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Companions · The mind that opened Egypt

عمرو بن العاص

Amr ibn al-As

Came to Islam between Khalid and Uthman ibn Talha in one caravan; Egypt entered Islam through him.

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Quraysh's sharpest diplomat, sent to Abyssinia to drag the emigrants home, Amr watched Ja'far's defense defeat him in front of the Negus and carried the splinter of that day for years. After Hudaybiyyah the calculation completed itself: he rode north and met Khalid and Uthman ibn Talha on the same errand. At his pledge he demanded a clause, that his past be forgiven, and learned the rule the ummah recites to every convert since: "Do you not know that Islam demolishes what was before it?"

The Prophet ﷺ used the new instrument immediately: command of Dhat as-Salasil, with Abu Bakr and Umar under his flag, and the young general asked the question every ambitious heart asks, who is most beloved to you, expecting his own name; the answer, Aisha, and of men her father, taught him where love actually ranked. Under Umar he opened Egypt with four thousand men and founded Fustat with its mosque, first in Africa; his deathbed scene in Sahih Muslim, weeping through the three chapters of his life, ends with the tawhid of hope: none but the Most Merciful for what remains.

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Do you not know that Islam demolishes what was before it?

Muslim 121

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