Mu'adh ibn Jabal
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[edit] Early life
Muadh ibn Jabal was a young boy at the time when Muhammed started preaching the message of Islam. He is a native of Medina and was there during most of the time of Muhammed. He was noted for his intelligence, quick wit, potency in speech, and for his prominent standing between people. He is described as a very attractive looking individual with dark eyes and eye lashes. His teeth were extremely white and his hair was afro like in its curliness. Most books when referring to his physical appearance say that the person looking at him would be stunned by his good looks.
[edit] A Conversion
He became a Muslim on the hands of Musab bin Umair in Medina. He traveled to Mecca to participate in Bayatul Aqabah with 71 other people. In the Bayaa, he embraced Muhammad and pledged to uphold the religion of Islam. When he came back from Mecca, he formed a small posse of youth from his community and they vowed to destroy the Idols that were kept in Medina. It was because of him and his posse that one of the most respectable people of Medina entered Islam. That person was Amr ibn al-Jamuh, and he was one of the leaders of the tribe of Banu Salamah.
Amr had a magnificent idol carved of wood which was similar to the one of all the other noble men, except for the fact that he took explicit care of it in every way. He used to clothe it with silk and paint it with the best smelling extracts one could find. The name of his Idol was Manah, and he honored it more than anything in the world.
Muadh spotted the Idol and under the cover of darkness he and his posse took the idol from its place. Amr woke up that morning and as he always did he prepared to go and paint the idol with some more beautiful smelling extracts. When he reached the storage place of his idol he was shocked to see that it was missing. He spent most of the day looking for his idol until he found it behind the houses of Banu Salamah. It was planted face first in the middle of the hole where the tribe stuffed there refuse and human waste. He was deeply offended by this and said “Woe to you he who dare attack our lord in the middle of the night!” and after taking it out, cleaning it, purifying it, dressing it, and painting it with perfumes he said to it “Oh Manah if I only knew who did this to you, I would humiliate him everywhere.”
The next night the boys did the same thing but this time planting it firmly in another family’s septic hole. Amr woke up and to his shock the idol was missing again. He searched everywhere until he found it in the septic hole and then he took it out repeated the process of purifying and then warned the idol to watch for people that would do this to it again. When the process recurred the next night, he cleaned the idol and told it “oh Manah I have nothing in my power to protect you with so take this sword and if you are of any worth you will protect your self.” While saying that he hung a sword by a rope around the neck of the idol and left. That night the posse came and took the sword, tied it to the neck of a dead dog, tied the dog to the idol, and dumped the idol head first into a septic hole. When Amr woke up he searched for his idol and found it tied to the dog, headfirst in a waste hole. He said obviously you are worth nothing and not a god because if you were you would not be tied up to a dead dog and put headfirst into a septic hole. After this he went and declared his Islam and became a very prominent Muslim.
[edit] Accomplishments
When Muhammad arrived in Medina, Muadh was always around him until he became one of the top readers of Qur'an and master at Islamic knowledge. This was supported by Yazeed ibn Qutayb when he said: “I entered a mosque in Humms (Syria) and saw a young man with afro like hair and the people gathering around him. I asked who is this young man and they said to me he is Muadh bin Jabal. Abu Muslim al-Khawlani also said: I came to a mosque in Damascus and saw older men conversing in religion and every time they had an argument they reported to Muadh to see the answer to their debate. I asked who is that young man and I was told that it was Muadh ibn Jabal.
Muhammad said that this man is the most knowledgeable of my nation in the matters of Halal and Haram. Halal is all that is permissible in Islam and Haram is the exact opposite and it is all that is sinful. He was also one of the six called Kutab al-Wahi whome compiled the Qur'an under the authority of Muhammad. This means he was one of the six he put extreme trust into because Muhammad was illiterate and could not read what they wrote.
The six were
- Muawiyah ibn Abi Sufyan
- Abu Adarda
- Ubadah ibn al-Samit
- Abu Ayub al-Ansari
- Ubay ibn Kaab
- Muadh ibn Jabal
Muhammad is quoted by Sunnis as saying:
- "Learn the Qur'an from four persons: Abd-Allah ibn Mas'ud, Salim Mawla Abu-Hudhayfah, Ubayy ibn Kab and Muadh ibn Jabal."
