Ammar ibn Yasir

Ammar ibn Yasir (born c. 567-570 CE in Mecca; the exact year is a traditional estimate) was among the first generation of Muslims and one of the most severely persecuted. His father Yasir, of Yemeni (Qahtani) origin, and his mother Sumayya, who had been enslaved, were tortured by Meccan opponents; tradition holds that Sumayya was the first person to be killed for the new faith. Reports in the early biographical literature (the sira of Ibn Ishaq and Ibn Sa'd) say Ammar embraced Islam early, around the gatherings at the house of al-Arqam. Muslim tradition links Qur'an 16:106 - which permits a believer to utter words of disbelief under coercion while keeping faith in the heart - to Ammar yielding under torture, though such occasions-of-revelation reports are interpretive rather than firmly attested.

After the migration (hijra) to Medina, sources report that Ammar helped build the Prophet's mosque and fought in the early battles. He served as governor of Kufa under the caliph Umar and was later dismissed. Following the killing of the caliph Uthman, Ammar became a committed supporter of Ali, and he was killed - in Safar 37 AH / 657 CE, a date well attested in both Sunni and Shia tradition - fighting on Ali's side at the Battle of Siffin against Mu'awiya's forces. A widely transmitted hadith found in Bukhari and Muslim reports the Prophet saying a 'rebellious party' (al-fi'a al-baghiya) would kill Ammar; the report is generally graded sound, but its application - whether it marks Mu'awiya's camp as the wrongful party - has long been debated among Sunni, Shia and other interpreters and is presented here as a contested position, not a settled fact. He is reported to be buried near the Siffin battlefield, in today's Raqqa region of Syria, and is held in especially high honor in Shia tradition.