ʿAbd al-Muttalib ibn Hashim

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Depiction of the birth of the Prophet with ʿAbd al-Muttalib standing on the right, illustration from the Jami 'at-tawarich (14th century) in the Edinburgh University Library

ʿAbd al-Muttalib ibn Hāschim ( Arabic عبد المطلب ﺑﻦ هاشم, DMG ʿAbd al-Muṭṭalib bin Hāšim ; * at 497; † around 578) was the grandfather of the Islamic prophet Mohammed and an important figure in pre-Islamic Mecca .

Origin and naming

According to Islamic tradition, ʿAbd al-Muttalib arose from a marriage that his father, the Meccan Hāschim ibn ʿAbd Manāf from the Quraish tribe , entered into in Yathrib with the Salmā bint ʿAmr from the Chazradsch tribe from Medina when he himself was on a trade trip to Syria. Hashim left the boy with his mother. After he died a few years later on a trade trip in Gaza , his brother al-Muttalib went to Salmā in Yathrib and harassed her until she surrendered the boy to him. Al-Muttalib took him to Mecca, and when they rode into the city together on a camel, some people thought he was the slave ( ʿabd ) of al-Muttalib, from which his name ʿAbd al-Muttalib is said to come. Its original name was Schaiba ("white hair"); He is said to have received this because he had white spots on his head when he was born.

Position in Mecca

After the death of his uncle ʿAbd al-Muttalib inherited from him the office of entertaining ( rifāda ) and watering ( siqāya ) of the Mecca pilgrims and became head of the Hashim family. In order to strengthen his position in a dispute with opponents within Mecca, he formed an alliance with the Chuzāʿa tribe living in the vicinity of Mecca. At the commercial level, ʿAbd al-Muttalib established trade contacts in Abyssinia .

Islamic tradition ascribes ʿAbd al-Muttalib also the recovery of the Zamzam source. The related reports are summarized by Muhammad ibn Sa ind in his "class book", which the Meccan local historian al-Azraqī († 837) adorns with further locally specific legends in his history of the city of Mecca . In addition, ʿAbd al-Muttalib is said to have introduced the religious practice of tahannuth to the Quraish on Mount Hirā .

The legend about the sacrifice of ʿAbdallāh

ʿAbd al-Muttalib had ten sons, nine of whom are known by name: al-ʿAbbās , Ḥamza , ʿAbdallāh , az-Zubair, al-Ḥārith, Abū Lahab , al-Muqauwim, Ḍirār and Abū Tālib . Islamic tradition particularly emphasizes the relationship with his son ʿAbdallāh, who was the father of Muhammad.

According to a legend that was passed down both orally and in writing in the late 7th century, ʿAbd al-Muttalib took the oath on the Kaaba to sacrifice one of his sons to idols when their number reached ten. At the drawing of the ten names between the arrows at Hubal , the lot fell on ʿAbdallāh, the future father of the Prophet Mohammed. Family members, especially his daughters, had advised ʿAbd al-Muttalib, however, to replace the oath with the sacrifice of ten camels as a customary atonement at the time. Only after the arrows had been questioned ten times, the lot should no longer have fallen on ʿAbdallāh, but on the camels, which ʿAbd al-Muttalib then claims to have sacrificed at Mina .

In the Koran verse:

“That is the obvious test (which we placed on Abraham). And we redeemed him (i.e. his son, who was to be slaughtered) with a huge sacrifice. "

- Sura 37 , verse 106-107 : Translation: Rudi Paret

the Koran exegesis sees the sacrifice of his son intended by Abraham , which could be compensated as an atonement ( kaffāra ) by the slaughter of a ram (kabsch), according to the Islamic legal understanding . In the Koran exegetical work of at-Tabarī and later in Ibn Kathīr , Mohammed consequently describes himself as the "son of the two sacrificed" (Ibn adh-dhabīḥaini) and thus indicates the - not carried out - sacrifice of his father by ʿAbd al-Muttalib and is thus understood through the person of Ishmael , who with his father Abraham is venerated as the builder of the Kaaba sanctuary of Mecca, as part of the Abrahamic tradition . Because, according to Islamic tradition and Koran exegesis, Abraham wanted to offer his son Ishmael as a sacrifice.

In pre-Islamic Arabia , human sacrifice , male children and prisoners of war were known as ritual practices, but were no longer common in the 6th century. This report, told in the retrospective, is therefore regarded as unhistorical in research, and its status in Islamic historiography as apocryphal .

The relationship with the prophet

Since ʿAbdallāh died before the Prophet was born and his mother Āmina also passed away a few years after his birth, ʿAbd al-Muttalib, the then over 70-year-old grandfather of Muhammad, was given the task of looking after the orphans. A little later, however, when Mohammed was 8 years old, he died, Mohammed's uncle Abu Talib took over further care.

Islamic tradition emphasizes the particular closeness of ʿAbd al-Muttalib to the Prophet. He is said to have circumcised him and given him the name Muhammad and was also present at his birth.

literature

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  • Ibn Saad : biographies .. . (Ed. Eugen Wednesday). Brill, Leiden 1905. Vol. I. Theil 1. P. 48 ff., P. IX (table of contents) in German
Studies

Individual evidence

  1. Hans Jansen : Mohammed. A biography. (2005/2007) Translated from the Dutch by Marlene Müller-Haas. CH Beck, Munich 2008, ISBN 978-3-406-56858-9 , p. 234.
  2. See Peters 77f.
  3. Ibn Saad: Biographies ... (Ed.) Eugen Wednesday. Brill, Leiden 1905. Vol. I. Part 1, p. 46
  4. Cf. ʿAbd al-Malik ibn Ḥabīb: K. at-Ta'rīḫ . Ed. J. Aguadé. Madrid 1991. p. 76.
  5. See Peters 78f.
  6. ^ W. Montgomery Watt (1953), p. 30
  7. ^ W. Montgomery Watt (1953), p. 31
  8. Ibn Saad: Biographies ... (Ed.) Eugen Wednesday. Brill, Leiden 1905. Vol. I. Part 1, pp. 48-51; P. IX (table of contents) in German
  9. ^ Fuat Sezgin: History of Arabic literature . Brill, Leiden 1967. Vol. 1, p. 344
  10. Cf. MJ Kister: "Al-Taḥannuth: an inquiry into the meaning of a term" in Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 31 (1968) 223-236. Here p. 232f.
  11. Cf. ʿAbd al-Malik ibn Ḥabīb ibid.
  12. On this question of the modes of transmission in the early period see: G. Widengren: Oral tradition and written literature among the Hebrew in the light of Arabic evidence, with special regard to prose narratives. In: Acta Orientalia (AO), Vol. 23 (1958), pp. 201-262; here: p. 212
  13. Ibn Saad: Biographies ... (Ed.) Eugen Wednesday. Brill, Leiden 1905. Vol. I. Theil 1, pp. 53-54; P. IX-X. (Table of contents) in German
  14. Joseph Henninger: Human sacrifice among the Arabs. In: Anthropos 53 (1958), p. 721ff - with further references; Julius Wellhausen: Remains of Arab paganism. Berlin 1897. p. 116
  15. Cf. Ibn Ishāq: Kitāb Sīrat Rasūl Allāh. Arranged by Abd el-Malik Ibn Hischâm. From d. Hs. On Berlin, Leipzig, Gotha a. Leyden ed. by Ferdinand Wüstenfeld. 2 vols. Göttingen 1858-59. P. 108. Available online here: http://archive.org/stream/p1daslebenmuhamm01ibnhuoft#page/n439/mode/2up
  16. See Rubin.