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The Firsts (Sahaba Stories) | The Forerunners of Islam
Wahshi (ra): He Killed The Lion of Allah and A False Prophet | The Firsts
His spear struck the both the best and worst of people, and made him the most famous assassin in Islamic history,
Wahshi ibn Harb (ra) killed Hamza (ra), the uncle of the Prophet ﷺ, to buy his freedom. Years later he walked into Medina seeking faith and forgiveness. He was forgiven on the spot, with no punishment, and humbly asked only to stay away from the Prophet ﷺ.
But that wasn’t the end of his story.
This transcript was auto-generated using AI and may contain misspellings.
00:00And then we come to the man who your mind probably immediately goes to when you think of someone who hurt the Prophet, may Allah's peace and blessings be upon him, and the Prophet, may Allah's peace and blessings be upon him, had a hard time forgiving him.
00:15Who comes to your mind when you think of someone that hurt the Prophet, may Allah's peace and blessings be upon him's family and the Prophet, may Allah's peace and blessings be upon him, had a hard time looking at him and forgiving him? Anyone know? What comes to your mind? Wahshi.
00:28Wahshi ibn Harb, may Allah be pleased with him.
00:32And so we end this particular part with Wahshi, may Allah be pleased with him, the story of Wahshi and who Wahshi was and what happens with Wahshi.
00:43So Wahshi, of course, refers to someone who's wild. And this referred to the quality of Wahshi in terms of his fierceness. He was ferocious.
00:55The name of Wahshi was also Abu Dasma. Dasma means exceedingly black. And so you can think about the component of racism that could exist there as well, right? But his name is Abu Dasma.
01:09His name is Wahshi ibn Harb, ferocious, the son of war. He was an Abyssinian slave of Jubayr ibn Mut'im ibn Adi.
01:19And he was renowned, of course, for having the specific skill of spear-throwing.
01:26And so Wahshi used to be in the festivals, and he used to be able to hit a target from very far away and hit it perfectly, right, in the days of Jahiliyyah. His spear never missed its target. And Wahshi, by the way, is someone of a specific brilliance.
01:40SubhanAllah, I'm actually going to share with you the subtext or the context of a hadith about Wahshi, which I find just super interesting.
01:49It's actually in Sahih al-Bukhari, the chapter on the killing of Hamza ibn Abd al-Muttalib, may Allah be pleased with him. The chapter is the chapter of the martyrdom of Hamza, may Allah be pleased with him. It's narrated by Ja'far ibn Amr, who says,
02:03I went out with Ubaidullah ibn Adi ibn al-Khiyar. That I went out with Ubaidullah ibn Adi ibn al-Khiyar. And we got to the town of Homs in Syria, in Hisham.
02:14So this is well after the death of the Prophet, may Allah's peace and blessings be upon him. So Ubaidullah said to me, so imagine two young men, right, going out, and they're at this town of Homs.
02:26And when you look at celebrity houses and who lives there and who lives there, Ubaidullah is like, by the way, you know Wahshi? He lives over there. So this is the whole background in the hadith in Bukhari.
02:38So he says, do you want to go see him so we can ask him about the killing of Hamza, may Allah be pleased with him? Like this legend, the story of the martyrdom of Hamza, may Allah be pleased with him.
02:52So basically we went and we inquired about the specific location of the house of Wahshi. And they pointed towards Wahshi and they said he's in the shade of his palace as if it was a full water skin.
03:05So he had a full house where he settled in Homs in Syria. So we went up to him until we were a short distance away from him. And we said, "As-salamu alaykum." And he said, "Wa alaykum as-salam."
03:17Ubaidullah, this is why I'm telling you, this is such a fascinating story. Ubaidullah, he was wearing his turban and he had his face wrapped.
03:26So he said, the only thing that showed for me were my eyes and my feet. So I said to Wahshi when I saw him, "Do you know me?"
03:40Ta'rifuni? Do you know who I am? Why would Wahshi know who he is? So Wahshi looks at him. He looks at his eyes. And then he looks at his feet.
03:54And he says, "I don't know who you are, but I know that Adi ibn al-Khiyar, back in the day in Mecca, married a woman named Umm Qital, the daughter of Abu al-As. And she delivered a boy in Mecca.
04:07And I was told by my master to go and to find a wet nurse for that boy in Mecca. So I went and I carried that baby in Mecca. And I handed him over to her.
04:19And your feet look like the feet of that baby. And it was him. So Ubaidullah wraps his face. And like, yeah, that was me.
04:32Which the scholars point to, like this is in the Sharh of Bukhari, like the intelligence of Wahshi. Like he was someone so precise. Like if he could see where his spear would hit from far away, which is science, right? Like I can throw the spear from the furthest point and I know exactly what point.
04:46So I could look at this grown man decades later and from his feet. So like, yeah, I remember holding a baby whose feet look like that. And he said, "Yeah, I'm Ubaidullah.
04:59I'm the child of al-Khiyar. Like that's actually who I am." So Ubaidullah says to him after that, he said, "Can you tell us the story of the murder of Hamza?
05:12The martyrdom of Hamza." So that's when Wahshi actually gives a first-person account. Like just imagine you're in Homs 30, 40 years after the death of the Prophet, may Allah's peace and blessings be upon him, in Syria, sitting in the house of Wahshi, right?
05:26He had a big house in Syria in front of his house. And he's starting to tell you about what happened way back in the day in Uhud and how he took the life of Hamza, may Allah be pleased with him.
05:37So he begins to share the story and it's firsthand, which makes it that much more powerful because he tells the story from start to finish.
05:46He says that my master, my owner, Jubayr, his uncle Tu'ima ibn Adi was killed by Hamza, may Allah be pleased with him. Okay?
05:59And Jubayr told me, "If you kill Hamza, the uncle of the Prophet, may Allah's peace and blessings be upon him,
06:12in place of my uncle, then you will go free. You will go free." Okay? So Wahshi, he actually says, and this is really important in the narration. He says, "I really had no desire for war. I had no desire for fighting people.
06:26I didn't even know who Hamza really was. I'm not interested in this." The enslaved class of people, they're so exploited and oppressed in these days of ignorance.
06:35This is the opposite of Bilal, may Allah be pleased with him, and those that were freed from slavery by the Prophet, may Allah's peace and blessings be upon him, that are now holding the highest of positions. Wahshi's like, "We were not even allowed to have an opinion on this stuff."
06:48Remember with Bilal, when Bilal, may Allah be pleased with him, weighed in, it's like, "Who are you? Why are you talking? Why are you even talking about Allah and oneness and one God? No one asked you about your theology." Salman al-Farisi, when Salman, may Allah be pleased with him, asked, what did you say?
07:02And he gets punched in the face by his master. "Go back to work. What are you doing?" So Wahshi says, "I had no real skin in the game. I didn't care. I just wanted to be free." Which shows you the cruelty, by the way, and the logic of warfare too.
07:16SubhanAllah, when I'm reading this story with a modern lens, I'm thinking about people that are sent overseas to kill innocent people. But the way that they're maybe looking is like, "I don't know anything about the Middle East. I don't know anything about the Muslim world. I don't know anything about this.
07:30I don't know anything about that. But that's how I'm going to get my full scholarship. That's the only way I can pay for college. That's the only way I can get through this. I don't actually want to kill people, but that's the only way for me." There's a mindset there and there's a cruelty to the system that upholds that.
07:44That leads to that level of dehumanization. That's part of the harj that the Prophet, may Allah's peace and blessings be upon him, was talking about, that people kill and they don't know why they're killing, and the one who's being killed doesn't know why he's being killed by that person. Murder is so senseless at that point.
07:57So Wahshi said, "I just wanted freedom. I just wanted my education. I just wanted my scholarship." So he basically said, "So I got to Uhud,
08:07and he watched the beginning of the battle play out. So Wahshi said, "I stalked Hamza from the beginning of the battle.
08:19So he said, Hamza came out to duel the way that he always does before the battle started, and Hamza, of course, won. Hamza was fighting ferociously in the battle of Uhud.
08:33So Wahshi said, "I was just following him the entire time, waiting for the perfect shot, like a sniper. Waiting for the perfect shot. So I let time go on and time go on and time go on, and then basically after Hamza killed someone,
08:46he had his arm up in the air. Wahshi said, "I threw the spear and it hit him right in the midsection, and it went through his body.
08:56Wahshi is now recounting what he saw, saying Hamza was so strong that he fell, but then he got up and he actually pursued me despite the spear being through his body.
09:09Like he tried to actually come after me despite the spear having hit him with a direct hit. And that basically went on until he succumbed to his wounds,
09:22and Hamza was martyred. Now some of you know, it's not Jubayr ibn Mut'im, wasn't it? The other person, who's the person that you think of in the story of Hamza being killed by Wahshi? Hind, right?
09:36So Hind also has something to do with this because, of course, Hamza radiAllahu ta'ala anhu killed her relatives as well, right? In the Battle of Badr, he fought her relatives as well. So Wahshi said that during the battle, she was saying,
09:50"Eihan eihan Abu Dasma, ishfi washtifu." So you know, go on Abu Dasma, heal and you will be healed. And Hind started to promise Wahshi gold and jewelry,
10:03beyond the freedom that Jubair ibn Mut'im had already promised him. So one person is promising him freedom, and Hind is promising him more gold and sort of the psychological reward
10:16and some of the extra bounty if he's able to kill Hamza. And so Wahshi was able to kill Hamza radiAllahu ta'ala anhu. Wahshi earned his freedom. He took his gold.
10:30He basically went and he lived as a free man in Mecca. So he went back to Mecca and Wahshi lived as a free person, right? And he didn't get involved in anything beyond that. So again, he doesn't care. Like this is not a battle that concerns me.
10:44This feud between the Prophet ﷺ and his relatives, Islam, kufr, I really don't care about all this. Remember, a lot of people are just indifferent to this all. So Wahshi avoided. He didn't come out to the next battle. He didn't come out and he didn't participate in anything.
10:57But he stayed that way. Now when he heard that the Prophet ﷺ was coming back to Mecca, Fath Mecca, he fled to Al-Ta'if. He fled to Al-Ta'if because he knows what he did, right?
11:11And so he should expect the ramifications of what he did to the most beloved person to the Prophet ﷺ. When Hamza radiAllahu anhu was struck and mutilated, that cry of the Prophet ﷺ was a cry that was unfamiliar to the Companions.
11:24Like it hurt the Prophet ﷺ deeply. Hamza radiAllahu anhu was his uncle but also his brother, his best friend, the first person of power to embrace Islam. He meant so much to the Messenger of Allah ﷺ.
11:36Like the Prophet ﷺ wept over Hamza radiAllahu anhu. So Wahshi basically didn't want to take the chance of the Prophet ﷺ coming to Mecca and maybe showing him mercy even though he wasn't on the list.
11:49The Prophet ﷺ did not put him on the list. He wasn't on a list like Habbar, but he was like, I'm out of here. So he fled to Al-Ta'if. This is very interesting by the way because like before I read deeply in the story of Wahshi,
12:01I always assumed that Wahshi is sort of one of the many in Fath Mecca that the Prophet ﷺ is sitting with and forgiving and letting things go.
12:09But Wahshi actually came to Medina amongst the people of Ta'if embracing Islam in the year of delegation.
12:20So he came with Banu Thaqeef to embrace Islam with the people of Ta'if. And subhanAllah, think of the irony of this. The worst day of the Prophet ﷺ's life, Ta'if.
12:33What those people did to him on the day of Ta'if was worse than Uhud. And he already ﷺ is dealing with the emotion of seeing the people that hurt him that way and forgiving them.
12:45And then on top of that, Wahshi is with them. So the Prophet ﷺ looks at him and he says, "Anta Wahshi? Are you who I think you are?"
12:57What in the world? What are you doing with the people of Ta'if with Banu Thaqeef? Right? Coming from there. And Wahshi says, "Na'am Ya Rasulullah. Yes, it's me."
13:09Prophet ﷺ says, "Anta qatalta Hamza?" You killed Hamza? You really killed Hamza?
13:18Like this lingers with the Prophet ﷺ which shows you like the rahma of his, the pain of Uhud, of Hamza radiAllahu anhu, is deeper than the pain that was inflicted on him. Right? Like you killed Hamza.
13:31And he said, "Na'am Ya Rasulullah." He said, "How did you kill Hamza?" So Wahshi actually started to share the details of how that murder took place.
13:43And the Prophet ﷺ was so pained that he forgave him. But he said, "In sha'ta, if you can, I ask you, ghayyi ba wajhaka anni."
13:55Like, I just, try not to let me see your face. It's traumatic. It's painful right now. You're forgiven. Your Islam is accepted. But there's a lot of pain right now. So I just ask you.
14:08Like, this is rahma by the way. It's mercy. I'm not going to do anything to you. But it's really hard to look at you right now as you just went back and recounted the details of how you mutilated my uncle. Right?
14:20And remembering that day and like the memory hits fresh. Like you see Wahshi after all these years and like you're hearing it and like, you got to remember like Uhud was always close to the Prophet ﷺ's heart.
14:31The last place he visited before he died was to go and make du'a for the shuhada of Uhud. The key shahid of Uhud is Sayyid al-Shuhada Hamza. The greatest martyr of them all. So he said, "Look, it's just hard for me to look at your face.
14:42I'm asking you please just keep your face out of my sight right now. Just for right now." Right?
14:50So Wahshi said that I was so embarrassed that when the Prophet ﷺ would enter a gathering or speak to a gathering,
15:00I basically sat behind the people to spare the Prophet ﷺ the pain. Right? Now, you know the Prophet ﷺ. If Wahshi went to the Prophet ﷺ, kissed his hand, said, "Ya Rasulullah, forgive me." I mean we already talked about Habbar and Abdullah.
15:14I mean the Prophet ﷺ, was he really going to tell Wahshi, "Get out of my face?" No. He said, "Look, if you can, it's hard for me. Just I don't want to see your face right now as you just mentioned these things to me."
15:25But Wahshi said, "I felt the pain of having caused that pain to the Prophet ﷺ. And I did not want to cause more pain to the Prophet ﷺ by him having to see me.
15:36So I just always sat behind the gathering until the Prophet ﷺ passed away."
15:42This is one of the most important lessons for us as human beings that forgiveness does not always mean that the wound goes away.
15:53Sometimes the pain remains and it takes time for the wound to heal even for the best of Allah's creation. Right? Forgiveness is there. Forgiveness means that no consequence is inflicted on the person.
16:04And indeed no consequence is inflicted on the person. But at the same time, it still hurt the Prophet ﷺ. So he said that, "I waited until the Prophet ﷺ passed away.
16:17And basically I stayed in this. I never really came close to the Prophet ﷺ because I didn't want to cause him more pain by having him see my face." So no rejection of Islam but acknowledging the Prophet ﷺ's grief.
16:30So he said, "Then when the Prophet ﷺ passed away, I said to myself, as I heard of the fitna of Musaylimah al-Kadhdhab,
16:43the worst of the false prophets, his apostasy, his murdering spree, all the evil that Musaylimah is doing, Wahshi said that I said to myself,
16:55'I'm going to go find Musaylimah and I'm going to be the one who takes out Musaylimah,
17:08hoping that that will be a means of expiation for my hand having taken Hamza.'" So subhanAllah, he said, "I took the same spear that I killed Hamza with.
17:21And I went out in Hurub al-Ridda and I went to Hadiqat al-Mawt, which is the Garden of Death that was surrounding Musaylimah, where Musaylimah was just, people would go in there and be killed.
17:34And he said, 'I stalked him, same way I stalked Hamza. And with the same hand, he said, 'I threw my spear and it struck Musaylimah.'
17:44And then Abu Dujana or Abdullah ibn Zaid went to him as he was struck with the spear and finished him off. He said that I said, 'Alhamdulillah,
18:01With this spear, I killed the best of people in the days of ignorance, and the worst of people in Islam.
18:10With the same hand, the same spear, I killed the best of people in the days of ignorance, and the worst of people in Islam.'"
18:20And subhanAllah, with that, that's why many of the ulama you'll find in the tafsir of Surah Az-Zumar.
18:32Say, "O My servants who have transgressed against themselves, do not despair of the mercy of Allah. Allah forgives all sins. And indeed, Allah is All-Forgiving and Most Merciful."
18:43They always include the story of Wahshi when they talk about how to do kafaratu adhdhunub. He thought to himself, not just like, "I'm forgiven. The Prophet ﷺ already forgave me." He said, "I want to do something that I can meet Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala with on the day of judgment,
18:57and say that I did something in its place. You're already forgiven. You don't have to do that. But he wants to do that so that he can exert his skill in the exact same way.
19:08And there's a deeper wisdom as well, by the way, when you think about who Musaylimah is and who Hamza is. Hamza opened the doors of Islam. When Hamza became Muslim, there was an added dignity to Islam. There was an openness.
19:20There was a new way of coming forth with Hamza. And then when Umar became Muslim, that just flung the doors wide open. Hamza was the first, and then Umar opened the doors next level. So Hamza was the pride of Islam. Hamzah opened the doors of Islam.
19:34Hamzah was the one who came out in Badr, came out in Uhud. He was the one that you lined up behind for Islam. Musaylimah was the one who was crushing the presence of Islam,
19:47who was killing the huffadh, who was trying to undo the progress of the Prophet ﷺ. And so they really do represent the opposites of one another. But I also will say that in the story of Wahshi, in this regard,
20:00that you also find him in the explanation of the hadith, where the Prophet ﷺ said that Allah laughs at two men. Two men who meet each other in Paradise, and one of them killed the other.
20:14What is it like when the murderer meets the murdered, and the murdered meets the murderer in Jannah? Can you imagine the surprise, the shock of Hamzah when he sees Wahshi in Jannah?
20:26When the last look, the last sight, right, was Wahshi throwing the spear at him, and Hamzah looking at Wahshi to try to get him for what he did to him, and now they're in Jannah together, and there are no hard feelings anymore.
20:39Nothing in the chest. So you even can talk about Uhud, and talk about what that was like, and no one's mad. There isn't like a, you know, I still haven't let that go, you know. No, you're in Jannah. So everything's been cleared from the chest.
20:51And then you imagine sitting with Hamzah and Wahshi, and like getting the details, like of the different sides of the story. That's what it's like in Jannah. So the Prophet ﷺ said Allah laughs at these two men who bump into each other in Jannah, who meet each other in Jannah,
21:04the qatil and the maqtul, the one who killed and the one who was killed. One person martyred the other, and then the other one lived afterwards, and was martyred as well. Wahshi, radiy'Allahu ta'ala anhu, afterwards continued to participate
21:17in the futuhat, towards the conquest, towards al-Sham. He participated famously in the Battle of Yarmouk, which of course is one of the most significant battles in Islam as it took place in the area of al-Sham.
21:31And he lived to a very old age, and he was held with a lot of respect. Again, Wahshi lives a very dignified life in Syria, and they go there to ask him about what happened that day,
21:43and to hear firsthand what happened on the day of Uhud, and what happened on the day of Yamama. Like these are two major battles in the history of Islam, Uhud and Yamama. And he passes away in the time of Sayyidina Uthman, radiy'Allahu ta'ala anhu,
21:56in Syria, in al-Homs, where he's still buried today. He had two sons, Harb ibn Wahshi ibn Harb, and he had a second son named Ali.
22:08So Harb and Ali both became narrators of hadith as well, and transmitted from their father, and in fact they are in some of the narrations in Sunan Abu Dawud.
22:20And afterwards, basically, they lived in al-Sham, and they taught in al-Sham, they transmitted in al-Sham, and their descendants also continued until this day in al-Sham,
22:32all the way from Wahshi ibn Harb, radiy'Allahu ta'ala anhu. Again, if Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala could give you a story like that, I'll just end with this thought that, you know the man who killed 99 people, and then killed 100?
22:46What do you think is worse, killing 100 people, or killing Hamzah, radiy'Allahu ta'ala anhu? Like subhan'Allah, like that's my hand, I did that, and then seeing the pain that you caused to the Prophet ﷺ. But even then is a story of redemption,
22:59and in that is the praise of the Prophet ﷺ, and his mercy, and in that is the praise of the Most Merciful, who sent him ﷺ, ar-Rahman ar-Rahim, who has unlimited and infinite mercy. We ask Allah 'azza wa jal to have mercy upon us,
23:13and to allow us to embody that mercy that we love about the Prophet ﷺ, and to inspire in us the tawbah that was found in Abdullah ibn Abi Umayyah, and Habbar, and Wahshi, so that they did not despair from Allah, but instead they turned back to Allah. Allahumma ameen.
23:27Wa assalamu alaykum wa rahmatullahi wa barakatuh.







































































































































































































