The Death of Ibrahim, the Son of the Prophet ﷺ

Shaykh Yasir Qadhi explains:

Māriyah bore the Prophet ﷺ a son, and he came to the masjid beaming, the Companions saw him smiling, and said: a boy was born to me last night, and I shall call him by the name of my forefather, Ibrāhīm. A woman of the Anṣār was engaged as wet-nurse, for a stipend, there being an eager competition among the women of Madinah to foster him, a custom now all but vanished, by which women helped one another rear their newborns.

Ibrāhīm lived only about eighteen months, and we know of no report of any incident within that time, one of the sad silences of the Sīrah; there was perhaps nothing to tell beyond a baby boy seen in his father's arms. He was the Prophet's ﷺ only living son, all his other children having died save Fāṭimah, which is part of why his birth had brought such joy. And in the first quarter of the tenth year, with less than a year of the Prophet's ﷺ own life remaining, the boy fell sick and died, at the tenderest and most beloved of ages.

❧"The eye weeps and the heart grieves"

Word came that Ibrāhīm was dying, and the Prophet ﷺ went to Māriyah, who lived in a district of Madinah called al-ʿAwālī, still known by that name fourteen centuries later. He took the infant, wheezing and coughing in the throes of death, and his tears fell. One of the Companions said: أَوَتَبْكِي يَا رَسُولَ اللَّهِ, you weep, O Messenger of Allah?, for they rarely saw him weep in public, and it startled them. And he answered with the famous words: تَدْمَعُ الْعَيْنُ وَيَحْزَنُ الْقَلْبُ، وَلَا نَقُولُ إِلَّا مَا يَرْضَىٰ رَبُّنَا, the eye weeps and the heart grieves, but we say only what pleases our Lord, and were it not that Allah's promise is true, and that the later of us shall follow the earlier, we would grieve for you more bitterly than this.

This is what ṣabr means. Ṣabr is not the absence of feeling, you may be sad, you may weep, that is fine. Ṣabr is control of the tongue and the limbs: you do not wail, you do not tear your hair or cry "why is this happening to me," you say only what pleases Allah. The funeral prayer was prayed over the infant, with four takbīrāt, from which we learn both that we pray the janāzah over a young child and that its takbīrāt are four, and he was buried in al-Baqīʿ, in a grave known to this day.

❧The sun does not weep

On the very day Ibrāhīm died, as the Musnad of al-Ṭayālisī records, within hours of his death in the morning, the sun was eclipsed, and the people of Madinah began to say that the sun grieved for the Prophet's ﷺ sorrow. He gathered them and delivered the khuṭbah recorded in al-Bukhārī and Muslim: إِنَّ الشَّمْسَ وَالْقَمَرَ آيَتَانِ مِنْ آيَاتِ اللَّهِ، لَا يَنْكَسِفَانِ لِمَوْتِ أَحَدٍ وَلَا لِحَيَاتِهِ, the sun and the moon are two of Allah's signs; they are not eclipsed for anyone's death or life; when you see it, hasten to the remembrance of Allah and to prayer.

It is incidents like this that prove his sincerity beyond doubt. He had only to stay silent and let the rumour stand, what would he have lost if the world believed the sun wept for his son? But he is the Messenger of Allah ﷺ and must preach the truth, so he called the people and told them plainly that the eclipse had nothing to do with his own child's death. Note that al-Bukhārī gives the khuṭbah without naming Ibrāhīm; but why would he say the sun does not eclipse for a death unless a death had just occurred?, and it was his own son's.

❧"Not the father of any of your men"

That Ibrāhīm would never reach manhood was, in a sense, already decreed in the Qurʾān. Allah says: مَّا كَانَ مُحَمَّدٌ أَبَا أَحَدٍ مِّن رِّجَالِكُمْ وَلَٰكِن رَّسُولَ اللَّهِ وَخَاتَمَ النَّبِيِّينَ, Muḥammad is not the father of any of your men, a verse of Sūrat al-Aḥzāb revealed before Ibrāhīm's birth. Notice the precision: not "father of any child" or "any mawlūd," but rijāl, grown men. Had Ibrāhīm reached manhood the verse would have been contradicted; but he was always a walad, a mawlūd, and never a rajul.

There is also a report in Ibn Mājah from Anas that the Prophet ﷺ said Allah had given Ibrāhīm a wet-nurse in Paradise, and وَلَوْ عَاشَ لَكَانَ صِدِّيقًا نَبِيًّا, had he lived he would have been a truthful one, a prophet. Al-Albānī graded it ḥasan, but the majority, and the view the shaykh leans to, is that this is the statement of Anas himself and other Companions, an ijtihād, that how could the Prophet's ﷺ son be other than a prophet, not a ḥadīth; it is so reported in Musnad Aḥmad as Anas's own words.

❧The wisdom of no male line

There is a political wisdom in the Prophet ﷺ leaving no male lineage. Had there been a son, he would inevitably have become the next caliph, and his son after him, look at the controversies that erupted even from his descendants through his daughter, and how groups exalted the Ahl al-Bayt beyond what is human. We honour the Ahl al-Bayt; but here is the difference from the Shīʿah, we say they are blessed if they are righteous, not that they are righteous because they are Ahl al-Bayt. Blood does not make a man righteous; his deeds do. A good man who is also Ahl al-Bayt is light upon light; a bad man's lineage will not save him, and we are all children of prophets, of Nūḥ and of Ādam. As the ḥadīth in al-Tirmidhī has it: مَنْ بَطَّأَ بِهِ عَمَلُهُ لَمْ يُسْرِعْ بِهِ نَسَبُهُ, whoever is held back by his deeds, his lineage will not speed him forward.

So Allah willed that Ibrāhīm pass away, and the Prophet ﷺ, now sixty-two, who had buried his father before birth, his mother, his grandfather, Abū Ṭālib, Khadījah, and every child but Fāṭimah, was tested one last time in the final year of his life, that his rank be raised and that he be a model for us.