Al-'Abbaas ibn 'Abd al-Muttalib (RA) and love without favoritism

The story

When Al-'Abbaas was held among those detained after the encounter at Badr, the Prophet ﷺ found he couldn't sleep — the sound of his own uncle in distress kept him awake. Word got out, and a few Companions quietly eased his restraints without being asked. When the Prophet ﷺ learned only his uncle had been shown that mercy, he didn't thank them. He asked why everyone else hadn't received the same treatment, then had it extended to every person being held. Later, when it came time to pay for release, Al-'Abbaas pleaded a special case — he'd only been forced into it against his will. The Prophet ﷺ turned him down flatly and told him to pay exactly what everyone else owed, since he could afford it. However much he loved his uncle, it was never going to buy him an exception.

That love was real, and it ran deep. Al-'Abbaas and the Prophet ﷺ were nearly the same age, raised together as cousins close enough to blur into something more like brothers. "He is the only one left of my family," the Prophet ﷺ once said of him — and on another occasion, more plainly still, "Whoever troubles Al-'Abbaas troubles me."

Years after the Prophet ﷺ had passed away, that closeness became something the whole community could lean on. During a severe drought, 'Umar led the people out to pray for rain and took Al-'Abbaas's hand, raising it to the sky. "We used to ask for rain through the Prophet ﷺ," he said. "Today we ask through his uncle." The rain came before the prayer had even finished. From that day, people had a new name for him: "Water Provider of the Two Sacred Places."

Away from moments like that, he simply lived generously — known across the Quraish for holding his family and kin together with his time and his money, never keeping score of who deserved what from him. When he died decades later, on a Friday in the month of Rajab, more people walked behind his funeral than Madinah had ever seen turn out before. It was the same devotion 'Umar had once called on in an open field during a drought — earned not by anything Al-'Abbaas had achieved, but by who he'd stayed close to, faithfully, his whole life.