During the day the Messenger of Allah, peace and blessings be upon him, would sit and converse with his Companions in the house of Saʿd b. al-Rabīʿ—may Allah be pleased with him—until he moved to the quarter of Banū al-Najjār, as mentioned earlier.

Ibn al-Athīr says (1): “It is said that he was the first Muslim to die after the arrival of the Messenger of Allah, peace and blessings be upon him; after him came Asʿad b. Zurārah.” Al-Ṭabarī records the same (2).

Section: The birth of ʿAbd Allāh b. al-Zubayr in Shawwāl of the year of the Hijrah

He was the first child born into Islam among the Muhājirūn, just as al-Nuʿmān b. Bashīr was the first child born to the Anṣār after the Hijrah—may Allah be pleased with them. Some, however, maintained that Ibn al-Zubayr was born twenty months after the Hijrah; this was stated by Abū al-Aswad (3) and transmitted by al-Wāqidī from Muḥammad b. Yaḥyā b. Sahl b. Abī Ḥathmah, from his father, from his grandfather. They also claimed that al-Nuʿmān was born six months before Ibn al-Zubayr, fourteen months into the Hijrah year. The sound view is what we have already presented.

Al-Bukhārī relates (4): “Zakarīyā b. Yaḥyā narrated to us; Abū Usāmah narrated to us, from Hishām b. ʿUrwah, from his father, from Asmāʾ that she conceived ʿAbd Allāh b. al-Zubayr. She said: ‘I left (Makkah) while I was full-term, arrived in Madinah, and stayed in Qubāʾ. There I gave birth to him, then brought him to the Messenger of Allah, peace and blessings be upon him. He placed the child in his lap, called for a date, chewed it, and spat some of it into his mouth; the very first thing to enter his stomach was the saliva of the Messenger of Allah, peace and blessings be upon him. He then rubbed the date over his palate, supplicated for him, and invoked blessings upon him. Thus he was the first child born in Islam.’”

Khalid b. Makhlad corroborated this report, narrating from ʿAlī b. Mus-har, from Hishām, from his father, from Asmāʾ that she migrated to the Prophet, peace and blessings be upon him, while she was pregnant.

Qutaybah narrated to us (5), from Abū Usāmah, from Hishām b. ʿUrwah, from his father, from ʿĀʾishah who said: “The first child born in Islam was ʿAbd Allāh b. al-Zubayr. They brought him to the Prophet, peace and blessings be upon him; he took a date, chewed it, and placed it in his mouth, so the first thing to enter his belly was the saliva of the Prophet, peace and blessings be upon him.”

This report refutes al-Wāqidī and others, for he claimed that the Prophet, peace and blessings be upon him, had dispatched ʿAbd Allāh b. al-Zubayr together with ʿAbd Allāh b. Urayqiṭ when he returned to Mecca.