Companions · Son of this ummah's Pharaoh, martyr of Yarmuk
عكرمة بن أبي جهل
Ikrimah ibn Abi Jahl
He fled the Opening by sea; the storm's tawhid brought him back to the gate of mercy.
The account
Son of Abu Jahl, raised at the furnace of his father's hatred, Ikrimah commanded a flank against the Muslims at Uhud and fought on at the Opening after resistance collapsed. Excluded from the amnesty, he fled for Abyssinia by sea, and in the storm heard the sailors say: nothing avails here but calling on Allah alone. He said to himself: if none avails at sea but Him, none avails on land but Him, and turned around on the strength of a wave's theology. His wife Umm Hakim had already taken his pardon from the Prophet ﷺ, who received him with joy and forbade the Muslims to curse his dead father, for cursing the dead wounds the living.
He spent himself like a man paying arrears: Qur'an pressed to his face, saying the Book of my Lord, the Book of my Lord. At Yarmuk he dismounted with the pledge-unto-death band and fell covered in wounds; the tradition sets his death among the wounded brothers passing the water cup down the line, each refusing it for the next, all dying before it returned. From the first enemy's son to that cup is the full width of Islam's door.
The facts
- FatherAbu Jahl
- Turned byThe storm's tawhid
- EtiquetteHis dead father not to be cursed
- EndYarmuk, the passed cup
The narrations
Do not curse the dead, for thereby you hurt the living.
cf. Tirmidhi 1982 · Bukhari 1393 (principle)
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The words
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