Hamza ibn Abd al-Muttalib

Hamza — hunter, warrior, and the most physically formidable of Quraysh — accepted Islam in a burst of protective fury: returning from the hunt, he was told Abu Jahl had abused and insulted his nephew ﷺ. He strode into the sanctuary, struck Abu Jahl with his bow, and declared himself on Muhammad’s ﷺ religion in front of everyone — a declaration that hardened into true, settled faith.

From that day the balance of intimidation in Makkah shifted: with Hamza (and soon Umar) counted among the Muslims, open persecution grew costlier. In Madinah the Prophet ﷺ entrusted him with one of the very first raiding expeditions and its white banner — by many accounts the first banner tied in Islam, though other reports give that distinction to Ubaydah ibn al-Harith.

At Badr he was one of the three duellists who answered Quraysh’s champions before the armies met, fighting with an ostrich feather marking him out. At Uhud the following year he was cut down — not in open combat, but by the javelin of Wahshi, a slave promised his freedom for it, thrown from concealment.

The mutilation of his body grieved the Prophet ﷺ beyond any loss before it. He named him Sayyid ash-Shuhada — the master of the martyrs (al-Tabarani, al-Mu’jam al-Kabir 2958, from Ali ibn Abi Talib; graded sahih by al-Suyuti in al-Jami’ al-Saghir 4730) — and the Quran’s words about those slain in Allah’s path became forever associated with Uhud’s fallen.

Hamza’s conversion was one of the two events (with Umar’s) that let Islam stand upright in Makkah, and his death at Uhud taught the community the price of the path. Years later, when Makkah was conquered, Wahshi fled to Ta’if; when its people came to accept Islam (9 AH), he came with their delegation, and the Prophet ﷺ accepted his Islam, asking only that he keep out of his sight (Sahih al-Bukhari 4072) — a coda the sirah preserves as a lesson in how far the Prophet’s ﷺ mercy reached.