Abu Dharr al-Ghifari
أبو ذر الغفاري
c. 590 CE – 652 CE · 31 AH† †
† Hijri date derived by computation from the Gregorian/Julian date; it may differ from the transmitted date by a day or two.
A tribesman of Ghifar among the very first converts, remembered for fierce asceticism and for denouncing the hoarding of wealth; Uthman exiled him to al-Rabadha, where he died.
At a glance
- Roles
- Companion
- Counted among
- Sunni
- Era
- The Prophetic Era · The Rashidun Caliphate
- Region
- Arabia · Levant & Iraq
- Review
- Draft Completeness 2/5 · Help complete it
In time
In space
Map: Natural Earth, public domain · places and route from the graph
The poor and the workerSpirituality and SufismDissent, heresy and freethought
Place in the story
- Convert to Islam · c. 614 CETradition
- Companion · c. 614 CETradition
- CritictowardMu'awiya ibn Abi Sufyan · c. 644 CE · c. 23 AH†Tradition
Sunni (transmitted)
How others named them
- “'The truthfulness of the heavens has no one more truthful than Abu Dharr' — a saying attributed to the Prophet” — a saying attributed to the Prophet in the tradition
Roles are dated and sourced; the museum describes the act and attributes the judgement.
Brief
Abu Dharr al-Ghifari was a desert tribesman among the very first Muslims — and the tradition's fiercest conscience about wealth, exiled by a caliph for saying so out loud.
Life
A man of Banu Ghifar, a tribe of the Hijazi desert, Abu Dharr walked to Mecca and became one of the first handful of converts, about 614 CE 1. He preached to his own people, then lived austerely in Medina and later Damascus.
There the sources record his open denunciations of the governors' accumulating gold and silver, quoting scripture against hoarding. Sent back to Medina, he kept speaking; the caliph Uthman finally exiled him to the desert hamlet of al-Rabadha, where he died in 652 CE 1.
Legacy
Later generations — Sufis, social critics, modern writers on Islamic economics — all reach back to Abu Dharr: the man who asked, at the very beginning, what the community owed the poor.
For young visitors
Abu Dharr believed being rich while others were poor was wrong, and he kept saying so to the most powerful men alive — even when it cost him his home.
Connections
- Member of
- Banu GhifarThe early Muslim community
- Converted under
- Muhammad
- Participated in
- The HijraAbu Dharr lags behind and follows on footThe death of Abu Dharr at al-Rabadha
- Died in
- al-Rabadha
- Mentioned in
- Arba'un 18 — fear God wherever you areArba'un 24 — O My servants, I have forbidden injustice to MyselfArba'un 25 — the wealthy have taken all the reward
People and things also explored
Abdullah ibn Mas'udThe Battle of BadrThe expedition to TabukBilal ibn RabahMeccaMedinaThe HijraMuhammad
Sources
- Ibn Sa'd, Kitab al-Tabaqat al-Kabir (Bewley translation, Ta-Ha)
- Madelung, The Succession to Muhammad (1997)
Cite this page
islam.museum contributors. “Abu Dharr al-Ghifari”. islam.museum, https://islam.museum/en/person/abu-dharr-al-ghifari/. CC BY-SA 4.0. Accessed 2026-10-12.