The house of al-Arqam sat at the foot of Safa in early Mecca, and it was in this house that the first Muslims met in secret. Among them was a boy of fifteen, thin and quick, whose father had been killed before he was born and whose mother, Safiyya bint Abdul-Muttalib, was the sister of the Prophet Muhammad ﷺ himself. His name was Zubair ibn al-Awwam.
He had entered Islam. He was one of the first eight men to say the shahada. He kept it hidden from Quraysh because he had to. His uncle Nawfal, who had taken over his upbringing after his father died, was one of the more brutal opponents of the new religion. When Nawfal learned that his nephew had become a Muslim, he wrapped Zubair in a mat and lit a fire beneath it. Zubair did not renounce.
One afternoon a rumor ran through Mecca. Some enemy of Quraysh had killed Muhammad ﷺ. The Muslims heard it. The Prophet ﷺ was still praying at the Kaaba. Zubair heard the rumor while he was inside a house at the upper part of Mecca. He drew his sword. It was the first sword drawn in Islam. He ran through the streets of Mecca, sword in hand, past the houses of Quraysh, past the men who would have killed him for it.
He came out into the open ground near Safa and saw the Prophet ﷺ standing there, alive. Their eyes met. The Prophet ﷺ said: what is this, Zubair?
Zubair said: I heard you had been killed.
The Prophet ﷺ said: what were you going to do?
Zubair said: I was going to strike whoever killed you until I too was killed.
The Prophet ﷺ raised his hands and prayed for him. He prayed for the boy. He prayed for the sword. He prayed for the arm that held the sword. The Companions who saw it and who narrated it afterward said the Prophet ﷺ prayed for Zubair on that morning in a way that would follow him for the rest of his life.
Zubair carried that sword to Badr. He carried it to Uhud. He carried it to the Khandaq, and to Khaybar where an enemy's blade laid his cheek open to the bone and left his eye hanging from its socket, and he pushed the eye back into its place with his thumb and rejoined the battle. He carried it to Hunayn. He carried it to the Yarmouk campaign. He was still carrying it when the Prophet ﷺ, years later, looked around the Muhajirun and Ansar during a moment of quiet and said the words the Muslims remembered:
Every prophet has a hawariyy, a disciple. And my hawariyy is Zubair.
What the story teaches. A covenant is set in a single moment and then it lasts the rest of your life. Zubair took his sword out of its sheath at fifteen, ran through the streets of a city that would have killed him for what he believed, and then he never really put the sword down again. He took it to Badr and Uhud and Khaybar and Yarmouk. He kept it in his hand until the Battle of the Camel. What was decided in that moment when he heard the rumor was decided once and for all, and it was decided in Zubair's favor. When the Prophet ﷺ later named him the disciple, he was giving a public name to a private covenant that had been made in a single afternoon many years before, when a fifteen-year-old boy heard that his kinsman had been killed and drew his sword before anyone else could.