Sa`d ibn Abi Waqqas

Sa`d ibn Abi Waqqas was an Arab merchant and military commander and governor.

Born in Mecca in 595, Sa`d was from the Banu Zuhrah clan of the Quraysh tribe, and was the grandson of the paternal uncle of Aminah bint Wahb, mother of prophet Muhammad.

Sa'd was the seventeenth person to embrace Islam at the age of seventeen. He was one of the important companions of the Islamic prophet Muhammad, actually one of the ten eminent Companions of the Prophet Muhammad to whom he is believed to have promised paradise.

In 614, the Muslims were on their way to the hills of Mecca to offer prayer with the prophet Muhammad, when a group of polytheists observed them. They began to abuse and fight them. Sa`ad beat a polytheist and shed his blood, reportedly becoming the first Muslim to shed blood in the name of Islam.

He is mainly known for his commandership in the conquest of Persia in 636, governorship over it, and diplomatic sojourns to China in 616 and 651. According to China Muslims’ traditional legendary accounts, Islam was first brought to China by Sa’d ibn abi Waqqas, who came to China for the third time at the head of an embassy sent by Uthman, the third Caliph, in 651, less than twenty years after the death of prophet Muhammad. The embassy was led by Sa`d ibn Abī Waqqās, the maternal uncle of the prophet himself. Emperor Gaozong, the Tang emperor who received the envoy then ordered the construction of the Memorial mosque in Canton, the first mosque in the country, in memory of the prophet.

He outlived all ten blessed companions, and died a wealthy man at the age of eighty, around the year 674.