Marriage of Abdullah and Aminah

Every biography of the Prophet Muhammad, may the peace and blessings of Allah be upon him, must begin years before his birth, in the narrow valleys of Makkah where the fortunes of sacred history were silently being arranged by the hand of Allah. The last decades of the sixth century of the Christian era found Quraysh settled around the Ancient House, honoured among the Arabs as the custodians of the Kaaba and the descendants of Ibrahim and Ismail, peace be upon them both. Yet idolatry had crept over the sanctuary, and the need for a purifying prophet was felt by the few remaining hanifs who still turned their faces toward the One God. Into this generation, in about the year 569 of the Christian calendar, came one of the most consequential marriages ever contracted upon the face of the earth, so ordinary in its appearance and so staggering in its result: the marriage of Abdullah ibn Abdul-Muttalib of Banu Hashim to Aminah bint Wahb of Banu Zuhrah.

Abdullah had already been marked out in the memory of Quraysh by the strange trial of his childhood. His father Abdul-Muttalib, having been blessed with sons after years of loneliness, had vowed before his Lord that if ten sons were granted to him and they grew to protect him, he would sacrifice one of them in gratitude to the Kaaba. When the years fulfilled the condition, he gathered his sons and cast the divining arrows, and the lot fell upon Abdullah, the youngest and the dearest of them all. A hundred camels were eventually accepted as his ransom through the repeated casting of the arrows, and so Abdullah remained among the living, walking thereafter as a living sign: the son who had been given back, the boy upon whom a peculiar radiance was seen to rest. Ibn Kathir records that when Abdullah's father led him out to arrange his marriage, the whole of Makkah sensed that something hallowed attended this young man.

The sources describe Abdullah ibn Abdul-Muttalib as the most handsome youth of Quraysh, and Martin Lings preserves the eloquent description that he was, for beauty, the Joseph of his times, such that even the oldest men and women of Quraysh could not remember having seen his equal. He was in his twenty-fifth year when his marriage was arranged, in the full flower of his youth. Yet what struck the discerning eye was not his physical grace alone; it was the light that seemed to shine from beyond this world upon his countenance. That light was the sign, carried in the loins of the chosen line from Ibrahim and Ismail onward, that the prophethood of the final Messenger ﷺ was about to be placed in the womb that Allah had selected. The pagan Arabs of Makkah could not have articulated this doctrine, but the reports preserved in the Seerah literature show that certain spiritually alert individuals among them, Jews and Christians and diviners who had read or heard of the ancient promises, discerned the radiance and understood, at least in part, what it portended.

On the other side of this union stood Aminah bint Wahb, a daughter of Banu Zuhrah, the clan descended from Zuhrah ibn Kilab, the brother of Qusayy ibn Kilab, whose line ran parallel to that of Abdul-Muttalib through their common ancestor Abd Manaf ibn Qusayy. Ibn Ishaq, as transmitted through Ibn Hisham, describes her as the woman most highly regarded among her people in lineage and standing. Her father Wahb ibn Abd Manaf had been chief of Banu Zuhrah in both age and honour; and although Wahb had died some years before the marriage, the guardianship of the family passed to his brother Wuhayb ibn Abd Manaf, who succeeded him as chief of the clan and who accordingly concluded the marriage contract. The Arabs of that age esteemed purity of lineage above almost every other consideration in marriage, for the blood of the noble houses carried the honour of the sanctuary and the memory of Ibrahim. In choosing Aminah, Quraysh witnessed a union of the two most purified streams of Qurayshite nobility: the Hashimite line of custodians and the Zuhrite line of chieftains, both converging upon Qusayy, both honoured in the valleys of Makkah. What believer's heart does not pause here in wonder: Allah was weaving the ancestry of His final Messenger through the noblest houses of Arabia, preparing a lineage worthy of the trust before the trust itself was given.

The occasion was doubled in its dignity by a second union. Abdul-Muttalib, now over seventy years of age yet still remarkably vigorous, had resolved to take a wife for himself from the same household: he asked Wuhayb for the hand of his daughter Halah, the cousin of Aminah, at the same time as he sought Aminah for his son. Wuhayb agreed, and all preparations were made for the two weddings to be contracted on the same day. On the appointed day the aged chief of Quraysh took his son by the hand, and the two bridegrooms set off together for the dwellings of Banu Zuhrah. Lings preserves the awe of the scene: the slow approach of the two bridegrooms, their natural grace enhanced by the solemnity of the occasion, was indeed an impressive sight, and everyone in Makkah knew of the great wedding which was about to take place. The custom of the Arabs demanded that such contracts be witnessed by the clan elders, sealed with the dower, and celebrated openly; the marriage of the custodian's son to the noblest daughter of Banu Zuhrah was accordingly a public and celebrated event, not a private affair. There is a quiet teaching here for every Muslim household: the Seerah honours the open, witnessed, and honourable contract, and the believer who stands at a marriage today walks in a line that stretches back to blessed gatherings such as this one in the valleys of Makkah.

On the way, the procession passed the dwellings of Banu Asad ibn Abd al-Uzza. There, at the entrance of her house, stood a woman whom Lings names Qutaylah and whom Ibn Kathir's fuller transmission identifies as Umm Qattal, daughter of Nawfal, the sister of Waraqah ibn Nawfal. Ibn Ishaq's account suggests that she had stationed herself there deliberately, perhaps in order to see what could be seen, for everyone in Makkah knew of the wedding about to be contracted. Her brother Waraqah was among the very few men of Quraysh who could read, and he had made a study of the scriptures and had become a Christian, as Lings relates; from him Qutaylah had often heard of the prophet who was expected to arise in that nation, and the thought of that awaited prophet filled her mind. As the two bridegrooms drew near, she had eyes only for the younger man, and she was struck above all, as she had been on other occasions but never so much as now, by the radiance which lit his face and which seemed to her to shine from beyond this world. Could it be, she wondered, that Abdullah was the expected prophet, or that he was to be the father of the prophet?

Overcome by a sudden impulse, she called out to him: O Abdullah. His father let go of his hand as if to tell him to speak with his kinswoman, and Abdullah turned back to face her. She asked him where he was going, and he replied simply that he was with his father, not out of reticence, but because he felt sure that she must know that he was on his way to his wedding. Then she made her astonishing offer: take me here and now as your wife, she said, and you shall have as many camels as those that were sacrificed in your stead. Ibn Kathir's transmission records her words in the form: if you will have me now, you can have the like number of camels that were sacrificed for you. The reference was to the hundred camels of his ransom, and the audacity of the offer, a woman proposing herself openly in the path of a bridal procession, shows how powerfully the light upon him had worked upon her hopes. Abdullah's answer has been preserved by the traditionists: I am with my father, he said; I cannot act against his wishes, and I cannot leave him; I may not oppose him or forsake him. The reply reveals the filial perfection of the man whose son would perfect every virtue: he would not seize even a heaven-sent hint of blessing at the cost of disrespecting his father in the hour of his father's errand.

The marriages were then contracted according to plan: Abdullah married Aminah, and Abdul-Muttalib married Halah, and the two couples stayed for some days in the house of Wuhayb. Ibn Ishaq states that Abdullah consummated the marriage with Aminah in Makkah, and it is claimed in his transmission that she there and then conceived the Messenger of Allah ﷺ; Ibn Kathir adds, along the line of al-Khara'iti, that Abdullah stayed three nights with her. The consummation in Makkah shortly before his departure on a trading expedition to Syria is significant: the conception of the Prophet occurred in the holiest of cities, within the sanctuary of the first house of worship appointed for mankind, and through a marriage lawful and honourable in every particular. Qutaylah's hopes, however, were to be disappointed; and the manner of her disappointment is one of the most haunting episodes in all the preparatory history of the Seerah.

A few days later, when Abdullah went to fetch something from his own house, he again passed Qutaylah, the sister of Waraqah. Her eyes searched his face with such earnestness that he stopped beside her, expecting her to speak. When she remained silent, he asked her why she did not say to him what she had said before. She answered him with the words that have been transmitted with awe ever since: the light hath left thee that was with thee yesterday; today thou canst not fulfil the need I had of thee. Ibn Kathir's version of her words reads: the light you bore yesterday has left you, and I need you no more. She had understood, in the interval between the two meetings, that the radiance she had hoped to capture had passed from Abdullah into his bride, and that the awaited prophet would now be born of Aminah and not of her. Ibn Kathir explains that she had heard from her brother Waraqah, who had become a Christian and studied the scriptures, that there was to be a prophet come to that nation, and that she had wanted him to be born to her; but God made him of the finest and most noble lineage, as the Almighty declared in the Qur'an: Allah knows best where to place His message.

The grief of Qutaylah found its way into verse, and her verses have been preserved, remarkably, in the canonical collections of the Seerah. Ibn Kathir relates them on the authority of al-Bayhaqi, from Yunus ibn Bukayr, from Muhammad ibn Ishaq: and so on to Banu Zuhrah, where they were, and to Aminah who bore a boy; she sees al-Muhammad, the right-guided, when he mounted her, and a light that had preceded him ahead; and again: all creation, all mankind, were hoping for him to lead the people as an imam, rightly guided; God shaped him from a light, making it pure, its glow taking the gloom from us; that is the work of your Lord who singled him out. These lines are astonishing testimony: a woman of the Jahiliyyah, standing outside the fold of the coming revelation, confesses in her own poetry that God Himself had formed the expected one from a light, and that his coming would lift the gloom of the ages. Ibn Kathir notes that the verses were spoken in disappointment at her failure to obtain what she had wanted, and yet in the providence of Allah they became among the earliest human testimonies to the prophetic light that entered Aminah.

The classical corpus preserves a parallel and independent account of a second woman's perception, transmitted along a different chain. Ibn Kathir relates it from Abu Bakr Muhammad ibn Sahl al-Khara'iti, from Ali ibn Harb, from Muhammad ibn Umar al-Qurashi, from Muslim ibn Khalid al-Zanji, from Ibn Jurayh, from Ata ibn Abi Rabah, from Ibn Abbas: when Abdul-Muttalib went off with his son Abdullah to arrange his marriage, he passed by a woman diviner who had adopted the Jewish faith and read the scriptures, named Fatimah daughter of Murr al-Khathamiyyah. She saw the light of prophethood on Abdullah's face and said: young man, would you like to have me now and let me give you a hundred camels? Abdullah replied in verse that he would rather die than commit what is forbidden. Then Abdullah passed on with his father, who married him to Aminah daughter of Wahb, and he stayed three nights with her. When he afterwards came to her and told her what he had done, she said: by God, I am not a woman of doubtful morals; but I did see a light in your face, and I wanted it to be in me; but God refused to put it anywhere other than He wished. She too mourned her loss in verses that Ibn Kathir transmits in full, marvelling that the light had passed to the Zuhrite bride as a lamp passes to a new wick.

The student of the Seerah will notice that the two accounts differ in the identity of the woman: Ibn Ishaq's woman of Banu Asad, identified in the fuller transmissions as the sister of Waraqah, against al-Khara'iti's Fatimah bint Murr al-Khathamiyyah, a divineress learned in the scriptures. The classical scholars did not force these accounts into artificial harmony; Ibn Kathir transmits both side by side, exactly as they reached him, and the careful reader may conclude, as many commentators have suggested, that more than one woman among the Arabs had heard the ancient promises and longed to be the mother of the awaited prophet. What every version agrees upon is the essential point of faith: the light of prophethood rested visibly upon Abdullah until his marriage, and passed, by the decree of Allah who knows best where to place His message, into Aminah bint Wahb alone. The repetition of the motif through independent chains is precisely what gives the event its weight in the hadith-based Seerah literature, for the scholars of Islam have always preferred multiply attested reports when reconstructing the years before revelation.

There is, moreover, a report which explains why Abdul-Muttalib had turned to the house of Wahb at all. Ibn Kathir transmits it from Imam Abu Nu'aym al-Isfahani, in his book Dala'il an-Nubuwwah, on a chain running from Yaqub ibn Muhammad al-Zuhri, from Abd al-Aziz ibn Umar, from Abdullah ibn Jafar, from Ibn Awn, from al-Miswar ibn Makhramah, from Ibn Abbas, as follows: Abdul-Muttalib went to Yemen on a winter's journey and stayed with a Jewish scholar of the scriptures. The scholar examined him and said: I swear that in one of your hands you will have power and in the other prophethood; but we find that prophethood to be in Banu Zuhrah, so how can that be? He then asked whether Abdul-Muttalib had a wife, and advised him: when you go back, marry someone from them, meaning from Banu Zuhrah. So when Abdul-Muttalib returned home he married Halah daughter of Wahb ibn Abd Manaf ibn Zuhrah, and she bore Hamzah and Safiyyah; and Abdullah son of Abdul-Muttalib married Aminah daughter of Wahb, and she gave birth to the Messenger of Allah. When Abdullah married Aminah, the men of Quraysh commented: he has won out.

The double alliance thus wove the houses of Hashim and Zuhrah into a single tapestry. Halah bore Hamzah ibn Abdul-Muttalib, who was at once the paternal uncle of the Prophet and his maternal cousin, for the mothers of both were daughters of the house of Wahb; Hamzah would in time be called the Lion of Allah and the Lion of His Messenger, martyred at Uhud with his deeds ringing through history. The remark of Quraysh that Abdullah had won out, recorded in the transmission of Ibn Abbas cited above, was made in half jest at the time, yet it concealed a truth which the speakers could not see: in winning Aminah, Abdullah had indeed secured the greatest prize ever granted to a bridegroom, for the light of the final prophethood had passed into her womb. The word the Quraysh used was that he had overcome, as though father and son had been rivals for a single treasure. The treasure was the custody of the awaited prophet's origin, and Allah had reserved it for the son rather than the father. Subhanallah, even the half-jesting word of the marketplace was bearing a prophecy that none of its speakers understood.

The scholars of the Ummah have drawn from this event a doctrine of singular beauty: the Prophet was generated through lawful marriage alone, in a line purified by Allah across the generations. Ibn Kathir, after recounting the marriage, adduces the report transmitted through a good line of narration in which the Messenger of Allah ﷺ said: I was born of marriage, not of fornication. This is confirmed by the rigorously authenticated hadith of Wathilah ibn al-Asqa recorded by Imam Muslim in his Sahih, in which the Prophet ﷺ said that Allah chose Kinanah from the children of Ismail, and chose Quraysh from Kinanah, and chose Banu Hashim from Quraysh, and chose him from Banu Hashim. The marriage of Abdullah and Aminah was therefore not a chance human arrangement but the final joining of two streams of an elect lineage, each link of which had been contracted in lawful wedlock. Qutaylah's impermissible offer, and Fatimah's, were declined with the chastity of a young man who would die before the birth of his son, leaving him a pure inheritance, a pure name, and a household free of reproach even by the standards of the age of ignorance itself.

Shortly after the consummation of the marriage, Abdullah departed from Makkah with a trading caravan of Quraysh bound for Gaza and Syria, as the trading seasons moved the merchants of Makkah northward. He left behind Aminah with child, though neither husband nor wife knew as yet the full meaning of what had been conceived; the caravan, and the illness which would overtake Abdullah in Yathrib on his return journey, belong to the events which follow this one in the sequence of the Seerah. Lings places the marriage in the year 569 of the Christian era, and the year following it became known forever after as the Year of the Elephant, momentous, as he writes, for more than one reason. It is one of the quiet glories of this event that nothing in it appeared miraculous to the onlookers: a father arranged a marriage, a son obeyed, a bride was honoured. Only the penetrating eye of a Waraqah's sister, and the learned expectation of a scriptural scholar in distant Yemen, caught the outline of what Allah was weaving through these ordinary human courtesies: the approach of the best of creation to the gate of his worldly existence.

The significance of the marriage of Abdullah and Aminah within the architecture of the Seerah can hardly be overstated. It stands at the meeting point of the age of promise and the age of fulfilment; through it, the light which had been handed down through the chosen loins of Ibrahim's house reached the womb in which the Seal of the Prophets would be formed. For the believer who reads these accounts, the event affirms the perfection of divine planning: Allah, who knows best where to place His message, chose the hour, the household, and the bride, and allowed the expectation of learned souls to circle the event without ever controlling it. It teaches, too, the Islamic estimation of marriage as the sole worthy vessel of human generation: the Prophet's origin was safeguarded in lawful union, that his lineage might be beyond reproach. And it teaches the honour due to parents and elders, for Abdullah refused a prophetic longing out of deference to his father, and Aminah accepted her trust with the dignity of a woman who had been chosen before she knew it. From this marriage flowed every event that follows in the blessed life: the conception and its light, the orphanhood decreed in wisdom, and the birth in the Year of the Elephant, toward which the whole of this sacred history now turns.