Suhayl ibn Amr

Suhayl ibn ʿAmr (سُهَيْلُ بْنُ عَمْرو) was the chieftain of Banū ʿĀmir ibn Luʾayy, a sub-tribe of the Quraysh. When the Prophet ﷺ, stranded outside Mecca after Ṭāʾif, sent emissaries seeking tribal protection for re-entry, Suhayl ibn ʿAmr was the second approached. He declined, citing the excuse that his sub-tribe had never given protection to someone from the Banū Kaʿb, but the speaker notes this was a flimsy excuse motivated by embarrassment rather than genuine hostility; Suhayl was not like Abū Jahl. He is most famous as the chief Quraysh negotiator of the Treaty of Ḥudaybiyyah in Year 6 AH, it was he who insisted on striking out "Rasūlullāh" from the Prophet's title in the treaty. Despite this hostility throughout the Meccan period, Suhayl later accepted Islam and became a Companion.

Suhayl was known as Khaṭīb Quraysh, the orator of Quraysh, its most eloquent and persuasive speaker, and a member of its ruling council (the Nadī). His standing is captured by an incident from Badr, where he was taken prisoner: when a wife of the Prophet ﷺ saw the noble Suhayl with his hands bound to his neck as captives were tied, she blurted out that it would have been more fitting for him to have died than to be seen so humiliated, until the Prophet ﷺ rebuked her for siding against Allah and His Messenger. At Badr, ʿUmar asked to pull out Suhayl's front teeth (or, by the account, cut out his tongue) so he could never again rouse Quraysh against the Muslims with his oratory; the Prophet ﷺ refused, saying he would not mutilate anyone lest Allah mutilate him though he was a prophet, and predicted that Suhayl would one day take a stand that would please ʿUmar.

That prediction was borne out. Suhayl accepted Islam only at the Conquest of Makkah, among the last batch of converts (al-ṭulaqāʾ), yet became one of the most devout of them, foremost among that group in prayer, fasting, and charity. When news of the Prophet's ﷺ death threw Makkah into turmoil and its recent converts wavered, and the appointed governor went into hiding fearing for his life, it was Suhayl who stood before the Kaʿbah and steadied the city with a fiery address, warning them: "Do not be the last people to enter Islam and the first to leave it." He restored the governor and held Makkah firm. Later, visiting ʿUmar in Madinah, he watched former slaves like Bilāl and Ṣuhayb admitted before the old Qurashī nobility; when Abū Sufyān bristled, Suhayl answered that the anger should be turned on themselves, those men had been called to Islam and raced ahead while Quraysh lagged behind, and the blessing of that head start outweighed any precedence at a caliph's door. He urged them to make up the distance through jihād, joined the armies fighting in Syria, and died there a martyr.