Hakim ibn Hizam

Hakim ibn Hizam ibn Khuwaylid al-Asadi al-Qurashi, nephew of Khadija, wife of the Prophet. He was known by the kunya Abu Khalid, and he has a hadith in the Six Books ¹.

Musa ibn Uqba relates from Abu Habiba, client of al-Zubayr, that Hakim said: "I was born thirteen years before the Elephant." He also said that he was old enough to understand when Abd al-Muttalib wanted to sacrifice his son Abdullah. Al-Waqidi adds that this was five years before the Prophet's birth ¹. His father was killed in the War of Fijar, which Hakim witnessed, and al-Zubayr ibn Bakkar relates that he was born inside the Ka'ba ¹. He held the rifada, did good and kept ties of kinship, and he was learned in the genealogies and history of Quraysh ¹.

He was a friend of the Prophet before the mission, and the Prophet loved and cherished him after it. But his Islam came late, not until the year of the conquest. The Prophet said: "Whoever enters the house of Hakim ibn Hizam is safe" ¹. He had fought at Badr on the side of the disbelievers and escaped, so whenever he swore an oath in earnest he would say: "By Him who saved me on the day of Badr" ¹.

He was among those whose hearts were won over. He attended Hunayn and was given a hundred camels from its spoils, and then his Islam became sound ¹. In the Sahih he asked the Prophet about things he used to do in the Jahiliyya: was there reward for them? The Prophet said: "You embraced Islam with the good that had gone before from you" ¹.

The Dar al-Nadwa (see the plot of the Dar al-Nadwa) was in his hands. He sold it to Mu'awiya for a hundred thousand dirhams. When Ibn al-Zubayr blamed him, he said: "Nephew, with it I bought a house in Paradise," and he gave all the dirhams in charity ¹.

He lived to a hundred and twenty years, half of them in the Jahiliyya and half in Islam ¹. The year of his death is disputed: fifty, or "year four" (as the printed edition has it), or fifty-eight, or sixty ¹. Al-Bukhari says in al-Tarikh that he died in the year sixty, aged a hundred and twenty ¹.

He used to carry wheat to his aunt Khadija in the Shi'b, but Abu Jahl confronted him. Abu al-Bakhtari intervened and allowed him to carry it ².

He did not drink from the Muslims' cistern, and so he was not killed. After his conversion, whenever he swore an oath in earnest he would say: "No, by Him who saved me from the day of Badr." He offered Utba that he would turn the people back and bear the blood-money of his ally, but Abu Jahl refused (the day of Badr) ^{3 4}.