There is a kind of courage that does not stop to count the cost. It hears the call and it moves, and only afterward, if there is an afterward, does it think about what answering meant. Most of us weigh and hesitate until the moment has passed. Al-Zubayr ibn al-Awwam (may Allah be pleased with him) had this courage from the time he was a boy of thirteen, and he never lost it. When the Prophet Muhammad ﷺ wanted to name the one man in his Ummah who answered the way the disciples of Isa once answered their prophet, he named al-Zubayr. To understand him, you have to begin with the woman who raised him.
The falcon his mother raised
His mother was Safiyyah bint Abd al-Muttalib (may Allah be pleased with her), the aunt of the Prophet ﷺ, a woman of fierce strength who set out to raise her son into something hard and brave. She disciplined him so severely that one of his uncles once told her she was being too rough on the boy. She was not raising a gentle child; she was raising a falcon, and she wanted him to have courage and nobility and honour. He would grow up to be all of that and to exceed every expectation she placed on him.
His father, al-Awwam, was the brother of Khadijah (may Allah be pleased with her). So al-Zubayr came to the Prophet ﷺ through two doors at once: a first cousin through his mother, and a nephew of the Prophet's beloved wife through his father. He grew up an orphan in a society that mistreated orphans, and he carried that wound even before Islam came. When it came, he did not need much convincing; he knew the Prophet ﷺ already. Some scholars place his Islam as early as the fourth or fifth person to believe, alongside Abu Bakr al-Siddiq, who guided him. He was only twelve or thirteen years old.
He was inseparable from Talha ibn Ubaydillah (may Allah be pleased with him), a boy of the same age who embraced Islam in the same days. The two were so bound together that the Prophet ﷺ once named them his neighbours in Paradise, which is not a thing earned lightly.
The boy who would not disbelieve
The cost came quickly. When al-Zubayr became Muslim, he lost nearly every friend except Talha and his cousin Ali, and was ridiculed by the youth of Makkah. And then his own uncle came for him.
This uncle was Nawfal ibn Khuwaylid, the brother of Khadijah, and one of the fiercest enemies the Prophet ﷺ ever faced, nicknamed by him the Shaytan of Quraysh. There is something almost unbearable in it: that the brother of the woman who gave everything for the Messenger of Allah ﷺ would be among those who came at Badr to try to kill him, so much so that the Prophet ﷺ, for love of Khadijah, did not even want to meet him on the battlefield.
This was the man assigned to break al-Zubayr. In those early days, before the open persecution began, the first tactic of Quraysh was to let families torture their own. Nawfal wrapped al-Zubayr in a rug, shut him in a small room, and lit a fire beside his face so the smoke would suffocate him. He stepped on him and beat him and demanded he renounce his religion. And every night this thirteen-year-old boy would scream, not the scream of someone breaking, but of someone refusing to. He shouted, "I will never disbelieve. I will never disbelieve." The neighbours walked past and heard him, and what they heard was not surrender but resistance. The smoke filled his lungs until he passed out, and still the words coming out of him were that he would never turn his back on his faith. The falcon his mother wanted him to be, he already was, and more.
You would think that kind of nightly torture would make a boy keep his head down. It did the opposite. He never missed the gatherings in the house of al-Arqam, where the Prophet ﷺ taught and the Qur'an came down; he went from his uncle's fire straight back to the Messenger of Allah ﷺ. He, Talha, and Ali became a trio, three young men knit together by age and closeness.
And then came the moment that named him forever. A rumour reached al-Zubayr that the Messenger of Allah ﷺ had been attacked. He came running, sword already drawn, and arrived panting before the Prophet ﷺ, who asked, "What is wrong with you? Do you have news?" Al-Zubayr said he had heard the Prophet ﷺ was attacked. The Prophet ﷺ smiled and asked, "And what would you have done?" The boy answered that he would have struck whoever had touched him. In the earliest, most dangerous days of Islam, when drawing a sword in the Prophet's defence would almost certainly have meant his own death, he had not stopped to think at all. For this he earned the title of the first man to draw his sword in defence of the Prophet ﷺ.
The swimmer in the Nile
As his uncle's torture grew worse, the Prophet ﷺ gave him permission to migrate to Abyssinia with his cousin Ja'far (may Allah be pleased with him). Most who made that journey went as couples; al-Zubayr was not yet married, and he went alone among them. There he drew close to the Negus, the just king who sheltered the Muslims, a man he would later grieve and pray over in his absence from Madinah.
The most vivid moment of those years came during an attempted coup against the Negus. A faction rebelled, and the two armies faced each other across the Nile. The Muslims had to stay out of it, but their safety hung on the outcome. They waited on the riverbank, desperate for news. Al-Zubayr was the youngest, the fittest, and the only one who could swim. So they fashioned a sort of skin for him, and he slipped into the Nile, crossed to where the battle was raging, watched, and swam back. As he came across the water toward the waiting believers, he lifted his voice: "Allahu Akbar." The Negus had won. Umm Salama, who told this story, said they all began to make takbir, and that she swore by Allah they had never been so relieved. It is the whole man in one image: he goes into the water while everyone else waits on the shore.
A thousand men on the battlefield
If you had seen al-Zubayr, you would have seen a very tall man, lean and muscular, with only a light beard, so tall that on his horse his feet would nearly brush the ground. He was one of only two men, the other being Khalid ibn al-Walid, who could control a horse with his legs alone while wielding a sword in each hand. Umar would later say one al-Zubayr was worth a thousand men. His legacy is almost entirely written on the battlefield.
When he came back from Abyssinia, he married Asma bint Abi Bakr (may Allah be pleased with her). Abu Bakr wanted his daughters married to men struggling in the path of Allah, and he knew the life he was giving her: that of a man always out in front. She made the migration to Madinah while heavily pregnant, into a city where the enemies of the Muslims were spreading a rumour that the believing women had been bewitched so none could bear a living child, and where the first months brought only miscarriages. Then Asma and al-Zubayr had a son, Abdullah ibn al-Zubayr, the first child born to the migrants in Madinah. The Prophet ﷺ softened a date in his own mouth and placed it in the child's, made supplication for him, and they carried the baby through the streets crying "Allahu Akbar." Even a child born alive was, in those days, a victory. And al-Zubayr named his children with intention: where his friend Talha named his sons after prophets, al-Zubayr named his after warriors and martyrs. You can read a man's hopes in the names he chooses.
Then come the days that made him. Every battle al-Zubayr fought belonged to him, but none like Badr. The veterans of Badr hold a rank in this religion that no later deed can reach; the Prophet ﷺ said they were forgiven for all that came before and after. When Jibril asked how he regarded them, the Prophet ﷺ said they were the best among the Muslims, and Jibril said the angels who fought at Badr were the best of the angels.
At Badr the Muslims were caught unready, outnumbered and out-armoured, with only two horses among them against a hundred on the other side. The two who rode those horses were al-Miqdad and al-Zubayr. That day al-Zubayr wore a yellow turban. He drove into the enemy ranks, running between their horsemen with both swords drawn, and took two grievous wounds that did not slow him. And here is the honour the Prophet ﷺ told them of afterward: when Allah sent the angels down at Badr, Jibril and the angels came wearing the yellow turban of al-Zubayr. The angels of heaven dressed themselves like him; no one else can make such a claim. His son Urwa would say that as a child he used to put his fingers into the wounds in his father's body, holes so deep they were like openings in his flesh: two from Badr, one from Yarmuk.
The disciple
At Uhud, the disadvantage was greater still, the enemy larger. The Prophet ﷺ called out, "Who will take my sword?" Each time he asked, al-Zubayr answered at once, until the Prophet ﷺ gave the sword to Abu Dujana instead. Al-Zubayr admitted he was hurt, until he saw Abu Dujana fight, and then he understood. But notice what he had done: he had answered, every time, the instant the call came, without a thought for the cost.
That day a giant of Quraysh, Talha ibn Abi Talha, rode out on the finest horse in the enemy's ranks and called for someone to face him. Only one man answered, on foot: al-Zubayr. His mother Safiyyah came to the Prophet ﷺ and said, "O Messenger of Allah, he will kill my son." The Prophet ﷺ said, "Rather, al-Zubayr will kill him, if Allah wills." Ali described al-Zubayr that day as a man with the fury of a tiger and the spring of a lion. He struck the giant's sword down, pulled him off his horse, took his blade, and killed him with it, then rode that finest horse back to the Muslim lines.
Al-Zubayr was among the few who did not flee from the Prophet ﷺ at Uhud when the line broke and it seemed all was lost. He put his body between the Prophet ﷺ and death and took wound after wound. Later Aisha (may Allah be pleased with her) asked al-Zubayr's son Urwa, "Do you know which verse was revealed about your father and your grandfather, Abu Bakr al-Siddiq?" It was about those who, after the catastrophe of Uhud, still answered the call and stayed:
Those who responded to God and the Messenger after suffering defeat, who do good and remain conscious of God, will have a great reward.
Qur'an 3:172
Then came the trench, al-Khandaq. The Prophet ﷺ learned that tribes were plotting against the Muslims from within their fortress, and asked, "Who will go and bring me their news?" To slip in among people bent on killing the Prophet ﷺ was nearly suicidal. Three times he asked, and all three times the only one to answer was al-Zubayr. And the Prophet ﷺ said the words that would define him: "Every prophet has a disciple, and my disciple is al-Zubayr."
It is easy to read past that as one more virtue in a long list. Sit with it. The Prophet ﷺ likened al-Zubayr to the Hawariyun, the disciples of Isa. And what are they praised for in the Qur'an? Their answer. Isa asks who will help him in the cause of Allah, and they reply:
When Jesus realized they [still] did not believe, he said, 'Who will help me in God's cause?' The disciples said, 'We will be God's helpers; we believe in God- witness our devotion to Him.'
Qur'an 3:52
The distinguishing mark of the disciples was the speed of their yes. That is exactly what the Prophet ﷺ had watched al-Zubayr do since he was a boy running with a drawn sword toward a rumour. When al-Zubayr returned safely from the fortress, the Prophet ﷺ said to him what he had said to only one other man, Sa'd: "May my father and mother be sacrificed for you." For a word like that from the Messenger of Allah ﷺ, all of it was worth it.
He fought on. At Yarmuk, against the Byzantines, he charged alone through the entire Roman army to the rear, turned, and cut his way back to the front, felling everyone in his path both ways. He was a leading general in the conquest of Egypt. When Umar died, al-Zubayr was one of the ten given the glad tidings of Paradise and one of the council of six who chose the next caliph, and his vote went to his cousin Ali.
His debts, and his murder in prayer
His death is bound together with his sons' in something the histories treat as a sign.
When Uthman (may Allah be pleased with him) was besieged, al-Zubayr sent his sons to guard him and wanted to fight the besiegers himself, but Uthman forbade any blood spilled in his cause and ordered him to stand down. Al-Zubayr practised that restraint, hating every moment of it. Then Uthman was murdered. In the chaos that followed, al-Zubayr and Aisha and Talha went out demanding justice for the killers, and met Ali before the battle of the Camel.
This is the tragedy. Al-Zubayr and Ali had grown up together, embraced Islam together, loved one another. Ali reminded him of a day long ago when the Prophet ﷺ found the two of them sitting as brothers and asked, "Do you love Ali?" Al-Zubayr said of course he did. And the Prophet ﷺ told him that one day he would fight against Ali, and would be in the wrong. Al-Zubayr had forgotten it. When Ali brought it back to him, he broke down in tears, gave Ali his pledge, and walked off the battlefield.
A man named Amr ibn Jurmuz followed him as he left, asking to keep his company, and al-Zubayr, thinking him another man walking away from the fighting, allowed it. But the man knew he could never overpower al-Zubayr in a fair fight, so he waited. When the time for prayer came and al-Zubayr said "Allahu Akbar" and stood defenceless before his Lord, the man stabbed him to death and took his sword. He carried it to Ali, expecting to be rewarded. Instead Ali wept, for he had heard the Prophet ﷺ say, "Give the murderer of the son of Safiyyah the news of the Fire." Ali began to repeat it, and the killer heard, fled, and took his own life. Al-Zubayr went to Paradise among the ten; his murderer went to the Fire by the tongue of the Prophet ﷺ.
Al-Zubayr used to pray that he would die in his prayer. He was killed in his prayer. So, in the histories Dr. Omar Suleiman relates, were his sons after him, this death standing before Allah becoming a pattern in his family. There is something almost luminous in it, for a person is raised on the Day of Resurrection in the state he died.
There is one last thing, and it is the most surprising. On the morning of his death, al-Zubayr told his son Abdullah that he sensed he would be killed that day, and that his one great worry was his debts. This man, so close to the Prophet ﷺ, was in debt because he kept no wealth in his house; whatever came to him, he loaned or gave away by nightfall. He told his son to sell whatever was needed to pay every creditor, and if he fell short, to seek the help of his Master, meaning Allah. For years afterward, whenever the burden overwhelmed him, Abdullah would call out, "O Lord of al-Zubayr, settle his debt." It turned out that far more was owed to al-Zubayr than he had ever owed; his estate, once reckoned, was worth a fortune in the millions, wealth he never once tasted in this life, because he had given it away as fast as it came.
He left only about five or six narrations from the Prophet ﷺ, astonishing for a man so close to him, with a wife like Asma and sons like Abdullah and Urwa to carry his words. When his son asked why, al-Zubayr said he had heard the Prophet ﷺ say, "Whoever lies about me, let him take his seat in the Fire," and he was too afraid of misrepresenting him to speak. The same fearlessness that drove him alone into armies made him tremble at a single misquoted word.
What al-Zubayr's life asks of our faith
It is tempting to read a life like this and feel only awe, to file al-Zubayr away as a warrior we could never resemble. That would be a waste. He is not a statue but a question put to your own iman, and the question is simple: when the call comes, how long do you take to say yes?
The thread running through every scene of his life is the speed of his obedience. The boy running with a sword. The single man slipping into the Nile. The young man answering at Uhud and al-Khandaq before anyone else could open his mouth. This is what made him the disciple, and the Qur'an tells us plainly what the disciples were praised for: not their strength, but their answer. "We will be God's helpers." You and I are not asked to charge through a Byzantine army, but we are asked, every single day, to answer Allah, and most of us answer slowly, or only once it is convenient, or not at all. The prayer can wait until the show ends; the charity until the money is comfortable; the repentance until we are older. Al-Zubayr's life asks you to collapse that delay, to make your yes to Allah quick, before you talk yourself out of it, the next time the adhan calls or a good deed presents itself and the lazy part of you reaches for later.
His sincerity is the second thing. His wealth never spent a night in his house. He gave it away so completely that he died in debt, and yet was secretly a millionaire in the sight of Allah, rich with what he had sent ahead. The giving was so quiet that even his own debts hid how much he owned. That is ikhlas, doing the deed for Allah and being content that He alone has seen it. Ask what you could let go of this week for His sake, without a single person knowing you did it.
And consider how he died. He prayed for years to die in his prayer, and Allah granted it in the cruellest of circumstances, struck down defenceless the moment he turned to his Lord. From the outside it looked like a noble man betrayed in a needless war. In truth he was lifted, in the exact posture he had begged for, into the company of the ten promised Paradise. What the world saw as a wasted death, Allah recorded as an answered prayer. This is the promise that should steady you when your own life does not go the way you planned: what you ask of Allah, He hears, and may answer in a form you would never have chosen and would not trade for anything once you see it whole.
There is a mercy hidden even in the war that killed him. Ali, who stood on the other side of that battlefield, later recited about Uthman and Talha and al-Zubayr and himself the verse of those whose hearts Allah purifies:
and We shall remove any bitterness from their hearts: [they will be like] brothers, sitting on couches, face to face.
Qur'an 15:47
The fitna set these brothers against each other in this world; Allah promised to seat them facing one another in the next, with every bitterness lifted away. If that is the ending Allah prepares for those who loved Him and erred in the chaos of trial, then hold your hope in Him higher than your fear, and guard your own heart from bitterness toward the believers, for the One who removes it in Paradise is teaching you to remove it now.
So take one thing from al-Zubayr into your day. The next time Allah calls you to something, by the adhan, by a need in front of you, by a sin you know you should leave, answer the way the disciples answered, quickly, before the moment cools. Give one thing for His sake that stays hidden. And ask Him for the death you want, trusting that He hears. May Allah be pleased with al-Zubayr ibn al-Awwam, the disciple of His Messenger ﷺ, raise us in the state we would most wish to meet Him in, and gather us among those seated as brothers, face to face, with no bitterness between them.
This chapter follows the account of al-Zubayr ibn al-Awwam (RA) in Dr. Omar Suleiman's series The Firsts (Yaqeen Institute). Qur'an translations are from M.A.S. Abdel Haleem (3:52, 3:172, 15:47).