To understand the Ansar (may Allah be pleased with them), you have to begin not with them, but with the loneliest hour in the life of the Prophet Muhammad ﷺ. You have to begin in a place of rejection, on a road covered in blood, so that you can feel the size of the mercy that came afterward.
Khadijah had died, the wife who comforted him when the revelation first came and who believed in him when no one else would. Abu Talib had died, the uncle whose protection had kept the worst of Quraysh at bay. And so the Prophet ﷺ went out to Ta'if, thinking that perhaps there were people in that proud city of leaders who would take him in. Instead he was met with the worst humiliation a human being can be met with. He was cursed and mocked and made to walk between two lines of children and the thugs of the city, who pelted him until the blood ran into his sandals and the stones gathered in his shoes. He walked mile after mile until he no longer recognized where he was.
And there, broken, he called out to his Lord with words that hold two things at once. First a fear about the unseen: as long as You are not angry with me, he said, I do not care, I will be patient. And then, beneath that, a very human and very real question. Ila man takiluni. To whom are You leaving me? My family has rejected me. My people have rejected me. The strangers are no better. Where do I go from here?
This chapter is the answer to that question. And the wisdom of Allah is woven all through it, that He let His Prophet ﷺ taste this unprecedented cruelty from one people just before he would taste an unprecedented love from another.
The dream of green, and the city that said no
The Prophet ﷺ had seen a dream of a place of greenery, and the landscape of Ta'if resembled it, so he tried Ta'if first. But Ta'if was a place of pride, of chiefs and wealth, of people who felt they had everything and needed nothing. Ta'if said no.
There was another place, far poorer and farther from Makkah, called Yathrib: a scattered settlement of perhaps forty-six encampments, like small military bases, whose chiefs had largely killed one another off in generations of fighting. To the worldly eye it offered nothing, and the advice of any sensible person would have been simple: do not waste your breath on people like that, for even if they believe, what can they possibly give you?
But the Prophet ﷺ never looked past people. Ta'if was his hardship, his usrah; Yathrib would become his ease, his yusrah. The proud city that refused him is today visited by only a few; the poor settlement that took him in became al-Madinah, one of the most beloved cities on the face of the earth. That reversal is the whole story in miniature: the world looked at the Ansar and saw nothing, and Allah looked at them and saw the people who would carry His Prophet ﷺ.
Six young men in the valley
It was the eleventh year after the revelation began, and Makkah was sure the matter was finished. Every pathway had been cut; where could this man possibly go? In the season of Hajj the Prophet ﷺ moved among the tribes gathered from across Arabia, with Abu Bakr and Ali (may Allah be pleased with them) at his side, the first man and the first youth to believe. He would approach a gathering, ask politely to be heard, and meet the same wall every year. Some ignored him. Some listened a moment out of courtesy and walked away. Some set impossible conditions. Rejection after rejection.
Then, at Mina, he saw six young men with no elder among them, from that disturbed place in the middle of nowhere, Yathrib. He went to them, sat with them, and asked if they would listen. They were not proud men; they said, of course. He spoke to them of the oneness of God and of the message he carried, and when he learned they were from Yathrib, he noted that they were neighbours of the Jewish tribes who had settled there, tribes that had long spoken of a prophet who was to come. The young men looked at one another. Everything this man was saying lined up with what they had been hearing for years. And one of them, As'ad ibn Zurarah, said the sentence that changed their lives: why do we not race them to this, and embrace this prophet before they do?
It looked like a small thing. It was the hinge of history. They returned the next year with six more, twelve men in all, and pledged themselves to him: that they would not associate any partner with Allah, would not steal, would not commit adultery, would not kill their children, would not slander, and would not disobey in what is right. The very essence of the faith. The Prophet ﷺ sent Mus'ab ibn Umayr (may Allah be pleased with him) back with them to teach the religion. Within a single year, it is reported, every household in that city had learned the faith and was waiting for him. The whole town was ready before he ever arrived.
A profitable transaction
The following Hajj, seventy-three of them came. They met in secret, by night, behind the place of the stoning, for if Makkah learned that so large a group had come to pledge to him there would be bloodshed. The Prophet ﷺ came to them with his uncle al-Abbas, who pulled the matter open before them. Are you sure about this? If you are not equal to it, turn back now, it is no shame. We are his family. We can keep him.
They refused to turn back. They understood exactly what they were taking on, and said to him plainly: by taking you in, we make enemies of everyone. Our fragile alliances will shatter. Makkah will come for us, and others will come for us, and we are not only taking you, we are taking in a whole community of refugees with you. What do we get in return?
The Prophet ﷺ did not promise them a great city, or a famous mosque, or a legacy in the books, or that their town would one day be the heart of an empire. He said one thing. You get Paradise. That is all. No worldly reward, because they were not in it for the world, and so there was no point in naming a worldly reward at all.
And they said: that is a profitable transaction. We will take it. We will take you in, follow you, give you everything, and we want nothing of this world in return.
There was something in these people. Our mother Aisha (may Allah be pleased with her) explained it best. She spoke of the Day of Bu'ath, the war that had killed off the chiefs of the two tribes of Yathrib, the Aws and the Khazraj, and said it was a day Allah had given as a gift to His Messenger ﷺ. Because of that war the people were broken, their leaders dead, every one of them carrying wounds, exhausted by fighting they had only inherited from their fathers and no longer believed in. The pride had been beaten out of them. They were a humbled people, and a young people, and humbled young hearts can receive a prophet in a way that proud old ones cannot. Makkah was rich and felt invincible and could not accept anything that threatened its world. Yathrib had already learned that this world, when all you do with it is fight and bury your dead, holds no sweetness at all.
The sweetness of faith
In Sahih al-Bukhari there is a chapter on faith, and in it a narration of Anas ibn Malik (may Allah be pleased with him), who was himself one of the Ansar; al-Bukhari knew precisely whose narration to choose. The Prophet ﷺ said that there are three qualities, and whoever has them has tasted the sweetness of faith: that Allah and His Messenger ﷺ are more beloved to him than anything else; that he loves a person only for the sake of Allah; and that he would hate to return to disbelief the way he would hate to be thrown into the fire.
Then, in the very next chapter, al-Bukhari places a second narration of Anas, and the placement is itself a teaching. The Prophet ﷺ said that to love the Ansar is a sign of faith, and to dislike them a sign of hypocrisy. The scholars say what al-Bukhari is quietly pointing to is this: there is no group who embodied that sweetness of faith like the Ansar. Their love of Allah and His Messenger ﷺ surpassed everything else almost at once. They loved the Prophet ﷺ not for his eloquence, not because he was a Makkan, not for his genius or beauty or manners, but for one reason only, because they understood that Allah had sent him. And they loved those who came with him because the One they loved and the Messenger they loved had told them to. Nothing on earth was going to make them go back. Through Uhud, through every trial, every force that tried to pull them away from the Prophet ﷺ failed, because they had no interest whatsoever in returning to what they were before.
Once, Ghaylan ibn Jarir asked Anas whether the name "the Ansar," the Helpers, was something they had called themselves, a rallying cry, or whether Allah had named them. Anas answered: rather, Allah named us. What a name to be given by your Lord, and it carries an echo. When Isa, peace be upon him, stood with the world turned against him and a small band at his side, he called out, who are my helpers for Allah? And his disciples answered, we are God's helpers.
You who believe, be God's helpers. As Jesus, son of Mary, said to the disciples, 'Who will come with me to help God?' The disciples said, 'We shall be God's helpers.' Some of the Children of Israel believed and some disbelieved: We supported the believers against their enemy and they were the ones who came out on top.
Qur'an 61:14
The Prophet ﷺ likened the twelve who first came to him to those disciples. Isa, peace be upon him, lifted from a world that had turned on him, had asked, where are my helpers? And the Prophet ﷺ at Ta'if had asked, to whom are You leaving me? The Ansar were the answer Allah sent. So great was the Prophet's love for them that he said: if all the people went one way and the Ansar went down a valley, he would go down the valley of the Ansar; and were it not that he was, by his nature, a migrant among the Muhajirun, he would have wished to be called one of them, for there was no people he would rather have belonged to.
A story of love
The story of the Ansar with the Prophet ﷺ is, from beginning to end, a story of love. When the Muhajirun arrived in Madinah, stripped of home and family, the Ansar received them not as a burden but as celebrities. Come to my house. No, come to mine. It was not staged and not forced; their hearts were genuinely full, because they had tasted the sweetness of faith and so they loved the people of faith. When Abdur-Rahman ibn Awf (may Allah be pleased with him) was paired with Sa'd ibn ar-Rabi' (may Allah be pleased with him), Sa'd offered him half of everything he owned, the better half; Abdur-Rahman, a proud merchant, thanked him and asked only to be shown the marketplace. The Ansar gave the migrants the better part of their houses and food, and sometimes went hungry so their guests could eat. When the Prophet ﷺ proposed they merely share their date palms, they argued with him, trying to give more than he would allow. He had to temper their generosity.
And their love grew precise. Ibn Hajar notes that they studied his habits to learn what foods he liked, so they could set those aside from their farms for him. They even learned which of his homes he was happiest in, and timed their gifts to arrive when he was there: the attention of people in love. Allah could have praised them for their generosity, but listen to how He chose to describe them instead:
Those who were already firmly established in their homes [in Medina], and firmly rooted in faith, show love for those who migrated to them for refuge and harbour no desire in their hearts for what has been given to them. They give them preference over themselves, even if they too are poor: those who are saved from their own souls' greed are truly successful.
Qur'an 59:9
The Prophet ﷺ, for his part, told them he loved them, again and again, the way you should tell those you love for Allah's sake. Once, seeing the women and children of the Ansar, he stood and swore three times that they were among the most beloved of people to him. On Eid he would not simply pray and go home; he would go around Madinah greeting them, because he knew it was not Eid for them until they had seen their Prophet ﷺ. And his love showed most in his grief: he hated for the Ansar to suffer casualties in battle. At Khandaq, as they dug the trench, starving and covered in mud while the hypocrites taunted that this prophet had ruined their lives, the Ansar answered by singing their pledge to stay with him until the end. And the Prophet ﷺ, watching these young people who had given up everything, raised his hands: O Allah, there is no life except the life of the Hereafter, so honour the Ansar and the Muhajirun, and forgive them both.
The tent at Hunayn
The test of that love came at its sharpest after Makkah was conquered. The Prophet ﷺ had returned, victorious, to the city of his birth and of Khadijah, the place he loved and had only left because its people drove him out. After the battle of Hunayn that followed, he began distributing the spoils, and much of it went to the people of Makkah and to those who had only just accepted Islam, men whose faith was still new and needed softening.
The Ansar watched, and their hearts sank. They did not contemplate leaving the faith; they would never. But they were hurt. We took him in. We loved him. Our swords are still wet with the blood we shed for him, and now he gives to the people of Makkah and seems to forget us. Is he going to stay there and leave us? Some murmured, may Allah forgive the Messenger of Allah, the gentlest possible way of voicing pain.
So the Prophet ﷺ had them gathered, all of them, in one tent, and let no one else enter. Exhausted as he was from battle, he came in to find them crammed together, much as they had first crowded around him on the outskirts of Makkah ten years before, except that some of those first faces were now in their graves. He asked them: what is this that I have heard from you? And Anas notes, even here, that the Ansar did not know how to lie; the hurt simply showed on their faces.
Then he spoke to them, and his words took them apart and put them back together. Did I not come to you when you were lost, and Allah guided you through me? Were you not poor, and Allah enriched you through me? Were you not enemies, and Allah united your hearts through me? They could only answer: Allah and His Messenger have done us every favour. He said, will you not answer me back? You could say to me, truthfully: you came called a liar, and we believed you; abandoned, and we sheltered you; in need, and we gave you everything. You could mention all of that, and I would not deny it. But they were too shy to speak.
And then he asked them the only question that mattered. Are you not pleased that the people go home with their sheep and camels and spoils, and you go home with the Messenger of Allah? He was telling them he was coming with them, home to Madinah, not staying in Makkah. He raised his hands and prayed: O Allah, have mercy on the Ansar, and the children of the Ansar, and the children of the children of the Ansar. And the whole tent wept until their beards were soaked with tears. They had taken in a man they did not yet know, for nothing but Paradise. In ten years they had fallen entirely in love with him. And now all they wanted in the world was Paradise and his companionship, and they had been given the promise of both.
They never changed, not even in victory. When he later offered them governance over a wealthy region, they answered that they would accept only if their brothers from the Muhajirun were given the same; otherwise they wanted no power at all, content to remain the helpers in the background. He told them, then, to be patient, for after him they would find others preferred over them, passed over precisely because of their selflessness. Be patient, he said, until you meet me at the Fountain. And in his final days, too weak to stand, a cloth bound around his feverish head, he climbed the pulpit one last time and made his last public request to the ummah: take care of my Ansar. They were, he said, the ones in whom he confided; they had fulfilled what was upon them, so accept the good from the good among them and overlook the faults of any who err.
What the life of the Ansar asks of our faith
It is easy to read the story of the Ansar and feel a warm admiration that costs us nothing. That would be to miss what their lives are actually asking of us. They are not a beautiful memory to be honoured. They are a question put to our own iman.
Start with why they are loved at all. The Prophet ﷺ said that whoever loves the Ansar loves them for their love of him ﷺ. Think of someone most precious to you, taken in by strangers who shelter and feed and protect them and ask nothing back. You would love those strangers forever, though you never met them. That is why a believer loves the Ansar: they did for the most beloved of all creation what we, reading the story of Ta'if and aching, only wish we could have done. We say, if only I had been there, I would have protected him, though we do not actually know that our faith would have stood. They stood. So loving them is not sentimentality. It is a thermometer of the heart, which is why love of them is a sign of faith and dislike of them a sign of hypocrisy.
But the deeper thing they ask is about the reason for our love and our deeds. Their whole greatness rests on one foundation: they did it for Allah. They loved the Prophet ﷺ for Allah, not for what he could give them. They loved the refugees for Allah, finding no resentment in their chests even as their own resources thinned. And when they were offered the one thing every other people fights for, power, they handed it back, content to be like salt in a meal, because the love of this world had no grip on their hearts. That is the quality to take. Ask honestly how much of what you do is done to be seen and thanked and counted, and how much you could do the way the Ansar did, in the background, for Allah alone. They were promised Paradise and nothing of this world, and called it a profitable transaction.
And notice what such people are spared. When the Khilafah passed to Abu Bakr in their own city, the city they had every worldly claim to lead, they did not rebel; one visit settled it, because there was no hunger for the world in them to be wounded. The love of this world is what makes us bitter when we are passed over and anxious when we are not thanked. The Ansar were free of all of it. Contentment with Allah's decree is not weakness; it is the freest way a heart can live.
So carry one concrete thing from them into an ordinary day. Do one good deed this week that no one will ever know you did, and let it be for Allah alone. When you are overlooked or unthanked, hold your tongue and your heart steady, and remember the Ansar who were content to be salt in the meal. And tell someone you love them for the sake of Allah, the way the Prophet ﷺ told the Ansar again and again that he loved them. That is the sweetness of faith, lived in private, and the door to it is still open. Allah named them the foremost, and beside them He named a third group, the only one we can still hope to join:
God will be well pleased with the first emigrants and helpers and those who followed them in good deeds, and they will be well pleased with Him: He has prepared Gardens graced with flowing streams for them, there to remain for ever. That is the supreme triumph.
Qur'an 9:100
We cannot be of the Muhajirun, and we cannot be of the Ansar. But we can be of those who followed them in doing good. May Allah be pleased with the Ansar, and with the children of the Ansar, and with the children of their children, and may He make us among those who followed them in their excellence, gathered with His Prophet ﷺ at the Fountain, loving those whom He loves.
This chapter follows the account of the Ansar in Dr. Omar Suleiman's series The Firsts (Yaqeen Institute). Qur'an translations are from M.A.S. Abdel Haleem (61:14, 59:9, 9:100). Where the histories carry more than one narration, the most widely reported has been followed.