The day Hamza accepted Islam

Abu Jahl abused the Prophet ﷺ in the street of Mecca. A servant witnessed it and ran to tell Hamza, who had just returned from a hunt. Hamza went to the Kaaba, struck Abu Jahl on the head with his bow, and declared his Islam in front of Quraysh.

Hamza ibn Abdul-Muttalib was among the most feared men of pre-Islamic Mecca. Uncle of Muhammad ﷺ, foster-brother, only two years older, he had grown up with the Prophet in the household of Abdul-Muttalib. He was a hunter. He was a warrior. He was a member of the Meccan aristocracy who had not yet accepted the message his nephew was preaching.

One day Hamza had gone out of Mecca early to hunt. In his absence, Abu Jahl, Amr ibn Hisham of the Banu Makhzum, the chief opponent of the Prophet ﷺ among the Meccan leadership, came upon Muhammad ﷺ sitting at Safa. Abu Jahl insulted him openly. He mocked him. He struck him. He drew blood. The Prophet ﷺ answered him with silence.

A servant woman of the Banu Hashim clan witnessed the scene from a nearby house. When Hamza returned from his hunt in the afternoon and passed the Kaaba where the Meccan men gathered, the woman ran out to him. She said: "O Abu Umara, if you had seen what your nephew Muhammad suffered a little while ago from Abu Jahl. He found him sitting here and abused him and struck him. Muhammad did not answer him with a word."

Hamza stood still. Then his temper rose in him. He was a man of the pre-Islamic code of tribal honour, and the code was absolute on this point: an insult to a member of your family, unanswered, was a stain on the whole clan. He did not go home. He did not consult his brothers. He turned around and walked straight to the Kaaba with his hunting bow in his hand.

He came upon Abu Jahl sitting in a group of Quraysh leaders. He raised the bow and struck Abu Jahl a heavy blow on the head with it. Abu Jahl was cut. Blood ran down his face. He turned in fury but stopped when he saw who had struck him, Hamza, chief of the Banu Hashim's warriors, was not a man Abu Jahl would fight without a war behind him.

The Meccan men around Abu Jahl rose in anger. But Abu Jahl himself, calculating even in the moment of humiliation, said to them: "Leave Abu Umara alone. By Allah, I abused his nephew in the ugliest way." He knew he had crossed a tribal line that would cost the Meccan opposition an outright war with the Banu Hashim if pursued. He accepted the blow. He walked away with blood on his face.

Hamza went to the Prophet ﷺ and told him what he had said. The Prophet ﷺ asked him: is that true? Do you truly accept Islam? Hamza was reported in that moment to have paused. He had said the words in anger. Had he meant them? He answered his nephew: "O son of my brother, my heart accepts Islam. Ask Allah to make me firm on it." The Prophet ﷺ made du'a for him. Hamza never went back.

From that day the Muslim community had one of the most feared warriors of Mecca as its member. The Meccan opposition was checked. Every serious act against a Muslim from that day would risk a fight with Hamza and the Banu Hashim. It bought the tiny early Muslim community a year or more of space to consolidate.

Hamza fought at Badr where he killed Utba ibn Rabi'a in single combat. He was killed at Uhud in 3 AH by Wahshi ibn Harb, an Ethiopian slave promised freedom by Hind bint Utbah in revenge for her father Utba's death at Badr. The Prophet ﷺ wept over his body. He was cut so badly the Prophet could not recognise him at first. His body was mutilated. He was buried at Uhud where he fell. The Prophet ﷺ called him Sayyid ash-Shuhada, the master of the martyrs, and Asadullah, the Lion of Allah.

What the story teaches

Hamza's acceptance of Islam is one of the most-told scenes of the Meccan period. It is remembered because the trigger for his declaration was tribal honour, not theological conviction, and yet the tribal honour became theological conviction and lasted the rest of his life. The classical Muslim commentators have long noticed the pattern: Allah brings people into Islam through the doors of their own hearts, and the door for Hamza was the code of the fatiya, the tribal warrior. Allah did not require him to accept for a "purer" reason first. Allah took the reason at hand, opened the door with it, and Hamza walked through and stayed. The lesson is not lost on any Muslim parent whose child accepts Islam for a reason that would sound thin in a theology seminar. Hamza's da'wa began with an insult to his nephew and a hunting bow, and it ended with a martyr's grave at Uhud.