Abu Sufyan ibn al-Harith: From the Ranks at Badr to the Prophet's Side at Hunayn

Abu Sufyan ibn al-Harith ibn Abd al-Muttalib, born al-Mughira, was a first cousin of Prophet Muhammad ﷺ — the son of al-Harith ibn Abd al-Muttalib, and so a grandson of Abd al-Muttalib through a different son than the Prophet's own father. He is not to be confused with Abu Sufyan ibn Harb, the Meccan leader who converted separately around the same time and whose descendants included the Umayyad caliphs; the two men share only a kunya. Abu Sufyan ibn al-Harith fought against the Muslims at the Battle of Badr, converted to Islam only on the eve of the conquest of Mecca — after the Prophet at first declined to receive him over specific past grievances — and was, by three independent lines of transmission, one of only two men who did not flee when the Muslim army broke at the Battle of Hunayn.

Opposition: The Report from Badr

Before his conversion, Abu Sufyan ibn al-Harith stood with the Quraysh against the Muslims. Hayatus Sahabah preserves his own account, given to his uncle Abu Lahab, of the Meccan army's defeat at the Battle of Badr in 624 CE. According to this narration, as told by Abu Rafi — at the time a slave in Abu Lahab's household — a report reached Abu Lahab that "Abu Sufyan ibn al-Harith ibn Abd al-Muttalib" had returned from Badr with news, and that his name was in fact al-Mughira. Abu Lahab called him over and pressed him for what had happened. Abu Sufyan answered plainly: "By Allah, as soon as we engaged them in combat, they started killing us and taking us prisoner as they pleased. By Allah, the blame cannot be placed on our men, because the men we fought were extremely fair in complexion and rode spotted horses that glided between the ground and the sky. By Allah, they left nothing, and nothing could stand before them."

This account, given by Abu Sufyan himself while he was still opposed to the Muslim community, is one of the earliest first-hand descriptions of the Meccan defeat at Badr to survive, and it is reported here as his own testimony rather than as a later reconstruction.

Conversion on the Road to Mecca

Hayatus Sahabah, citing al-Waqidi's account as preserved in Al-Bidaya wan-Nihaya and separately by Ibn Asakir, records the circumstances of Abu Sufyan's conversion. As the Prophet marched from Medina toward Mecca in 630 CE, Abu Sufyan ibn al-Harith and another cousin of the Prophet, Abdullah ibn Abi Umayya, met him on the road and sought permission to join him and accept Islam.

The Prophet at first refused to receive either man, and named his reasons specifically: of Abu Sufyan, he said, "He humiliated me in Mecca"; of Abdullah ibn Abi Umayya, that he had "made derogatory statements" about him there. Umm Salama, the Prophet's wife, interceded on their behalf, pointing out their exact relationship to him — one his paternal cousin, the other his maternal cousin and brother-in-law. When the two men learned that the Prophet had still not relented, Abu Sufyan, who had a young child with him, declared that if the Prophet would not permit him to approach, he would take the child and go out into the wilderness until they both died of hunger and thirst. On hearing this, the Prophet was moved to pity and permitted them to come forward. Both men joined the Muslims and accepted Islam.

Standing Firm at Hunayn

Abu Sufyan ibn al-Harith's most consequential recorded act came only weeks later, at the Battle of Hunayn. When the Muslim advance was thrown into disorder by a Hawazin ambush in the valley and the greater part of the army broke and fled, a small number of men remained with the Prophet. Multiple independent narrations agree on who they were.

Hayatus Sahabah, Volume 3, preserves two separate reports — one from al-Harith ibn Badal, who fought against the Muslims that day, and another jointly from Amr ibn Sufyan al-Thaqafi and an unnamed tribesman — each stating plainly that when the Muslim ranks broke, "it was only Abbas and Abu Sufyan ibn al-Harith who remained with the Messenger of Allah," and that it was at this point that the Prophet took up a handful of dirt or pebbles and threw it toward the enemy, an act both narrators — speaking from the losing side — credited with turning the battle. Ibn Kathir's Al-Sira al-Nabawiyya, transmitting an account reaching back through a comparable chain naming al-Harith ibn Badr al-Nasri's tribesman and the same Amr ibn Sufyan al-Thaqafi, independently confirms the identical detail: that Abbas and Abu Sufyan ibn al-Harith alone stood their ground.

This convergence of separate transmissions, several of them from men who were fighting against the Muslims at the time and had no reason to flatter a Muslim combatant, is a strong basis for treating Abu Sufyan's presence at the Prophet's side in the worst moment of Hunayn as an established fact, distinct from — and better attested than — some of the more elaborate later retellings of the battle's aftermath that circulate about him.

What This Article Does Not Assert

Later literature attributes to Abu Sufyan ibn al-Harith a poem exchanged with the poet Hassan ibn Thabit, a detailed dialogue with the Prophet at Hunayn in which he is addressed as a brother, and a claim to have been present at an embassy to the Byzantine emperor Heraclius. These episodes could not be traced to the approved source library consulted for this article — they rest, in the accounts where they appear, on translations of al-Tabari, al-Waqidi and Ibn Ishaq not held in the approved base — and they are accordingly left out rather than reported on the strength of sources this project has not verified. What is asserted above is confined to what the approved sources establish directly: his opposition at Badr, the specific circumstances of his conversion, and his conduct at Hunayn.

Legacy

Abu Sufyan ibn al-Harith's recorded life moves in a single arc: from a young man who fought and reported on the Muslims' behalf being routed at Badr, to a man who, having sought and nearly been refused entry into the Muslim community, stood as one of two men beside the Prophet when almost everyone else had fled. The sources consulted for this article do not establish when or where he died, and none is supplied here.

References and Further Reading

Primary Islamic Sources

• Quran, Surah at-Tawbah (9:25-26) — the Qur'anic address to the Battle of Hunayn, the setting of Abu Sufyan's recorded act of loyalty
• Ibn Kathir, as transmitted from al-Harith ibn Badr al-Nasri's tribesman and Amr ibn Sufyan al-Thaqafi — the independent confirmation that only Abbas and Abu Sufyan ibn al-Harith remained with the Prophet at Hunayn

Classical Islamic Sources

• Ibn Kathir, Ismail ibn Umar. Al-Sira al-Nabawiyya [English translation]. [Compiled c. 1373 CE]
• Al-Waqidi, Muhammad ibn Umar. Kitab al-Maghazi. [Original c. 823 CE]
• Ibn Sa'd, Muhammad. Al-Tabaqat al-Kubra. [Compiled c. 845 CE]
• Ibn Asakir, Ali ibn al-Hasan. Tarikh Dimashq. [Compiled 12th century CE]

Academic and Scholarly Sources

• Zakaria, Muhammad, compiler. Hayatus Sahabah. Karachi: Zam Zam Publishers.
• Watt, W. Montgomery. Muhammad at Medina. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1956.
• Peters, Francis E. Muhammad and the Origins of Islam. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1994.

Further Reading

• Lings, Martin. Muhammad: His Life Based on the Earliest Sources. Cambridge: Islamic Texts Society, 1983.
• Guillaume, Alfred, trans. The Life of Muhammad: A Translation of Ibn Ishaq's Sirat Rasul Allah. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1955.