Bilal: From 'Ahadun Ahad' in the Dust to the Roof of the Kaabah

Bilāl ibn Abī Rabāḥ رضي الله عنه was an Abyssinian slave owned by Umayya ibn Khalaf of the Banū Jumah clan, and Umayya had a sadistic streak that the Seerah makes no effort to hide.

When Bilāl accepted Islām, Umayya handed him over to the ruffians of Makkah, the gangs of idle teenagers, the kind of people every society produces. They tied a rope around his neck and dragged him through the valleys and streets of Makkah. Every society, Ibn Masʿūd noted, has people like this, those without direction, those who can only harm. And they found their target in Bilāl.

Through all of it, the rope, the dragging, the jeering, Bilāl said one thing: أَحَدٌ، أَحَدٌ. One. One. Not "stop." Not "please." Just the declaration of Tawḥīd. The Oneness of Allah.

Then came the personal sessions with Umayya himself. Every morning in the heat of the day, and Makkah's midday heat in summer is not a metaphor, Umayya would have other slaves carry a massive boulder into the open desert and pin it on Bilāl's chest, leaving him there without food or water beneath the noon sun, for the entire day.

Two separate non-Muslim witnesses testify to what they saw.

Hassan ibn Thābit, the poet, was visiting Makkah for Ḥajj in those Jāhilī days. He passed Bilāl being tortured and later said: "I remember how severe the torture was, and I wondered how he was still alive."

ʿAmr ibn al-ʿĀṣ, who was not yet Muslim, passed the scene and narrated: "The rocks beneath him were so hot from the sun that if I had laid raw meat on them, it would have cooked. And he was lying on those rocks." And through all of this, Bilāl was saying: أَكْفُرُ بِاللَّاتِ وَالْعُزَّىٰ وَأُومِنُ بِاللهِ, "I reject al-Lāt and al-ʿUzzā and I believe in Allah."

Ibn Masʿūd رضي الله عنه said, summarizing the difference between Bilāl and the others: "Every one of them eventually broke under the torture and said whatever Quraysh wanted them to say. Except Bilāl. Bilāl had made his soul insignificant before Allah. His soul was not worth anything to him compared to his Lord. He would not give them even one word."

Umayya kept at it. Quraysh kept at it. And Bilāl kept saying: أَحَدٌ، أَحَدٌ.

❧The purchase that changed everything

Abū Bakr al-Ṣiddīq رضي الله عنه heard what was happening and went to Umayya. He offered to buy Bilāl. Umayya, who saw that Bilāl was never going to break, agreed. Abū Bakr purchased him and immediately freed him. No conditions. No indentured service. Free.

When someone later told Abū Bakr he had paid too much for a worthless slave, Abū Bakr said: "Wallāhi, if the price were the whole world I would have paid it."

❧The reward: from the ground to the roof of the Kaʿbah

The principle of al-jazāʾu min jinsi al-ʿamal, the reward corresponds to the action, was never more visible than in what happened to Bilāl.

When the Adhān was first legislated, the Prophet صلى الله عليه وسلم chose Bilāl. He said: "Bilāl has the best voice among you." The man whose voice had called Aḥadun Aḥad in pain and humiliation in the valleys of Makkah was appointed to announce Allāhu Akbar in honor and dignity across Madīnah, five times a day, every day, for the rest of the Prophet's صلى الله عليه وسلم life.

And in the 8th year of the Hijra, when the Prophet صلى الله عليه وسلم conquered Makkah without bloodshed and entered the city at the head of ten thousand, the first thing he did was cleanse the Kaʿbah of its idols. And then he commanded Bilāl to climb to the top of the Kaʿbah itself.

The voice that had cried Aḥadun Aḥad in the dust, dragged through the streets of the city with a rope around his neck, now stood on the roof of the most sacred house on earth, and gave the first Adhān ever called in the valley of Makkah. Every echo that came back from the surrounding mountains, that was the sound of Tawḥīd filling the city that had tried to extinguish it.

الله أكبر، الله أكبر. أشهد أن لا إله إلا الله. أشهد أن محمدا رسول الله.

❧The blessings of the Adhān

The Prophet صلى الله عليه وسلم said: "If people knew the reward of the Adhān and the first row, and found no way to compete for it except by drawing lots, they would draw lots." (Ṣaḥīḥ Bukhārī and Muslim).

He also said: "Any Muʾadhdhin who gives the Adhān, not one animate or inanimate thing that hears his voice except that it will testify for him on the Day of Judgment." And he said: "The Muʾadhdhinīn will have the longest necks on the Day of Judgment", an expression meaning: they will be the most honored, the most looked up to.

The voice that Makkah tried to silence. The voice that was persecuted for saying One. That same voice became the sound that announced to the Ummah five times every day, from every corner of the earth where Islām reached, that only Allah is great.