Safwan ibn Umayya

Safwan ibn Umayya — son of Umayya, the man who tortured Bilal — continued his father's opposition almost to the end, was pardoned on the road to Jeddah, and within weeks was fighting for Islam at Hunayn.

A chief of Banu Jumah, Safwan helped finance the confederates of the Trench and, the sources record, sent an agent against the Prophet's life. At the conquest he fled for the coast and a ship out — until the Prophet sent him his own turban as a token of safety, with two months' grace ¹.

He came back, asked for and received pardon, and stood with the Muslim army at Hunayn — where the Prophet gave him a valley of livestock, and the tradition records Safwan's words that only a prophet's generosity could make a man love so quickly ¹.

He died in Mecca around 661, an elder of Quraysh.

The son of the man who owned Bilal ends the story as a Muslim elder — the sira's study in pardon as policy.