Patience, Family of Yasir

Yasir (ra) was a Yemeni who had settled in Makkah as an ally of the clan of Makhzum; his wife Sumayyah (ra) was a freedwoman; their son Ammar (ra) heard of the message at the house of al-Arqam and the whole family believed. Allies and freed people had no tribe to avenge them, and Makhzum's enforcer was Abu Jahl himself.

They were taken to the scorching ground and tortured in the heat: iron, stone, and sun. The Prophet ﷺ would pass them in their agony, with no earthly power yet to stop it, and give them the only provision he had, a promise from beyond the world: patience, family of Yasir; your appointed place is Paradise.

Old Yasir (ra) died under the torment. Sumayyah (ra), elderly and unbending, answered Abu Jahl's cruelty with defiance to his face, and he drove his spear into her and killed her. The first person in Islam to die for the testimony that there is no god but Allah was a woman past her youth, of no rank the world could measure.

Ammar (ra) survived, and once, broken by torture, his tongue spoke words of disbelief while his heart sat firm with faith. He came to the Prophet ﷺ weeping, and revelation itself came down to console him: there is no blame on the one compelled while his heart is at rest with iman. Ammar (ra) would live to carry Islam's banner for decades, and the Prophet ﷺ said of him: Ammar is filled with faith to his bones.