Khubaib ibn Adi, a Companion of the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him), is remembered for a rare last wish: before he was put to death he asked to pray two rakats. Prothom Alo's writer Nurullah Maruf retells his story from Sahih al-Bukhari and the seerah books.
About three years after the Prophet came to Madinah, after the battles of Badr and Uhud, a man named Khalid ibn Sufyan was preparing a surprise attack on the city, as narrated in Sunan Abu Dawud (hadith 2760). The Companion Abdullah ibn Unais stopped it. In revenge Khalid's tribe, the Banu Lahyan, bribed men of the Adal and Qarah tribes to go to Madinah and ask for Companions to come and teach them the Quran.
The Prophet sent ten Companions under Asim ibn Thabit, Khubaib among them. As they rested by a watering place called Raji, between Makkah and Usfan, two hundred armed men surrounded them, a hundred of them skilled archers. Asim and six others were killed. The remaining three were promised safety if they surrendered and were bound at once; Abdullah ibn Tariq, who protested, was stoned to death, and Khubaib and Zayd ibn al-Dathinah were sold as slaves in Makkah (Sahih al-Bukhari, hadith 3989).
Khubaib was bought by the sons of al-Harith ibn Amir, whom Khubaib had killed at Badr. Because bloodshed was forbidden in the sacred month, it was decided that he would be executed outside the boundary of the Haram once the month was over. One day during his captivity a daughter of al-Harith found her small son on Khubaib's lap while Khubaib held a razor. Seeing her fear, he told her he was no traitor and that his religion did not allow the killing of an innocent child. She later said she had never seen a better captive.
On the day of the execution, before a crowd of Makkans, Khubaib asked to pray two rakats. He prayed calmly and then said that he would have prayed longer had he not feared they would think he was afraid of death. He was then hung on the wooden frame and struck with spears. In al-Waqidi's Kitab al-Maghazi he prays in his last moments that God carry his greeting of peace to His Messenger.
According to Sahih al-Bukhari (hadith 3045), the Prophet told his Companions in Madinah of Khubaib's martyrdom. For Muslims, a man who made prayer his last wish at the gallows remains an example of steadfast faith.
Photo: Mbasit / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0)
Source: Prothom Alo
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