Today's light · Friday 30 October
The first person killed for this religion was a slave woman
Sumayyah bint Khayyat was an enslaved woman in Makkah, married to Yasir and the mother of Ammar. The family were among the earliest converts and had no clan able to protect them, which is why they were tortured in the open while men of the great families were not. The biographers record that Abu Jahl killed her with a spear. She was elderly. Muslim tradition counts her as the first person to be killed for the faith, before any battle and before the migration. The same reports preserve the Prophet ﷺ passing the family under torture and telling them to be patient, that their appointed place was Paradise. He could not stop it. He had no clan strong enough either.
Sumayyah bint Khayyat · Makkah, c. 615 CE
Friday 30 October 2026 · 18 Jumada al-Ula 1448 AH
The word · History
السِّيرَة
Sirah
The life story of the Prophet Muhammad, told in order, from birth to death.
The root means to travel, so a sirah is the road a person walked. The oldest surviving account is Ibn Ishaq's, preserved in the edition of Ibn Hisham, alongside al-Waqidi and the Tabaqat of Ibn Sa'd. Sirah writers accepted material on a looser standard of proof than the hadith scholars did, so a story being famous in the sirah does not by itself make it authentic.
The Path · chapter 39 of 71
أحد
Uhud: Archers on the Hill
Fifty archers left their post. The lesson of obedience.
Do not abandon your post for spoils
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