The Conversion
Ḥamzah was the Prophet's ﷺ uncle, close to him in age, and had been nursed by the same woman — so he was foster-brother as well as uncle. He was among the most formidable men of Quraysh, a hunter and a fighter, and for the first years of the mission he stood outside it.1
He came back from hunting one day to be told by a woman of his household that Abū Jahl had abused and humiliated his nephew at Ṣafā while he sat and did nothing. Still carrying his bow, he went into the sanctuary, found Abū Jahl among his people, struck him across the head with it, and said, “Will you insult him when I follow his religion and say what he says? Return that to me if you can.”1
The sīrah is candid that the anger came first and the conviction after: Ibn Isḥāq says he was seized by the pride of a man defending his kin, and that God afterwards made him firm in Islam. From that day Quraysh knew the Prophet ﷺ had a protector who could not be intimidated, and the sources treat his conversion — with ʿUmar's shortly after — as the point at which open violence against the Muslims became costly.1
Badr and Uḥud
At Badr he fought in the opening single combat and killed his opponent, and fought through the battle wearing an ostrich feather to mark himself out. His performance there made him a specific target for the Makkans, who had lost fathers and brothers to him.2
Hind bint ʿUtbah, whose father ʿUtbah had been killed at Badr, promised freedom to Waḥshī ibn Ḥarb, an Abyssinian slave skilled with the javelin, if he killed Ḥamzah at Uḥud. Waḥshī told the story himself years later, after he became Muslim: he stalked him through the battle, waited, and threw. Ḥamzah was killed and his body mutilated; Hind, the sources relate, cut out his liver.3
The Prophet ﷺ found him afterwards, and Ibn Isḥāq records that the Muslims had never seen him grieve as he grieved that day. There were no shrouds; the martyrs were buried in the cloaks they had, two and three to a grave, and he ordered that the ones who had memorised more Qur'an be placed first.3
After Uḥud
The Prophet ﷺ called him sayyid al-shuhadāʾ, the master of the martyrs, and said that the best of martyrs are Ḥamzah, and a man who stands before a tyrannical ruler and commands him to good and forbids him evil and is killed for it.4
Waḥshī later came to Madīnah and accepted Islam. The Prophet ﷺ heard his account and then said, “Keep your face away from me.” Waḥshī avoided his sight from then on, and after the Prophet's ﷺ death he fought in the wars of apostasy and killed Musaylimah the false prophet — saying afterwards that he had killed the best of men with that spear when he was a disbeliever, and the worst of men with it when he was a Muslim, and hoped one might make up for the other.3
Hind bint ʿUtbah accepted Islam at the conquest of Makkah, came to give her pledge among the women, and was pardoned.5