Al-Zubayr ibn al-Awwam

Al-Zubayr ibn al-Awwam was one of the earliest followers of the Prophet Muhammad and, through his mother Safiyya bint Abd al-Muttalib, the Prophet's first cousin; his father, al-Awwam ibn Khuwaylid, belonged to the Quraysh clan of Asad. Tradition holds that he embraced Islam as a youth and was among the first Muslims to emigrate to Abyssinia (modern Ethiopia) to escape persecution in Mecca, before joining the wider migration (hijra) to Medina in 622. Sources remember him above all as a warrior and cavalryman, present at the early battles of the Muslim community, including Badr (624) and Uhud. In Sunni tradition he is counted among "the ten promised Paradise" (al-asharah al-mubashsharah), a status that Shia tradition does not accept. After the death of the caliph Umar in 644, he was named one of the six-man council (shura) charged with choosing the next caliph. In 656, following the killing of the caliph Uthman, al-Zubayr — together with Talha and the Prophet's widow Aisha — opposed the new caliph Ali at the Battle of the Camel near Basra. Reports agree that al-Zubayr withdrew from the field before or during the fighting; he is then reported to have been pursued and killed by a man named Amr ibn Jurmuz, traditionally at a place called Wadi al-Siba near Basra. The deeper motives behind his withdrawal are reported differently by later partisan sources and cannot be settled with certainty.