Al-Aswad ibn Al-Muttalib

al-Aswad ibn al-Muṭṭalib ibn Asad al-Qurashī was a distant uncle of the Prophet Muḥammad ﷺ. His father al-Muṭṭalib ibn ʿAbd Manāf was a brother of both Hāshim and ʿAbd Shams, making al-Aswad a first cousin of the Prophet's grandfather ʿAbd al-Muṭṭalib.

At the Battle of Badr (2 AH / 624 CE), al-Aswad suffered one of the heaviest losses of any single Qurayshī family: all three of his sons were killed. Among them, his youngest and most beloved was Zumʿah ibn al-Aswad.

Following the battle, when Abū Sufyān issued a prohibition on women wailing over the dead of Badr (lest it give pleasure to the Muslims), al-Aswad found himself unable to grieve openly. Ibn Hishām records a poignant incident: one night al-Aswad heard a woman wailing nearby. His heart leaped with hope and he said: 'Go ask her, has the ban on wailing been lifted? I want to wail over my son Zumʿah.' The servant returned: 'She is wailing over a lost camel.' The ban covered only grief over Badr's dead, wailing over anything else was permitted. So al-Aswad, who had lost three sons at Badr, could not even publicly grieve while a woman cried over a camel. Ibn Kathīr uses this incident to illustrate how Allah added further grief to the Quraysh by denying them the consolation of communal mourning.