Moment 1 of 1
He named you
Madinah, when the Prophet ﷺ sent for Ubayy ibn Ka'b.
MadinahThe Madinan years1 min read
The Prophet ﷺ told Ubayy that he had been commanded to recite a surah to him.
Ubayy's response was to ask a question. Did He name me to you?
He was told that he had been named.
And Ubayy wept.
The whole episode is four or five lines long in the collections, and almost nothing happens in it. Nobody is rescued, nothing is decided, no battle turns. A man is told that he was mentioned, and he cries.
It is included here because of what it shows about scale. Ubayy was a man of Madinah, one of a few hundred, in a town most of the world had never heard of, who could read at a time when that was unusual. What he is told is that he had been named — specifically, individually — as the person this was to be recited to.
The report is in both Sahih collections, and it is one of the few places in the whole corpus where you see a Companion's reaction rather than his conduct.
In this moment: The Prophet Muhammad ﷺ
Quick recall
What did the Prophet ﷺ tell Ubayy ibn Ka'b that made him weep?
Sources & review
Draft content — undergoing reviewThis content was written for SahabaMate and has not yet been checked by a reviewer against the works below. Treat it as a starting point, not a citation.
Sahih al-Bukhariصحيح البخاري
Hadith collection · Muhammad ibn Isma'il al-Bukhari
Sahih Muslimصحيح مسلم
Hadith collection · Muslim ibn al-Hajjaj
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