The Conversion of Safwan ibn Umayyah

Shaykh Yasir Qadhi explains:

Ṣafwān ibn Umayyah, son of Umayyah ibn Khalaf, Bilāl's old tormentor, and one of the Quraysh who had tried to fight at the Conquest, fled toward Jeddah swearing to throw himself into the sea rather than live. His cousin and closest friend, ʿUmayr ibn Wahb, himself once a would-be assassin of the Prophet ﷺ after Badr, turned believer, begged and won a safe-conduct for him, and the Prophet ﷺ gave ʿUmayr the very turban he had worn entering Mecca as a token. ʿUmayr caught Ṣafwān at Jeddah on the point of sailing: "I come to you from the best of men, his honour is your honour, his glory your glory," the old language of lineage turned to the service of Islam. Ṣafwān came back but would not dismount until, before the whole Ḥaram, the Prophet ﷺ granted him four months' safety, twice what he asked, yet still he did not accept Islam.

❧The Gift That Won Him

When the Prophet ﷺ marched to Ḥunayn he asked Ṣafwān to lend a hundred coats of armour: "Is this by force?" "No, بَلْ عَارِيَةٌ مُؤَدَّاة, a guaranteed loan" (a source of much fiqh on liability for borrowed goods). Ṣafwān rode with the army still a pagan. After Ḥunayn, the greatest spoils in Islam's history, dwarfing even Khaybar, he stood staring at a whole valley of livestock, and the Prophet ﷺ said, أَتَعْجَبُ مِنْ هَذَا؟ … خُذْهَا فَإِنَّهَا لَكَ, "Does this amaze you? Take it, it is yours." Ṣafwān said such a gift could come only from the heart of a prophet, and took the shahādah. He had been won as one of الْمُؤَلَّفَةُ قُلُوبُهُمْ, "those whose hearts are reconciled", the man to whom the Prophet ﷺ had been the most hated, until he gave and gave and became the most beloved. So too Suhayl ibn ʿAmr and others came to Islam in these weeks.