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As for the attendants who served the Messenger of Allah ﷺ from among the Companions—other than his freed-slaves—the first of them is Anas ibn Mālik ibn al-Naḍr ibn Ḍamḍam ibn Zayd ibn Ḥarām ibn Jundub ibn ʿĀṣim ibn Ghanm ibn ʿAdiyy ibn al-Najjār, the Anṣārī al-Najjārī, Abū Ḥamzah al-Madanī, later a resident of Basra. He served the Messenger of Allah ﷺ for the entire period of the Prophet’s stay in Madinah, ten full years, and never once did the Prophet rebuke him for anything. He never said regarding something Anas had done, “Why did you do that?” nor, regarding something he had left undone, “If only you had done it.”

His mother, Umm Sulaym bint Milḥān ibn Khālid ibn Zayd ibn Ḥarām, is the one who offered him to the Messenger of Allah ﷺ, and the Prophet accepted him and prayed for him, saying: “O Allah, increase his wealth and his offspring, lengthen his life, and admit him into the Garden.” (2)

Anas later said, “I have witnessed two of those supplications and I am waiting for the third. By Allah, my wealth is indeed abundant, and my children and grandchildren number close to a hundred.” In another wording he added, “My date-palm orchard bears fruit twice a year, and the children born directly from me are one hundred and six.”

There is disagreement as to whether he was present at Badr. Al-Anṣārī relates from his father, from Thumāmah, that someone asked Anas, “Did you witness Badr?” He replied, “How could I have been absent from Badr—may your mother be bereft of you!?” The well-known view, however, is that he did not attend Badr because of his youth; for the same reason he was not present at Uḥud. He did take part in al-Ḥudaybiyyah, Khaybar, the ʿUmrat al-Qaḍāʾ, the Conquest (of Makkah), Ḥunayn, al-Ṭāʾif, and all that followed.

Abū Hurayrah (3) said, “I have never seen anyone whose prayer more closely resembled the prayer of the Messenger of Allah ﷺ than the son of Umm Sulaym”—meaning Anas ibn Mālik. Ibn Sīrīn (4) stated that Anas performed the most excellent prayer of all people, whether traveling or resident.

He died in Basra, and—according to ʿAlī ibn al-Madīnī (5)—he was the last Companion to remain there. His death occurred in the year 90 AH; others said 91, others 92, and others 93 AH, the last being the most widely held. As for his age at death, Imām Aḥmad relates in his Musnad (6): “Muʿtamir ibn Sulaymān narrated to us, from…"