Julaybib (ra): “He Is of Me and I Am of Him”

Most of the companions we remember arrive in the story with a name behind them — a clan, a father, a household. Julaybib arrived with none of that. The biographical literature describes him as a man of Madinah of unknown lineage, short and plain in appearance; even his name is a diminutive, the kind of name that tells you how little the town thought of him.

He was, in the eyes of his neighbours, nobody. That is exactly why his story is in the books.

The proposal nobody expected

The story of his marriage is preserved in Musnad Aḥmad (19784), on the authority of Anas ibn Malik (ra) — a report later hadith scholars, including Shuʿayb al-Arnāʾūṭ, judged to have an authentic chain, though it is not in the two Ṣaḥīḥ collections.

In it, the Prophet ﷺ went to a man of the Anṣār and asked for his daughter's hand — for Julaybib. The father said he would consult her mother. The mother's answer was immediate and unvarnished: Julaybib? No — they had already turned down better.

The daughter heard it from behind her curtain. She asked who was asking. When she learned the proposal came from the Messenger of Allah ﷺ himself, she answered her parents in a sentence that has outlived everyone in the room.

She was married to Julaybib, and the same narration reports that the Prophet ﷺ supplicated for her: that Allah pour good upon her in abundance, and not make her life one of hardship.

“But I have lost Julaybib”

The rest is in Sahih Muslim 2472, narrated by Abū Barza al-Aslamī (ra) — fully authentic, and one of the most quietly devastating passages in the collection.

After one of the Prophet's ﷺ expeditions, he asked his companions whether anyone among them was missing. They named some. He asked again. They named others. He asked a third time, and they said: no one. Then he said: “But I am missing Julaybib.”

They searched the field of the slain and found him lying beside seven of the enemy — he had fought them, and then been killed. The Prophet ﷺ came and stood over him and said: “He killed seven, then they killed him. He is of me, and I am of him.”

Then, the narration continues, he placed Julaybib upon his own arms. There was no bier for him but the arms of the Messenger of Allah ﷺ. A grave was dug, and he was laid in it.

Why his story matters

Notice what the hadith is actually built around. It is not the seven. It is the roll-call: an entire army looks over itself and does not notice that Julaybib is gone. One person notices. And that one person is the one whose noticing counts.

Julaybib had no lineage to trade on, no wealth, no standing — the exact profile the society around him had learned to overlook. The Sīrah is full of that reversal: people the world had written off, raised by Islam to a rank the world could not have assigned them. Read how four enslaved men became companions →

If you have ever felt like the person nobody would miss from the count, this hadith is aimed at you.

Watch the story

Sources: The battlefield roll-call, the seven, “He is of me and I am of him,” and the burial — Sahih Muslim 2472 (Abū Barza al-Aslamī). The marriage, the daughter's reply and the supplication for her — Musnad Aḥmad 19784 (Anas ibn Malik), graded authentic in chain by later scholars but outside the two Ṣaḥīḥs. Julaybib's description and unknown lineage — the biographical literature (Ibn al-Athīr, Usd al-Ghāba; Ibn Ḥajar, al-Iṣāba). Sahih Muslim does not name which expedition this was, and neither do we. Honorifics: ﷺ “peace be upon him,” (ra) “may Allah be pleased with him/her.”