The Family of Yāsir
Sumayyah was an enslaved woman in the household of Abū Ḥudhayfah of Makhzūm, married to Yāsir ibn ʿĀmir, a Yemeni who had settled in Makkah under Makhzūmī protection. Their son was ʿAmmār ibn Yāsir. All three accepted Islam early — ʿAmmār is counted among the first dozen or so believers — and all three had no clan of their own strong enough to shield them.1
That is the whole mechanism of the persecution and the sources are clear about it: the Makkans could not touch Abū Bakr or ʿUthmān without answering to their clans, so the violence fell on slaves, freedmen, women, and clients. The family of Yāsir was taken out into the sands at midday, in armour, in the heat, and tortured.1
Ibn Isḥāq records that the Prophet ﷺ would pass them in that state and could do nothing for them but say: “Patience, family of Yāsir — your appointed place is Paradise.”1
The First to Die
Sumayyah refused to recant. Abū Jahl killed her, striking her with a spear — she was, the sources say, an old woman. Yāsir died under the torture as well. They are counted the first two martyrs of Islam, and Sumayyah the first person to die for it.12
The classical biographers make a point of who she was: not a chief, not a warrior, not a person of any consequence in Makkan terms. An elderly enslaved woman, the property of another household, without wealth, lineage, or protection — and the first name on the list.2
ʿAmmār and the Verse
ʿAmmār survived. Under torture he was forced to say what his persecutors demanded, and came to the Prophet ﷺ afterwards in anguish. Asked how he found his heart, he said, “At rest with faith.” The Prophet ﷺ told him, “If they return, then say it again.”3
The Qur'an then addressed the case and made it law: “Whoever disbelieves in God after his belief — except for one who is forced while his heart is content with faith…” The exegetes name ʿAmmār as the occasion of its revelation. It is the basis in Islamic law for the permissibility of compelled speech under duress.34
ʿAmmār lived on into the civil wars and was killed at Ṣiffīn at over ninety, fighting on ʿAlī's side — his death carrying its own weight, since the Prophet ﷺ had said of him long before, while he carried bricks for the mosque of Madīnah, that “the transgressing party will kill ʿAmmār.”5