Stories

Shaykh Yasir Qadhi explains: The books of Sīrah begin by asking: who are the Arabs? There is nothing scientific here; these are the legends the Arabs carried down the generations, and this is the standard narrative. **…

Shaykh Yasir Qadhi explains: Qusayy ibn Kilab is the star of Quraysh, the fifth grandfather of the Prophet ﷺ, called al-Quraysh al-Aṣghar, the Minor Quraysh, because he began the immediate ascent of the tribe, so that f…

The family of Prophet Muhammad ﷺ is called the Hashimite family after his grandfather Hashim bin 'Abd Manaf. Hashim was the one responsible for giving food and water to the pilgrims. This had been his charge when the son…

Abraha al-Ashram, the Abyssinian (Aksumite) viceroy who governed Yemen from San'a, saw how the Arabs made their pilgrimage to the Ka'bah at Mecca, and how it gathered to that city honour and trade. Envious, he resolved t…

'Abdul-Muttalib: We have already known that after the death of Hashim, the charge of pilgrims' food and water went to his brother Al-Muttalib bin 'Abd Munaf (who was honest, generous and trustworthy). When 'Abdul-Muttali…

'Abdullah: The father of Prophet Muhammad ﷺ. His mother was Fatimah, daughter of 'Amr bin 'A'idh bin 'Imran bin Makhzum bin Yaqdha bin Murra. 'Abdullah was the smartest of 'Abdul-Muttalib's sons, the chastest and the mos…

'Abdul-Muttalib chose Amina, daughter of Wahab bin 'Abd Munaf bin Zahra bin Kilab, as a wife for his son, 'Abdullah. She thus, in the light of this ancestral lineage, stood eminent in respect of nobility of position and…

Soon after the marriage, 'Abdullah was sent by his father to buy dates in Madinah where he died. In another version, 'Abdullah went to Syria on a trade journey and died in Madinah on his way back. He was buried in the ho…

In the year the Prophet ﷺ was to be born, the gravest threat yet came upon Mecca from the south. Abraha al-Ashram was the viceroy of Yemen under the Najashi, not the same Najashi to whom the Companions would later emigra…

The Prophet ﷺ was born in Mecca in the Year of the Elephant, the year Allah turned back Abraha's army, which the historians place at about 570 CE. Two companions born in that same year confirmed it: Suwayd ibn Ghaflah, w…

After his birth the Prophet ﷺ was given, as was the custom of the noble Quraysh, to be nursed and raised among the Bedouin. The tribe most sought for this was the Banū Saʿd ibn Bakr, renowned for the purity of their Arab…

It was during his years among the Banū Saʿd, when the Prophet ﷺ was about four years old, that his chest was opened. Anas ibn Mālik narrates the account, recorded in Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim: Jibril came to the Prophet ﷺ while he wa…

When the Prophet ﷺ was about six, his mother Aminah took him to Yathrib to visit his kin there, for his great-grandmother had been of that city, the one tie the family of Quraysh had to the place he would one day call ho…

With both parents gone, the orphan was entrusted to his grandfather Abdul-Muttalib, chieftain of Quraysh, now very old and blind. By the Kaʿbah stood a raised seat in the shade where Abdul-Muttalib would sit each afterno…

When the Prophet was eight years old, death visited his family once again. Abdul-Muttalib, now very old and frail, sensed his time was coming. He gathered his sons and entrusted the care of Muhammad ﷺ to Abu Talib. Abu…

Abu Talib took his nephew into his modest home. Although he had many children and little wealth, he treated Muhammad ﷺ with immense love, often favoring him over his own sons. He would not eat until Muhammad was present,…

When the Prophet ﷺ was a boy of about nine to twelve, his uncle Abu Talib prepared to set out with the trading caravan to Syria. As he was leaving, the boy clung to him and said, "To whom are you leaving me? I have neith…

The tribe of Quraysh belonged to the great branch of Kinānah; facing them stood the branch of Qays ʿAylān, which included tribes such as Hawāzin and Ghaṭafān. When a man of Kinānah killed a man of Hawāzin, the Hawāzin fe…

Some years after the Fijār Wars, when the Prophet ﷺ was about twenty, a nobler event took place. A merchant of the tribe of Zubaid, come from Yemen for the pilgrimage, sold goods to al-ʿĀṣ ibn Wāʾil, a rich and powerful…

The story of the marriage to Khadijah رضي الله عنها begins with the Prophet صلى الله عليه وسلم as a young shepherd of about twenty-three or twenty-four. He was hired, along with another young man whose name has not been…

When the Prophet صلى الله عليه وسلم was thirty-five years old, as Ibn Isḥāq records, the Kaʻah was damaged by two disasters in the same year: first fire, then flood. A woman had been cooking near the Kaʻah, in those days…

Āʾisha رضي الله عنها narrates this story in the fifth hadīth of Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī, in vivid detail, even though she was not yet born when it happened. The Prophet صلى الله عليه وسلم had told her everything, as a husband d…

For three years, the message of Islam was spread secretly. Then, the command came to preach openly: 'Warn your closest kindred.' The Prophet ﷺ climbed Mount Safa and called out the war cry of the Arabs, 'Ya Sabahah!' Th…

As the persecution in Mecca intensified, the Prophet ﷺ felt pain for the suffering of his companions. He pointed towards the west and said, 'If you were to go to the land of Abyssinia (Ethiopia), for there is a king ther…