Zayd bin Amr

Zayd ibn Amr (died 605) was a monotheist who lived in Mecca shortly before Islam.

He was the son of Amr ibn Nufayl, a member of the Adi clan of the Quraysh tribe. Zayd's mother had previously been married to his grandfather, Nufayl ibn Abduluzza, so her son from this marriage, al-Khattab ibn Nufayl, was at the same time Zayd's maternal half-brother and paternal half-uncle.

Zayd married Fatima bint Baaja from the Khuza'a tribe, and their son was Sa'id ibn Zayd. A subsequent wife, Umm Kurz Safiya bint al-Hadrami, bore his daughter Atiqa.

Zayd became disillusioned with the traditional religion of Arabia, for the stone that that the people worshipped "could neither hear nor see nor hurt nor help" and "the worship of stone or hewn wood is nothing." He pledged with three friends that they would seek the true religion of Abraham, which they called al-Hanafiya. The other three men eventually converted to Christianity.

Zayd travelled to Syria to question both Jews and Christians about their beliefs, but he was not happy with the answers of either group. According to later Muslim historians, he had "the religion of Abraham, following the natural form" and "worshipped Allah alone with no partner." Amir ibn Rabia, an ally of Zayd's brother al-Khattab, later said that Zayd had told him that he believed in the future coming of a prophet.

Three points of Zayd's religious beliefs were agreed. First, he did not worship idols and he rebuked the Quraysh for doing so.Asma bint Abi Bakr heard him declaring outside the Kaaba: "O Quraysh, none of you is following Abraham's religion except me." He composed this poem:

Am I to worship one lord or a thousand?
If there are as many as you claim,
I renounce al-Lat and al-Uzza, both of them,
as any strong-minded person would.
I will not worship al-Uzza and her two daughters …
I will not worship Hubal, though he was our lord
in the days when I had little sense.

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