Life at a glance
A merchant of Makkah known for honesty and knowledge of Arab lineages, he never drank wine or bowed to an idol even before Islam. He was the Prophet's friend from youth; when revelation came, he believed without a moment's hesitation.
The Quran and Abu Bakr
The commentators of the Quran connect these verses to him. The first is explicit and agreed upon by all: he is the "second of the two" in the Cave.
"If you do not help him, Allah has already helped him, when the disbelievers drove him out, the second of two, when the two were in the Cave, when he said to his companion: Do not grieve, indeed Allah is with us."
Allah Himself calls Abu Bakr "his companion" and records that Allah was "with" the two of them. Abu Bakr narrates: "I said, O Messenger of Allah, if one of them looked down at his feet he would see us. He said: What do you think of two whose third is Allah?" Scholars note that no one can deny Abu Bakr's companionship without denying the Quran.
"The most God-fearing will be kept away from it (the Fire): he who gives his wealth to purify himself, owing no favour to anyone that must be repaid, but only seeking the Face of his Lord Most High. And he will surely be pleased."
Revealed about Abu Bakr when he freed Bilal and the other tortured slaves. Ibn al-Jawzi, al-Suyuti and others record that the commentators are agreed on this. From "al-atqa", the most God-fearing, the scholars derive that he is the best of the Muslim nation after the Prophet ﷺ, since the Quran says "the most noble of you with Allah is the most God-fearing" (49:13).
"And the one who brought the truth and the one who confirmed it: those are the God-fearing." Ali ibn Abi Talib, Abu Hurayrah and others among the early commentators said: the one who brought the truth is Muhammad ﷺ and the one who confirmed it is Abu Bakr. The word "saddaqa" is the root of his title al-Siddiq.
"Let not those of virtue and means among you swear not to give to relatives…" When his relative Mistah took part in the slander against Aishah, Abu Bakr swore to stop supporting him. This verse came down calling him "one of virtue and means", and he said: "By Allah, I love that Allah should forgive me," and restored the allowance. Allah described him as a man of "fadl" (virtue) in the Quran.
"Those who lower their voices in the presence of the Messenger of Allah: they are the ones whose hearts Allah has tested for God-fearing." After Abu Bakr and Umar once raised their voices in a discussion before the Prophet ﷺ, this verse came. Abu Bakr said afterwards: "By Allah, I will speak to the Messenger of Allah only like one whispering a secret."
"Allah will bring a people whom He loves and who love Him…" The verse foretells who will confront those who turn back from the religion. Hasan al-Basri, Qatadah and al-Dahhak said: "It is Abu Bakr and his companions," who fought the apostasy after the Prophet's passing.
"You will be called against a people of great might; you will fight them or they will submit." A number of commentators say "the one who will call" is Abu Bakr, who summoned the Muslims against the apostates and Musaylimah, and then Umar against Persia and Rome. Obedience to that call is described as obedience rewarded by Allah.
"And consult them in the matter." Some commentators note that the ones the Prophet ﷺ consulted most, and who this verse points to first, were Abu Bakr and Umar. The Prophet ﷺ called the two of them "my two ministers from the people of the earth" (Tirmidhi 3680).
What the Prophet ﷺ said about him
No Companion was praised by the Prophet ﷺ in so many different ways: as his most beloved, his most generous, his companion at the Pool, the one whose door would remain open, and the one Allah and the believers would refuse to see replaced.
"The person who has done me the greatest favour in companionship and wealth is Abu Bakr. Were I to take an intimate friend, I would take Abu Bakr; but there is the brotherhood of Islam. Let no door remain open into the mosque except the door of Abu Bakr." Spoken from the pulpit in the last days of the Prophet's life. Abu Bakr wept, understanding that the Prophet ﷺ was saying farewell.
Amr ibn al-As asked: "Which person is most beloved to you?" He said: "Aishah." "Among men?" He said: "Her father."
"Order Abu Bakr to lead the people in prayer." Aishah tried three times to divert it, worried her father's tender weeping would overcome him. The Prophet ﷺ repeated the order and said: "You are like the women of Yusuf. Order Abu Bakr to lead the people." Scholars from every age have said: the Prophet ﷺ chose him for the leadership of our religion; shall we not choose him for the leadership of our world?
"Call your father Abu Bakr and your brother to me so that I may write a document, for I fear that someone will wish and someone will say 'I am more entitled', while Allah and the believers refuse anyone but Abu Bakr."
"Be still, Uhud, for upon you are a Prophet, a Siddiq and two martyrs." When the mountain shook beneath the Prophet ﷺ, Abu Bakr, Umar and Uthman. The Prophet ﷺ himself gave him the title al-Siddiq here, and foretold the martyrdom of the other two.
The Prophet ﷺ described how the people of prayer, of charity, of fasting and of jihad would each be called from a gate of Paradise. Abu Bakr asked: "Will anyone be called from all those gates?" He said: "Yes, and I hope you will be one of them."
"You are my companion at the Pool and my companion in the Cave." Companionship in the hardest hour of this world, and companionship in the first hour of the next.
"Follow the two who come after me: Abu Bakr and Umar." Narrated by Hudhayfah. The Prophet ﷺ placed the two of them together as models for the Muslim nation after him.
"I saw myself at a well with a bucket. I drew from it what Allah willed; then Ibn Abi Quhafah took it and drew a bucket or two, and there was weakness in his drawing, and Allah forgives him…" The dream of the well: the two buckets are his two years of caliphate; "weakness" refers to their shortness, and the Prophet ﷺ paired it with a prayer of forgiveness.
"Abu Bakr and Umar are the masters of the mature men of Paradise, from the first to the last, except the prophets and messengers." Narrated by Ali ibn Abi Talib himself.
After a quarrel in which Umar had wronged Abu Bakr and Abu Bakr had come to apologise, the Prophet ﷺ said: "Allah sent me to you and you said: 'You lie,' but Abu Bakr said: 'He has spoken the truth,' and he supported me with his self and his wealth. So will you leave my companion alone for me?" He said it twice, and Abu Bakr was never troubled after that.
"Abu Bakr did not surpass you by much fasting or prayer, but by something that settled in his heart." A saying of the early generation, attributed to Bakr ibn Abdullah al-Muzani, that scholars have quoted for a thousand years to explain his rank: certainty (yaqin) and love, not merely deeds.
The Companions on Abu Bakr
Umar called him "our master". Ali called him the best of the Muslim nation after the Prophet ﷺ. The whole Muslim nation chose him, and no one claimed the position for himself.
Ali ibn Abi Talib
His son Muhammad ibn al-Hanafiyyah asked him: "Who is the best of people after the Messenger of Allah ﷺ?" He said: "Abu Bakr." "Then who?" "Then Umar." (Bukhari 3671)
Ali also said: "Allah revealed Abu Bakr's name as 'al-Siddiq' from the heaven" (al-Hakim). At Abu Bakr's death Ali stood at the door and said: "May Allah have mercy on you, Abu Bakr. You were the first of the people in Islam, the most sincere of them in faith, the strongest in certainty, the greatest in fear of Allah, the most generous with what he owned, the most protective of the Messenger of Allah ﷺ and of Islam… By Allah, you were to Islam a fortress, and to the disbelievers a scourge" (al-Hakim; Ibn Asakir).
Umar ibn al-Khattab
"Abu Bakr is our master, and he freed our master" meaning Bilal (Bukhari 3754). Umar also said: "I wish I were a hair on the chest of Abu Bakr," and, at the Saqifah, when the Ansar hesitated: "Which of you would be content to step ahead of the one whom the Messenger of Allah ﷺ put forward to lead the prayer?" (Bukhari 3668; Musnad Ahmad).
Aishah, Mother of the Believers
"By Allah, my father did not leave a dinar or a dirham; he gave everything back to the treasury." When she was asked whom the Prophet ﷺ would have appointed had he done so by name, she said: "Abu Bakr" (Muslim 2385). She described his crying in prayer: "He could not let people hear his recitation for weeping."
Abu Sa'id al-Khudri & Abu Hurayrah
Abu Sa'id: "Abu Bakr was the most knowledgeable of us." He said this because on the day the Prophet ﷺ passed, Abu Bakr alone remembered the verse "Muhammad is only a messenger; messengers before him have passed away" (3:144), and the whole mosque awoke to it (Bukhari 3667). Abu Hurayrah: "By Allah, had it not been for Abu Bakr, Allah would not have been worshipped after His Prophet," referring to the war against apostasy.
Abd al-Rahman ibn Awf & Ibn Mas'ud
Abd al-Rahman ibn Awf said at his deathbed: "You are, as far as I know, righteous and reforming; you are the best of people." Abdullah ibn Mas'ud, the great scholar: "There was none among us who did not have some hesitation at the beginning except Abu Bakr; his Islam was pure resolve."
The whole Muslim nation
At the Saqifah of Banu Sa'idah, the Emigrants and Helpers pledged to him; the next day the general pledge was given in the mosque, and Ali and Zubayr later affirmed it, saying: "We were not angry except that we were not consulted, and we hold that Abu Bakr is the most entitled of people to it: he is the companion of the Cave, and we know his honour" (al-Hakim, al-Bayhaqi).
Two years that saved the Islamic Empire
His caliphate was short, and each of its decisions was one that a weaker man would have avoided.
The first sermon
Usamah's army
The Prophet ﷺ had dispatched an army under the young Usamah ibn Zayd toward Syria. With Madinah exposed and tribes in revolt, the Companions urged him to hold it back. He replied: "By Him in whose hand is my soul, if I thought wild beasts would snatch me away, I would still send Usamah's army as the Messenger of Allah ﷺ ordered." He walked beside the mounted Usamah to see it off. The tribes, seeing the army leave, concluded Madinah must be strong.
The apostasy (Riddah)
Tribes across Arabia renounced Islam or refused zakat; false prophets arose: Musaylimah, Tulayhah, Sajah, al-Aswad al-Ansi. Umar advised leniency toward those who withheld only zakat. Abu Bakr replied: "By Allah, I will fight whoever separates prayer from zakat. If they withhold even a rope they used to give to the Messenger of Allah, I will fight them for it." Umar said: "I saw that Allah had opened Abu Bakr's chest to the truth, and I knew it was right" (Bukhari 1399). Within a year, under Khalid ibn al-Walid and ten other commanders, Arabia was one Islamic Empire again.
Collecting the Quran
After the battle of Yamamah, in which many memorisers were killed, Umar urged him to gather the Quran into one collection. He hesitated: "How can I do what the Messenger of Allah ﷺ did not?" then said: "Allah opened my heart to it." He commissioned Zayd ibn Thabit, who collected it from parchments, palm-stalks, stone tablets and the breasts of men. Ali said: "The greatest reward for the Mushaf belongs to Abu Bakr; he was the first to gather the Book of Allah between two covers" (Bukhari 4986; Ibn Abi Dawud, al-Masahif).
The conquests begin
He sent Khalid ibn al-Walid into Iraq (Hirah fell in 12 AH) and four armies into Syria under Abu Ubaydah, Yazid ibn Abi Sufyan, Shurahbil and Amr ibn al-As. The battle of Yarmuk began under his caliphate. His instructions to the armies are a charter of war ethics: "Do not kill a child, a woman or an old man; do not cut fruit-trees; do not slaughter a sheep or camel except to eat; do not burn palm-trees; do not betray; you will pass by people who have devoted themselves to worship in monasteries, leave them to what they devoted themselves to" (Muwatta Malik; al-Tabari).
His own austerity
He continued trading cloth until the Companions insisted he take a stipend. It was fixed at what a middling Emigrant would live on. At his death he ordered that his stipend be repaid from his land, and returned the camel and the state's servant to Umar. Umar wept: "You have made it hard for whoever comes after you." His wife once saved a little from the household allowance to buy sweets; he returned the amount to the treasury and reduced the allowance by that sum.
Appointing Umar
He consulted the senior Companions one by one, then dictated to Uthman: "This is the covenant of Abu Bakr ibn Abi Quhafah at the end of his life in this world and the beginning of the next… I have appointed Umar ibn al-Khattab over you; if he is just, that is my opinion of him, and if he changes, then each man will bear what he earned." He then prayed: "O Allah, I have appointed the best of them over them."
His last words
He asked Aishah what day the Prophet ﷺ had died, and to be washed in his own worn garments, saying "the living have more need of new clothes." He asked to be buried beside the Prophet ﷺ. His last words were from the Quran: "My Lord, take my soul as a Muslim and join me with the righteous" (12:101).
Character and sayings
Gentle, tearful in prayer, generous without limit, immovable in decision. He milked the goats of his neighbourhood for the orphans and widows, and continued doing so as caliph.
Tenderness
An old blind woman on the outskirts of Madinah found her house swept and her water drawn each morning by a stranger. Umar, wanting to know who did it, watched and found it was the caliph Abu Bakr. Umar said: "By my life, it is you, Abu Bakr; you have exhausted those who come after you."
His family
Wives: Qutaylah, Umm Ruman, Asma bint Umays, Habibah. Children: Abdullah, Asma (Dhat al-Nitaqayn, wife of Zubayr), Aishah (Mother of the Believers), Abd al-Rahman, Muhammad, and Umm Kulthum. Four generations of Companions in one house: Abu Quhafah, Abu Bakr, Abd al-Rahman and Abu Atiq.
Scholars through the ages
From the first generation to the twentieth century, the scholars of Islam have described him with one voice.
Imam Abu Hanifah (d. 150 AH)
In al-Fiqh al-Akbar: "The best of people after the Messenger of Allah ﷺ is Abu Bakr al-Siddiq, then Umar, then Uthman, then Ali. We love all the Companions and mention none of them except with good."
Imam Malik (d. 179 AH)
Asked who was the best of people after the Prophet ﷺ, he said: "Abu Bakr, then Umar," then paused and said "then Uthman, and after him the people are to be left to their judgement." He said of the collection of the Quran: "That is the deed of Abu Bakr."
Imam al-Shafi'i (d. 204 AH)
"The people were in a great distress after the Messenger of Allah ﷺ, and they found no one under the sky better than Abu Bakr, so they set him ahead of themselves." (al-Bayhaqi, Manaqib al-Shafi'i)
Imam Ahmad ibn Hanbal (d. 241 AH)
"Whoever does not affirm the caliphate of Abu Bakr and Umar has strayed. Abu Bakr was the best of the Companions, then Umar." He wrote a book of their virtues, Fada'il al-Sahabah, which opens with Abu Bakr.
Al-Ghazali (d. 505 AH)
In al-Iqtisad fi'l-I'tiqad: "The Companions agreed on Abu Bakr's caliphate. His rank is in what was in his heart: the Prophet ﷺ said his faith would outweigh the faith of the whole nation if it were weighed."
Ibn Hajar al-Asqalani (d. 852 AH)
In Fath al-Bari: "The virtues of Abu Bakr are many; the strongest of them is that he is the companion of the Cave by the text of the Quran, and that the Prophet ﷺ put him forward to lead the prayer, which the Companions understood as putting him forward for the caliphate."
Imam Ahmad Raza Khan (d. 1340 AH)
In his treatise Matla' al-Qamarayn fi Ibanat Sabqat al-Umarayn ("The Rising of the Two Moons: On the Precedence of the Two Umars", meaning Abu Bakr and Umar), written in 1297 AH, he gathers the proofs from the Quran, the Sunnah and the consensus of the Companions that Abu Bakr is the best of the Muslim nation after the Prophets, and Umar after him, and shows that Ali himself declared this in Bukhari. He calls Abu Bakr "Siddiq-e-Akbar", the Greatest Truthful One.
In Kanz al-Iman, his translation of the Quran, verse 9:40 is rendered so that the Cave companion's honour is unmistakable, and the note in Khaza'in al-Irfan reads: "The companion is Abu Bakr al-Siddiq, and this verse proves his companionship, his precedence and his virtue."
In Fatawa Ridawiyyah he writes that love of Abu Bakr is love of the one the Prophet ﷺ loved most among men, and that his rank rests on what the Prophet ﷺ said, not on any later claim.
Al-Dhahabi (d. 748 AH)
In Siyar A'lam al-Nubala: "He was the best of the Muslim nation, the most God-fearing, the most beloved to the Messenger of Allah ﷺ, and the one the Prophet ﷺ called al-Siddiq; his knowledge was the greatest, his heart the firmest, his generosity the widest."
Sources for this page
Hadith collections
- Sahih al-Bukhari: Kitab Fada'il al-Sahabah (3653–3675), 466, 664, 1399, 1897, 3754, 4750, 4845, 4986, 5666
- Sahih Muslim: 418, 1027, 2381–2387, 2393, 2540, 2770
- Jami' al-Tirmidhi: 3662, 3664, 3670, 3675, 3680, 3747
- Sunan Ibn Majah 97, 100; Musnad Ahmad; al-Hakim, al-Mustadrak vol. 3; Ahmad ibn Hanbal, Fada'il al-Sahabah
Tafsir
- Al-Tabari, Jami' al-Bayan on 9:40, 39:33, 5:54
- Al-Qurtubi, al-Jami' li-Ahkam al-Quran on 92:17–21, 48:16
- Al-Suyuti, al-Durr al-Manthur; Ibn Abi Hatim; al-Baghawi; al-Khazin
- Kanz al-Iman with Khaza'in al-Irfan on 9:40 and 92:17–21
Biography and scholarship
- Ibn Hisham, al-Sirah; Ibn Sa'd, al-Tabaqat vol. 3; al-Tabari, Tarikh
- Ibn Abd al-Barr, al-Isti'ab; Ibn Hajar, al-Isabah & Fath al-Bari vol. 7; al-Dhahabi, Siyar A'lam al-Nubala
- Al-Suyuti, Tarikh al-Khulafa; Muhibb al-Tabari, al-Riyad al-Nadirah; Abu Nu'aym, Hilyat al-Awliya vol. 1; Ibn Kathir, al-Bidayah wa'l-Nihayah vols. 5–7
- Abu Hanifah, al-Fiqh al-Akbar; al-Ghazali, al-Iqtisad; Ahmad Raza Khan, Matla' al-Qamarayn, Fatawa Ridawiyyah