Ṣirmah, The Ḥanīf of Madinah

❧Ṣirmah: The Only Known Ḥanīf of Madinah

Ṣirmah is mentioned by Ibn Isḥāq as the sole recorded Ḥanīf of Yathrib (Madinah). Recall: a Ḥanīf (حَنِيف) is someone who, without access to revealed scripture, abandoned the idolatry of their people and declared adherence to the pure monotheism of Ibrahim (ʿalayhi al-salām), worshipping only Allāh (ʿazza wa jall). We discussed several Ḥunafāʾ from Makkah (Waraqah ibn Nawfal, Zayd ibn ʿAmr, Abū ʿUbayda, Uthmān ibn al-Ḥuwayrath); Ṣirmah is our only known example from Madinah.

He was over a hundred years old when the Prophet ﷺ arrived, which means he was already elderly before the Prophet ﷺ was even born.

❧His Journey to Monotheism

In his youth, Ṣirmah openly rejected the idol-worship of the people of Yathrib. He spent time in Makkah seeking truth among the Ḥunafāʾ and the people who followed the religion of Ibrahim. He nearly converted to Christianity, but examined it and found it unsatisfactory. He concluded: "I will worship upon the religion of Ibrahim (ʿalayhi al-salām). I will not worship your idols, and I will worship only the Lord of Ibrahim."

Ibn Isḥāq records remarkable details about him:

- He performed Ghusl (complete ritual bath) after Janābah (sexual impurity), a practice derived from the Sharīʿah of Ibrahim.

- He instructed the women of his household to bathe after their menses, again, a ruling from the Sharīʿah of Ibrahim preserved through oral tradition.

These practices show that in certain families across Arabia, fragments of the original divine law had been preserved across centuries, even without a continuous line of prophecy.

Ibn Isḥāq also records that Ṣirmah composed poetry in praise of Ḥanīfiyyah (the pure monotheism of Ibrahim) and in criticism of idol worship. He declared publicly to the people of Yathrib: "I will not worship your gods. I worship the Lord of Ibrahim."

❧His Conversion and Death

When the Prophet ﷺ emigrated to Madinah, Ṣirmah was in the final weeks or months of his long life. He was over a hundred years old. Allāh (ʿazza wa jall) blessed him, after a lifetime of sincere, unguided pursuit of truth, to encounter the Prophet ﷺ and embrace Islam before his death.

He converted and died shortly afterwards.

❧The Lesson of His Story

Dr. Qadhi cites Ṣirmah's story as a vivid illustration of a Quranic and theological principle: those who sincerely seek Allāh are guided to Him by Allāh (ʿazza wa jall), even without formal access to revelation.

Ṣirmah spent perhaps 80 or 90 years worshipping Allāh alone, on the basis of nothing more than the intuition that the idols were false and the Lord of Ibrahim was true. He preserved elements of Ibrahim's law, Ghusl, ritual purity, across the centuries. And at the end of his life, when the truth arrived embodied in a prophet, Allāh opened his heart to recognise it.

For those who ask: "What about people who never heard of Islam?", Ṣirmah's story suggests that the sincere seeker finds his way, whether through the complete message (as most do) or, in rare exceptional cases, through preserved fragments of prior revelation until the complete message reaches him.