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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 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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