'Ahad, Ahad'

Bilal was born a slave in Makkah to an Abyssinian mother, Hamamah, and belonged to Umayyah ibn Khalaf of the Banu Jumah. He accepted Islam in its earliest days, among the first seven to declare it publicly.

Others were protected by their clans. Bilal had no one. Ibn Mas'ud reported that the pagans seized the believers and made them wear iron armour and be scorched in the sun. They all conceded something to what was demanded of them, except Bilal: he treated himself as nothing for the sake of Allah, and his people treated him as nothing. They gave him to the boys of Makkah, who dragged him through the streets while he kept saying, "Ahad, Ahad" (One, One) (Sunan Ibn Majah 150).

In the reports, his master Umayyah would lay him in the burning sand with a great rock on his chest and tell him to renounce Muhammad ﷺ. Bilal would answer only with those words.