When the Prophet was about six years old, his grandfather Abdul Muttalib
took him to Yathrib. His mother Aminah
and his “nanny” Barakah came along. The
purpose of the journey was to visit the grave of Abdullah, the son of Abdul
Muttalib, the husband of Aminah, the father of Muhammad, and the master of
Barakah.
But the greater reason for the journey was to introduce the young
Muhammad to his relatives in Yathrib.
The town Yathrib, as we know, was the place the Prophet and his
Companions migrated. The name of this
town was later changed to Madinah after the Prophet’s migration. This name stays until our times. Let’s use Madinah instead of Yathrib from
hereon, because this name is known to all.
But who were the relatives of the Prophet who lived in Madinah? They were the clan of Abdul Muttalib’s
mother, Banu an Najjar, a sub-tribe of Khazraj, one of the two main tribes in
Madinah. Her name was Salma bint Amr bin
Zayd bin Labid.
The great grandfather of Muhammad, Hashim, whose name the clan of the
Prophet, Banu Hashim, is associated with, married Salma bint Amr in one of his
visits to Madinah. He was on his trade
mission to Sham (Syria). He was in fact the
first to introduce the trade mission to Sham in the summer and to Yemen in the winter,
a tradition that we learn from Surah al-Quraysh (Chapter 106).
Due to his marriage with Salma, Hashim stayed with his wife for a while
in Madinah before continuing with his trading mission to Sham (at the Gaza
city). He died and was buried there,
leaving his widowed wife who was pregnant with a baby boy at that time. When she gave birth to him, they named him
Shaybah. In case you are curious, it is
said that he was named Shaybah (literally, old man) because he was born with a
few grey hairs. Hashim’s family in
Makkah, meanwhile, was not aware that he had a son in Madinah, until many years
later.
When Shaybah was about ten years old, his uncle Muttalib, the brother of
Hashim, went to Madinah to persuade his mother and her tribe to let the young
Shaybah be brought and raised in Makkah.
His mother Salma and her tribes were at first disagreed with the idea,
no doubt because they loved the boy and did not want to be separated from him.
Undeterred, Muttalib stayed in Madinah for three months and finally
managed to persuade them to let him bring his nephew to Makkah. His main argument was that Hashim, his
brother, was the leader of Makkah, and his son should be allowed to live in
Makkah so that he would be their leader when he became a grown up man.
When Muttalib brought the young Shaybah with him to Makkah, people
thought that the boy was his slave. So
they called him Abdul Muttalib (literally, the slave of Muttalib). Muttalib objected to that, saying that the
boy was his nephew, the son of their deceased leader, Hashim. Nevertheless, the name stuck throughout his
life and beyond.
Since the Prophet’s great grandmother was from Banu an-Najjar of Madinah,
there was, therefore, some Yathrib or Madinah blood in him. This proved to be quite handy for his mission
later on, for the first clan that accepted his mission was Banu an-Najjar, the clan
of his great grandmother. Thus, when the
Prophet migrated to Madinah, the town was not a complete stranger to him, for
here lived his relatives, and he had been there as a young boy.
Anyway, when Abdul Muttalib became the most prominent of leaders in Makkah,
one day he went to the place near Kaabah where animals were slaughtered. Due to the vow that he made years earlier, it
was not an animal that he was about to slaughter this time; it was one of his
sons, Abdullah.
When Abdul Muttalib was about to fulfill his vow, one of his wives, the
one who gave birth to Abdullah, went hysterical. When
she failed to persuade her husband to call off his intention, she quickly
called for her cousin, al-Mughirah, for help.
Meanwhile, Abdul Manaf, one of Abdul Muttalib’s sons, tried all he could
to stop his father from slaughtering his brother. At the same time, Umayyah, the cousin of
Abdul Muttalib, also tried to stop his cousin from continuing with his vow.
Abdul Muttalib of course did not really want to slaughter his son. Abdullah was after all his most beloved
son. But he also did not want to break
his vow with God. In the ensuing
suspense, Al-Mughirah proposed that the vow be ransomed with other things. “Even if we have to exhaust all our wealth,”
al-Mughirah said, “we would do so.” To
make this long story short, 100 camels were slaughtered in place of Abdullah.
Now, our concern here is not with this well-known story. It is with the important figures in the
story.
First, who was the woman (one of Abdul Muttalib’s wives) who went
hysterical when Abdullah was about to be slaughtered? She was Fatimah bint Amr, the mother of
Abdullah. Her name with lineage is Fatimah
bint Amr b. A'idh b. Imran b. Makhzum b. Yaqaza b. Murra b. Ka'b b. Lu'ayy b.
Ghalib. Because she was the mother of
Abdullah, that made her the grandmother of the Prophet.
You will see that just like the name of one his daughters, the Prophet’s
grandmother also went with similar name, Fatimah. But it was to Ali bin Abu Talib, the cousin
of the Prophet, that the honor of having Fatimahs around him should be given,
for Ali was probably the only one whose grandmothers, mother, wife, daughter and
granddaughter are named Fatimah.
Fatimah bint Amr was Ali’s grandmother as well, because his father Abu
Talib was the full brother of Abdullah.
His grandmother from his mother side was also called Fatimah, that is
Fatimah bint Qays, who was the mother of his mother, Fatimah bint Asad bin Hashim bin Abdul Manaf bin Qusayy. His wife was Fatimah bint Muhammad, the daughter
of the Prophet. And Ali also had one
daughter whom he named Fatimah (from different wife, not Fatimah bint Muhammad),
and a granddaughter by the same name.
Another name in the above story is al-Mughirah. Who was he?
He was the head of Makhzum clan at that time, a close friend of Abdul
Muttalib, and a cousin of Fatimah bint Amr.
If you are familiar with Seerah, you would notice that one of the most
notorious enemies of the Prophet came from this clan. Yes, he was none other than Abu Jahal.
Now, Abu Jahal was not actually called Abu Jahal. That was the name given by the Prophet to
him, a gift, we may say, for his fierce opposition. His real name was Amr. His full name was Amr bin Hisham bin
al-Mughirah bin Abdullah b. Umar b. Makhzum b. Yaqaza b. Murrah b. Ka'b.
Al-Mughirah, the cousin of Fatimah bint Amr, was Abu Jahal’s grandfather. Al-Mughirah was also the grandfather of the
great Islamic general, Khalid al-Walid.
Yes, Khalid full name was Khalid bin al-Walid bin al-Mughirah bin
Abdullah b. Umar b. Makhzum. Khalid and
Abu Jahal was first cousin. Khalid’s
father and Abu Jahal’s uncle, al-Walid, was the famous enemy of the Prophet. This al-Walid was the head of Banu Makhzum
when the Prophet started his mission.
Back to Abu Jahal, his real name was Amr, as we have seen above. But he liked to style himself Abu al-Hakam
(pronounce Abul Hakam), meaning the Father of the Wise, or the Father of
Wisdom. It was by this name that he was
known during the Prophet’s time. Since he rejected Islam, however, the Prophet
did not see any wisdom in that, so he changed the name to Abu Jahal, the Father
of Ignorance. Of course Abu Jahal was
not amused with that name calling.
Another name in the story above is Umayyah. This is another well-known name. One who reads Islamic history must have heard
of Umayyah Dynasty, which was founded by Muawiyah bin Abu Sufyan. Yes, this was the same Umayyah who gave the
name to the first Islamic dynasty.
Umayyah was the cousin of Abdul Muttalib. His father, Abdul Shams, was the brother of
Hashim. He was also the grandfather of
Abu Sufyan, another fierce enemy of the Prophet, before he became Muslim after
the conquest of Makkah. Abu Sufyan, as
we have seen in the first part of this series, was the husband of Hind, the fierce female opponent of the Prophet,
before she too embraced Islam. This
couple, Abu Sufyan and Hind, were the parent of Muawiyah, the founder of
Umayyah Dynasty.
The last name in the story above is Abdul Manaf. Now, you may have heard that sometimes the
Prophet is said to be of Banu Hashim.
Sometimes he is said to be of Banu Abdul Manaf. At other times, he is said to be of Banu
Abdul Muttalib. That is the Arab’s way
of identifying to which group he belongs to.
Banu simply means the children
of, or the descendants of. The Prophet
descended from Abdul Muttalib, who descended from Hashim, who descended from
Abdul Manaf. That is why sometimes it is
said that the Prophet belong to the tribe of Abdul Manaf (or Banu Abdul Manaf).
But the Abdul Manaf in the story above was not the great great
grandfather of the Prophet, of whom Banu Abdul Manaf was called. He was actually his uncle who was his
guardian after the death of his grandfather.
He was none other than Abu Talib, whose given name was Abdul Manaf. Since he had a son called Talib, Abdul Manaf
was therefore known as Abu Talib. He was
the father of Ali, and the full brother of Abdullah.
Sometime after the above event, Abdul Muttalib went looking for a woman
to be a wife for Abdullah. He took a
bride for himself first, whose name was Halah bint Wahab, or Wuhayb. He chose Halah’s first cousin to be the bride
for Abdullah. Her name was Aminah bint
Wahab bin Abdul Manaf bin
Zuhrah.
The Prophet’s mother, Aminah, is well known to many Muslims. Suffice to say here that she belong to Zuhrah
Clan, the clan of Sa’d Abu Waqqas, the conqueror of the Persian Empire, one of
the Ten Promised Paradise. She died when the Prophet was only six years
old, on her way back from Madinah, as mentioned in the beginning of this
article.
After visiting her husband’s grave, and introduced her son (the boy
Muhammad) to his relatives in Madinah, and let the boy played with his
relatives for a few months, it is said that she was caught by a viral fever,
but was undetected until the four of them (Abdul Muttalib, Barakah, Muhammad
and herself) took the journey back to Makkah.
The fever developed and proved to be fatal, and she was buried at the
place call al-Abwaa, somewhere between Madinah and Makkah.
The only thing to add is that her cousin Halah gave birth to two of the
well-known personalities in Islamic history.
The first was Hamzah, the Prophet’s uncle, who fell martyr in the Battle
of Uhud. The second was Safiyya, the
Prophet’s untie, who gave birth to Zubayr bin Awwam, one of the leading
companions. Zubayr was among the Ten
Promised Paradise. He was one of the six
candidates to replace Umar al Khattab.
When we trace the matriarchs of the Prophet, we could see the relationship
between the main actors in the Seerah of the Prophet. Whether they are companions or enemies, they
belong to the same tribe. This is not
surprising, because they are all Qurasyh.
We hope the above gives some picture to the readers.
Related Articles:
Ten Promised Paradise
All in the Family
Good one
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DeleteHope it provides some perspective.
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