Abdullah ibn Amr ibn al-As
616 CE–684 CE · Mecca
Abdullah ibn Amr ibn al-As was a Companion (sahabi, a contemporary follower of the Prophet Muhammad) best remembered in Muslim tradition for writing hadith — reports of the Prophet's words and deeds — down on paper at a time when most were preserved by memory. The collection attributed to him, al-Sahifa al-Sadiqa ("the truthful page"), is described in later hadith scholarship as one of the earliest such written documents; it does not survive independently, but its contents are traditionally said to have passed through his grandson Amr ibn Shuayb and to have been largely absorbed into the ninth-century Musnad of Ahmad ibn Hanbal. He is the son of Amr ibn al-As, the general who conquered Egypt.
Tradition holds that he embraced Islam shortly before his father, and reports credit him with an unusual interest in the earlier scriptures alongside the Qur'an. He is widely remembered for intense asceticism — constant fasting and night-long Qur'an recitation — which, according to well-known reports in the canonical collections, the Prophet personally counseled him to moderate.
He was present at the Battle of Siffin (37/657) on the side of his father and Mu'awiya, but several reports have him saying he neither struck a blow nor fired an arrow, and that he regretted being there; other accounts have him holding the standard or commanding a wing. His later years were spent largely in Egypt. Both the year and place of his death are disputed in the classical sources.
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Mecca
What they did here
Born in Mecca into the Banu Sahm clan of Quraysh, son of Amr ibn al-As. His exact birth year is not recorded; modern reference works place it around 616 CE based on his being roughly a dozen years younger than his father, but this is an estimate, not an attested date.
About Mecca
Mecca (Makka), in the Hejaz of western Saudi Arabia, is the birthplace of the Prophet Muhammad and the site of the Ka'ba; it is Islam's holiest city and the destination of the annual hajj pilgrimage, toward which Muslims pray. As a centre of learning that drew scholars from across the Muslim world, it hosted many of the figures connected here during periods of study, teaching, or pilgrimage.
The world in their lifetime
Thinkers, teachers, and rulers whose lives overlapped with Abdullah ibn Amr ibn al-As’s — a glimpse of the wider world they lived in. Drawn purely from recorded birth and death years.
Islamic world
- Amr ibn al-As· 585 CE–664 CE
- Sa'id ibn Zayd· 593 CE–671 CE
- Talha ibn Ubayd Allah· 594 CE–656 CE
- Al-Zubayr ibn al-Awwam· 594 CE–656 CE
- Abdullah ibn Mas'ud· 594 CE–653 CE
- Sa'd ibn Abi Waqqas· 595 CE–674 CE
- Umm Salama· 596 CE–681 CE
- Ali ibn Abi Talib· 600 CE–661 CE
- Mu'awiya ibn Abi Sufyan· 602 CE–680 CE
- Abu Hurayra· 603 CE–679 CE
- Hafsa bint Umar· 605 CE–665 CE
- Jabir ibn Abdullah· 607 CE–697 CE
- Zayd ibn Thabit· 611 CE–665 CE
- Abu Sa'id al-Khudri· 612 CE–693 CE
- Anas ibn Malik· 612 CE–712 CE
- Abdullah ibn Umar· 614 CE–692 CE
- Aisha bint Abi Bakr· 614 CE–678 CE
- Usama ibn Zayd· 614 CE–674 CE
- Abdullah ibn Abbas· 619 CE–687 CE
- Abdullah ibn al-Zubayr· 624 CE–692 CE
- Hasan ibn Ali· 625 CE–670 CE
- Husayn ibn Ali· 626 CE–680 CE
- Sa'id ibn al-Musayyib· 637 CE–712 CE
- Jabir ibn Zayd· 639 CE–711 CE
Christian world
Buddhist world
Graeco-Roman world
Rulers world
- K'ak' Uti' Witz' K'awiil (Smoke Imix)· 604 CE–695 CE
- Constans II· 630 CE–668 CE
- Munmu of Silla· 626 CE–681 CE
- Marwan I· 623 CE–685 CE
- Emperor Gaozong of Tang· 628 CE–683 CE
- Yuknoom Ch'een II (Yuknoom the Great)· 600 CE–686 CE
- K'inich Janaab' Pakal I (Pakal the Great)· 603 CE–683 CE
- Bajlaj Chan K'awiil (Ruler 1)· 625 CE–692 CE
- Emperor Tenmu· 631 CE–686 CE
- Yazdegerd III· 624 CE–651 CE
- Wu Zetian· 624 CE–705 CE
- Yazid I· 646 CE–683 CE
- Constantine IV· 652 CE–685 CE
- Abd al-Malik ibn Marwan· 644 CE–705 CE
Works
No works attributed in the corpus yet.