He used to say, “No one embraced Islam on the day I did, and for seven nights I remained such that I was a full one-third of the entire Muslim community.” (1)

Yusuf ibn al-Majishun related: I heard ʿAʾishah bint Saʿd say, “My father passed a whole day until nightfall while he alone represented one-third of Islam.”

Ismaʿil ibn Abi(2) Khalid—on the authority of Qays—reported that Saʿd ibn Malik said, “The Messenger of Allah ﷺ had never combined his father and mother (i.e., said, ‘May my father and mother be ransomed for you’) for anyone before me, and I distinctly heard him say to me, ‘O Saʿd, shoot! May my father and mother be ransomed for you.’

“I was the very first Muslim to shoot an arrow at the idolaters. I saw myself with the Messenger of Allah ﷺ as one of only seven men; we had no food except the leaves of the samur (acacia) tree, so that one of us would defecate like a sheep. Then the clan of Banu Asad began to rebuke me for my Islam—had that been so, I would indeed have failed and my effort would have been wasted.” (3)

Agreed upon.

It was transmitted by a number of authorities from Ismaʿil.

Al-Masʿudi also narrated—through al-Qasim ibn ʿAbd al-Rahman—that the first person to shoot an arrow in