Modern apologists are fond of repeating an apocryphal tale concerning the "martyring" of an elderly woman named Umm Summayah.  She was one of the first converts to Islam and a slave of Abu Jahl, an adversary of Muhammad.  According to the contemporary version of the tale, Umm Summayah died of a spear thrust from Abu Jahl.  Unfortunately, there is scant evidence to support this.

It is likely that Umm Summayah died at Mecca, since it is mentioned by an earlier historian, Ibn Sa'd.  Tellingly, however, he does not say how she died, which makes little sense if it was truly in the fashion that today's apologists would prefer.  Until recently, in fact, it was generally thought that she simply died from stress (as Muhammad's own daughter later would under Muslim persecution only three months after the death of her father).

If Umm Sumayyah was killed by a spear thrust from Abu Jahl, then why did it escape the notice of the earliest and most reliable biographers and historians?  In fact, Bukhari, Sahih, Muslim, al-Tabari and Ibn Ishaq, do not record the death of a single Muslim at the hands of the Meccans during this period, although they do detail a torturous episode in the life of a slave named Bilal.  There is no reason for them to document the one and not the other if both accounts are reliable.