Abdullah ibn Ubayy · Islam Museum

Depth

At a glance

Roles: Politician
Era: The Prophetic Era
Region: Arabia
Review: Draft Completeness 2/5 · Help complete it

Life in time

Pre-Islamic Arabia · The Prophetic Era · The Rashidun Caliphate · The Umayyad Period Contemporaries: al-Abbas ibn Abd al-Muttalib · Abdullah ibn Salam · Abu Bakr al-Siddiq · Abu Sufyan ibn Harb · al-Aswad al-Ansi

In space

Map: Natural Earth, public domain · places and route from the graph

Factions, splits and schisms Desertions, defections and withdrawals

Place in the story

Ruler · c. 618 CE – 622 CE · 1 BH†Historical
OpponenttowardMuhammad · 623 CE · 1 AH† – 631 CE · 10 AH†Historical

Sunni (debated)

How others named them

“Ra'is al-munafiqin (chief of the hypocrites)” — Sunni tradition

Roles are dated and sourced; the museum describes the act and attributes the judgement.

Brief

Abdullah ibn Ubayy was the chief of Khazraj — the man Medina had nearly crowned its king when the Hijra made the Prophet master of his city instead. Sunni tradition remembers him as the chief of the munafiqin: the enemy inside.

Life

The sources say the feuding tribes of Medina had agreed to crown him before the Prophet arrived and the crown evaporated. He professed Islam, kept his seat in the council — and, in the tradition's telling, worked against the Prophet from within ¹ ².

He withdrew his third of the army on the eve of Uhud; the slander against Aisha and sura al-Munafiqun are read against him ³. He died in early 631 CE, and the tradition records that the Prophet prayed over him and gave his own shirt for the shroud — an ending the sources tell without softening the man ³.

For young visitors

The man who nearly became king of Medina lost his crown to the Prophet's arrival — and fought him from inside the city for years after.

Opinions on the question

The question: How is Abdullah ibn Ubayy and his role in Medina classified?

First opinion · Sunni tradition (the museum's frame)Main reference

The chief of the munafiqin: outwardly Muslim, inwardly working against the Prophet — the figure around whom sura al-Munafiqun and the slander affair are read. The tradition also records that the Prophet prayed over him and gave him his own shirt for a shroud.

More opinions (1)

Academic viewSecondary opinion

Historians describe a Medinese aristocrat whose political base the Prophet steadily absorbed; 'hypocrite' is the tradition's category for what was also a straightforward contest for power inside Medina.