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Al-Aqra ibn Habis

الْأَقْرَع بْن حَابِس

al-Aqraʿ ibn Ḥābis

Biography

A leading chieftain of the age and one of those whose hearts were reconciled (al-muʾallafat qulūbuhum) with the immense spoils of Ḥunayn, like Abū Sufyān he was given a fortune from the largest ghanīmah of the Sīrah. Returning to his people, he testified that only a prophet could give away wealth so freely: "By Allāh, this man is a Nabī, for no king would do what he has done, I have just come from a man who has no concern for poverty at all." His words became a proof of how the Prophet's ﷺ boundless generosity drew the hearts of the Arab chieftains to Islam.

Significance

His remark, that no king would give away all his wealth as the Prophet ﷺ did, so he could only be a genuine Messenger, is one of the classic Sīrah testimonies to the reconciling power of the Ḥunayn distribution.

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