Bilal ibn Rabah
580 CE–640 CE · Mecca
Bilal ibn Rabah (also called al-Habashi, "the Abyssinian") was an enslaved man in Mecca who became one of the earliest followers of the Prophet Muhammad and is remembered in Islamic tradition as the first muezzin (mu'adhdhin, the person who calls Muslims to prayer). Early biographical works such as Ibn Hisham's Sira and Ibn Sa'd's Tabaqat report that he was of Abyssinian (Ethiopian) descent and that, after he embraced Islam, his Meccan owner Umayya ibn Khalaf tortured him to force him to recant. These accounts state that Abu Bakr bought and freed him.
After the emigration (hijra) to Medina, tradition holds that the Prophet appointed Bilal to call the prayer because of his powerful voice, and that he performed the call from atop the Ka'ba after Mecca came under Muslim control around 630 CE. He is also reported to have taken part in the Battle of Badr.
Sources relate that after the Prophet's death in 632 CE, Bilal largely gave up the call to prayer and moved to Syria (ash-Sham) to join the military campaigns there. Several traditions describe him giving the adhan again only on rare, emotional occasions.
Reports of his death disagree: it is variously placed in 17, 18, 20 or 21 AH, and his age given as anywhere from about sixty to seventy. Most accounts place his death and burial in Damascus (the Bab al-Saghir cemetery); others name Daraya near Damascus, or Aleppo. The scholar al-Mizzi held that the Aleppo grave belongs to Bilal's brother.
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Mecca
What they did here
Early biographies (Ibn Hisham's Sira; Ibn Sa'd's Tabaqat) report that Bilal was born and enslaved in Mecca, of Abyssinian descent, and that he was among the first to follow the Prophet Muhammad. The same sources relate that his owner Umayya ibn Khalaf tortured him to make him recant, and that Abu Bakr purchased and freed him. The birth date (c. 580 CE) is a traditional estimate, not an attested record.
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 and teachers of other traditions whose lives overlapped with Bilal ibn Rabah’s — a glimpse of the wider world they lived in. Drawn purely from recorded birth and death years.
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