Safwan ibn al-Mu'attal

Ṣafwān ibn al-Muʿaṭṭal al-Sulamī was a Companion assigned to bring up the rear of the army on the return march from al-Muraysīʿ (5 AH), tasked with recovering anything left behind at each stop. Having overslept the order to march, he found the campsite empty and, making his way after the army, came upon ʿĀʾishah bint Abī Bakr alone in the desert, having been inadvertently left behind. He recognized her, having seen her before the revelation of the verses of ḥijāb, said only "Innā lillāhi wa innā ilayhi rājiʿūn," and without exchanging another word, dismounted and turned his back so she could mount his camel unobserved, then walked the camel by hand the entire distance back to rejoin the army, catching up with the caravan near ʿAbdullāh ibn Ubayy's rearward position. This episode became, through ʿAbdullāh ibn Ubayy's malicious exploitation of it, the origin point of the slander against ʿĀʾishah.

Ṣafwān had not yet married at the time; he married afterward and went on to be martyred fighting in the conquest of Armenia during the caliphate of ʿUmar ibn al-Khaṭṭāb, where his grave remains.