His beautiful recitation of the Quran is said to have been the direct cause of Umar ibn al-Khattab's (died 644, reigned as the second caliph 634–644) conversion to Islam in c. 616.
[2] Khabbab ibn al-Aratt's background is uncertain, as medieval sources give widely different accounts.
[1] However, he most likely was the son of a non-Arab inhabitant of the Sawād (southern Iraq), perhaps an Iraqi Nabataean,[1] who was brought to Mecca as a slave and sold to someone belonging to the Arab Khuza'a tribe.
[2] His name al-Aratt, which literally means 'afflicted by a speech impairment', likely points to someone who did not master Arabic like a native speaker would.
[1] Khabbab later figured as a transmitter of reports about Muhammad that were collected by the 8th/9th-century scholars of hadith, thirteen of which appeared in the Six Books recognized as most authoritative by Sunni Muslims.