalled by Suyuti ﵀ in other places: that Abu Bakr ﵁ in that year led the whole Muslim Hajj at the 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 holy places on behalf of the Prophet ﷺ. And when, the year after, in the tenth year, the Prophet ﷺ himself went to Makkah for his Hajj al-Wada’, the tone had already been set. The ummah 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 most directly identified 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 afterwards 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 reproach: 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 the whole of Islamic history.

In a variant of 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 he ﷺ in his final days transferred to him the one office that would encompass all the others: the office of the man who stands before the people in the meeting with Allah ﷻ. He who led the salat, led the community. He who 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 chamber. He ﷺ had made the choice of which he had spoken in his penultimate 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. As 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 anyone who 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 ﵁ first went 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 passed by 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 ummah back its breath and that would form the bridge between the time of the 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 recorded in every collection of sahih and which Suyuti ﵀ sums up in his own phrasing about this night: “Whoever among you worshipped Muhammad ﷺ: Muhammad ﷺ has died. Whoever among 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. He would no longer be able to carry his legs and would sink 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 the 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 ummah listened. The Saqifah lay a few hundred metres 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, within that same day, Abu Bakr ﵁ would have his hands stretched out 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 chamber, 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 to 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 wine in the Jahiliyya, from the moment he had folded his bolts of cloth in his shop and had not composed verse, from the moment he had taken Bilal ﵁ off 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 brandished 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 final ten days, had formed one long novitiate for this single 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 tipped over the shoulder of a slender man with hollow cheeks, a beard dyed in henna and katam, and a heart that, as az-Zuhri ﵀ has said, never doubted Allah ﷻ for a single hour.

The caliphate was on the point of revealing itself to him. The Saqifah waited. But his life’s story up to that threshold, all that is set down in the pages of Suyuti ﵀ from page one to page fifty, was now complete. The son of Abu Quhafah ﵁ stood in the full armour of a life that had known no breaks, no hesitations, no second thoughts. The ummah 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.