Yasir

ياسر
YAA·sir

Ease; gentleness

Also written: Yasser · Yaser
Sourced · HadithMasculineNames of the Sahaba
The source
Musnad Ahmad — 'Patience, family of Yasir — your appointed place is Paradise' · hadith graded hasan

Meaning & source

Yasir ibn Amir (RA), husband of Sumayyah and father of Ammar (RA), died under the same torture that made his wife the first martyr — the family the Prophet ﷺ consoled with: patience, family of Yasir — your appointed place is Paradise.

His name, from the root of ease, reads now like a promise: after their hardship, ease forever.

ي س ر
The root
From y-s-r — ease, gentleness, and facilitation; the root of the Qur'an's promise that with hardship comes ease.

Every name in this collection is cited to the Qur'an or hadith graded hasan or higher. Our sources & method

The story of the name

4 parts · about 2 minutes

The father of the steadfast house

Yasir ibn Amir (RA) came to Makkah from Yemen. He came looking for a lost brother. He stayed, and found something larger.

He allied with Banu Makhzum. He married Sumayyah bint Khayyat (RA). He raised Ammar (RA). When the family believed, they believed together. When they suffered, they suffered together. They had no clan strong enough to shield them. In the first persecution, the family of Yasir (RA) became Makkah's example — and Islam's.

Patience, family of Yasir

The Prophet ﷺ could not stop the torture. He could only speak to it: patience, family of Yasir — your appointed place is Paradise (Musnad Ahmad 439, hasan). One household, promised the Garden together, by name, while still under the whip.

Yasir (RA) died as a result of that persecution, before the Hijrah. The exact circumstances of his death are less certain than his wife's — Sumayyah (RA)'s killing is attributed specifically to Abu Jahl in the early sources; Yasir (RA)'s is not. What is firmly established: he died for his faith, among the earliest to do so, and never lived to see Madinah, or Badr, or the safety that came after.

His son survived. Ammar (RA) carried the family's firmness into every chapter that followed — through the Prophet's ﷺ own lifetime, and to his own death decades later at Siffin.

Ease, at last

His name means ease and gentleness. His road held neither.

The scholars read the name the way the Qur'an teaches: indeed, with hardship comes ease (Surah al-Sharh, 94:5–6). His hardship was spent entirely in this world. His ease is spent entirely in the next.

To carry this name

To carry this name is to believe when believing costs you everything and gains you nothing here. It is to raise a family that stands together, not apart, when the pressure comes. It is patience that holds without any promise of rescue. And it is faith that asks for nothing in this life, trusting the ease is stored up for the one after it.

Scholars discuss

Yasir ibn Amir (RA) — husband of Sumayyah (RA), father of Ammar (RA)— came to Makkah from Yemen a free man seeking a lost brother, and stayed to find something larger. He was tortured beside his wife and son in the first persecution, and died as a result of it: among the earliest martyrs of Islam.

The consolation given to the family — patience, family of Yasir; your appointed place is Paradise — is preserved in Musnad Ahmad and graded hasan. What Ibn Kathir relates in al-Bidayah wa al-Nihayah gives the fuller scene: Banu Makhzum dragged the family onto Makkah's burning ground at the height of the midday heat. The Prophet's ﷺ words did not promise rescue. They affirmed the outcome.

One point of care: unlike Sumayyah (RA), whose killing is specifically and consistently attributed to Abu Jahl, the sources are less precise about who caused Yasir (RA)'s death, or exactly how it happened. The safer statement, and the one the classical tradition actually supports, is that he died under the persecution inflicted on his household.

His son's later trial is tied by the commentators to a specific verse. When Ammar(RA) was forced under torture to speak against his own faith while his heart stayed firm, the Qur'an excused him directly: except one who is compelled while his heart is secure in faith (Surah al-Nahl, 16:106). This verse concerns Ammar(RA), not Yasir (RA) himself.

The scholars note the family's larger significance: three people, no tribal protection, and a household that became the standing example of what early Islam actually cost. His name means ease — carried by a man whose road had none, toward the place that is nothing else.

In the hadith

Musnad Ahmad 439 (hasan) — The Prophet's ﷺ words to the family of Yasir: "patience, family of Yasir; your appointed place is Paradise."

No established narration from Sahih al-Bukhari or Sahih Muslim is devoted to Yasir (RA) directly. His account comes through the sirah — Ibn Ishaq, Ibn Sa'd's al-Tabaqat al-Kubra, and Ibn Kathir's al-Bidayah wa al-Nihayah.

Know this name.

The meaning, the pronunciation, the source — rendered as a card, one of a kind to this visit.

Save Yasir to a list
Suggest a correction
Thought of together
Save