Amina bint Wahb: Mother of the Prophet

Amina bint Wahb ibn Abd Manaf al-Zuhriyya (Arabic: آمنة بنت وهب) was the mother of Prophet Muhammad ﷺ. A woman of the Banu Zuhrah of the Quraysh, she was married to Abdullah ibn Abd al-Muttalib and widowed within months, bore her son at Mecca in the year of the Elephant, gave him over in infancy to a Bedouin foster-mother in the custom of the Meccan nobility, and had him back for only a few years before her own death at al-Abwa, on the road home from Yathrib, when he was six. The reports the sira preserves in her own voice concern her pregnancy and the birth; the one report about her in the authenticated hadith collections concerns her son's visit to her grave many years later, and his weeping there.

Family and Descent

Amina's father was Wahb ibn Abd Manaf ibn Zuhra ibn Kilab ibn Murra ibn Ka'b ibn Lu'ayy, of the Banu Zuhrah. Ibn Ishaq describes him as leader of his clan in both age and honour, and Haykal renders the same standing as chief of the Zuhrah and its eldest and noblest member; The Sealed Nectar records that Amina herself was the most highly regarded woman among her people, and that the standing of her house was the reason the match was sought. Her mother is named as Barrah.

One point of the record is unsettled. Ibn Ishaq has Abd al-Muttalib go directly to Wahb and obtain his daughter from him. Haykal notes that some historians instead place the negotiation at the house of Uhayb, Amina's uncle, on the understanding that her father had already died and that she stood under her uncle's protection.

Marriage to Abdullah

The marriage followed immediately upon the episode that had nearly cost Abdullah his life. Abd al-Muttalib, having ransomed his youngest son with a hundred camels, left the sanctuary holding him by the hand and took him to the quarter of the Banu Zuhrah, where the match was made. Abdullah was twenty-four.

On the road there, the sira records an encounter that turns on Amina without her being present. A woman who had been at the Kaaba stopped to stare into Abdullah's face and offered herself to him, promising camels to the number of those just sacrificed for him. He refused, saying he was with his father and could not leave him. When he passed the same woman after the marriage had been consummated, she told him she no longer had any need of him, because the light she had seen him carrying the day before had left him. She had heard from her brother Waraqah ibn Nawfal, a Christian who studied the scriptures, that a prophet was to arise among that people, and had wanted him born to herself. Ibn Kathir cites in connection with the episode the verse, "And God knows best where to place His prophethood" (Quran 6:124).

Abd al-Muttalib married on the same occasion, taking a kinswoman of Amina's named Hala — given by Ibn Kathir as Hala bint Wahb, which would make her Amina's sister, and in History of Islam as Hala bint Wuhaib, a relative rather than a sister. She bore Hamza and Safiyya, and the consequence of the two weddings falling together was that Hamza, the Prophet's paternal uncle, was close to him in age. When the marriages were made, the men of the Quraysh remarked that Abdullah had won out over his father.

Widowhood

Within a few months of the wedding, Abdullah left Mecca with a Quraysh trading caravan for Ghazza. On the return the company halted at Yathrib, where his family held kin, and there he fell ill and could not go on. He stayed behind while the caravan continued to Mecca, and when it arrived Abd al-Muttalib sent his eldest son al-Harith to fetch him. Al-Harith found that Abdullah had already died and been buried in the city. When the news reached Amina she composed a eulogy for him, remembered as deeply felt.

How much of her pregnancy she carried as a widow is a question the sources answer differently. Al-Waqidi and Ibn Sa'd held that Abdullah died while the child was still unborn, which Ibn Kathir observes is the completest form of orphanhood; other reports place the death at two months after the birth, at seven, or as late as twenty-eight. What is common to all of them is that Amina was left alone with the child very early, supported by the household of Abd al-Muttalib.

The Birth

The material the sira preserves in Amina's own voice belongs to this period. Ibn Kathir assembles several lines of transmission for a statement attributed to her:

"I became pregnant with him and he caused me no difficulties up to when I gave birth to him. When he was separated from me a light emerged along with him that lit all between east and west. Then he dropped to the ground, resting upon his hands, and took up a handful of earth which he gripped tight, raising his head towards heaven."

A variant wording has him come to rest upon his knees, and describes the light as illuminating the castles and market-places of Syria so far that the necks of the camels at Busra could be seen.

Two other women are named as present. Uthman ibn Abi al-As related that his mother had witnessed the birth and said that all she could see in the house was light, and that the stars came so close she thought they would fall on her. And the qadi Iyad transmits from al-Shaffa, the mother of Abd al-Rahman ibn Awf, that she served as Amina's midwife: that when the child came into her hands and first made a sound she heard a voice say "May God have mercy on you", and that a light shone from him by which the castles of Byzantium could be seen.

Amina's first act after the delivery was practical. She sent word to Abd al-Muttalib, who was at the Kaaba, announcing the birth. He came at once, took the infant in his hands, carried him into the Kaaba, and there gave him the name Muhammad — a name known among the Arabs but not in common use. He then returned the child to his mother and waited beside her for the wet-nurses of the Banu Sa'd to arrive, as was the practice of the Meccan nobility.

Fostering and Return

In keeping with that practice, the infant was given within days to a Bedouin foster-mother, Halima bint Abi Dhu'ayb al-Sa'diyya, and spent his earliest years away from Mecca among the Banu Sa'd. Amina therefore had her son with her for very little of his infancy.

One episode from the end of that arrangement involves her directly. Halima, who had become anxious for the child's safety, was bringing him back to Mecca when she lost him on the approach to the city and could not find him. She went to Abd al-Muttalib, who set out with a party of men to search; Waraqah ibn Nawfal and another man of the Quraysh found the boy and brought him to his grandfather, who lifted him onto his shoulders, circumambulated the Kaaba praying for his protection, and then returned him to his mother. Thereafter, in Ibn Ishaq's account, the boy lived with Amina and Abd al-Muttalib until her death.

A different chronology is preserved by al-Umawi, transmitted through an authority Ibn Kathir marks as weak: in that version Abdullah himself, still living, was sent to find the foster-mother, the boy stayed with Halima six years and was brought each year to visit his grandfather, and Amina died when he was eight rather than six, with Abd al-Muttalib surviving until the boy was ten.

The Journey to Yathrib and Her Death

When her son was about six, Amina took him north to Yathrib, travelling in the company of Umm Ayman — the servant Abdullah had left behind, who had helped raise the child from infancy. The purpose was to visit her late husband's maternal kin, the Banu Adi ibn al-Najjar of the Khazraj, among whom Abdullah had died and lay buried, and to whom the family was related through Salma bint Amr, Abd al-Muttalib's own mother.

Umm Ayman's account of what happened there survives, and it supplies the reason the visit ended. Two Jews of the city came to her and asked her to bring the boy out for them to see. They looked him over and turned him about in their hands, and one said to the other that this was the prophet of that nation, and that the city would be the place of his refuge, where many would be taken prisoner and many killed. When Amina heard this she was frightened, and left.

She did not complete the journey home. At al-Abwa, a place on the road between Mecca and Medina, she fell ill and died, and was buried there. Umm Ayman brought the six-year-old boy back to Mecca. The Quran addresses the condition he was left in directly: "Did He not find you an orphan and give [you] refuge?" (Quran 93:6).

He passed into the keeping of his grandfather, who treated him, Ibn Ishaq says, with a closeness he had not shown his own sons. A spread would be laid for Abd al-Muttalib in the shade of the Kaaba and none of his sons would sit on it out of deference; the boy would come and sit on it, and when his uncles moved to lift him off, his grandfather would stop them — "Leave my son alone; he has great things ahead of him." Men of the Banu Mudlij told Abd al-Muttalib to take good care of the child, saying they had never seen anyone of so noble a lineage; and Abd al-Muttalib repeated their words to Abu Talib, who did take care of him after the old man died two years later.

The Prophet's Visit to Her Grave

The one report concerning Amina to enter the authenticated hadith collections belongs to her son's later life. In the Book of Funerals of Sahih Muslim, under a chapter headed for it, Abu Hurayrah narrates that the Prophet said:

"I asked my Lord for permission to pray for forgiveness for my mother but He did not give me permission. And I asked Him for permission to visit her grave and He gave me permission."

Sunan Abi Dawud preserves the same report with a further detail: that the Prophet came to the grave of his mother and wept, and those around him wept with him, and then spoke the words above. The reports say what they say and no more; a tradition claiming that Amina and Abdullah were restored to life in order to believe is rejected by Ibn Kathir, who notes that it is contradicted by what is established in the authenticated collections.

Al-Abwa entered the narrative of her son's life once more. In Safar of the second year after the Hijra, the first expedition the Prophet led in person went out to al-Abwa, also known as Waddan — the place where his mother had been buried some forty years before.

References and Further Reading

Primary Islamic Sources

• Quran 93:6 — "Did He not find you an orphan and give [you] refuge?"; and Quran 6:124, cited by Ibn Kathir in connection with the light said to have passed from Abdullah to Amina
• Muslim ibn al-Hajjaj. Sahih Muslim, Book of Funerals, the chapter on the Prophet asking permission to visit his mother's grave, hadith 976 — narrated from Abu Hurayrah
• Sunan Abi Dawud, Book of Funerals, hadith 3234 — the same report, adding that the Prophet wept at the grave and those around him wept with him
• Ibn Ishaq, Sirat Rasul Allah, in the recension of Ibn Hisham — the marriage, Wahb's standing, the birth, the fostering by Halima, and Amina's death at al-Abwa in the Prophet's sixth year
• Al-Waqidi, as reported by Ibn Kathir — the visit to Yathrib in Umm Ayman's company and Umm Ayman's account of it

Classical Islamic Sources

• Ibn Kathir, Ismail ibn Umar. Al-Sira al-Nabawiyya, English translation, Volume 1 — the principal source for this article, including the chains for the testimony attributed to Amina and the marking of al-Waqqasi as a weak authority in the variant chronology
• Ibn Hisham, recension of Ibn Ishaq's Sirat Rasul Allah
• Qadi Iyad, as reported by Ibn Kathir — the testimony of al-Shaffa, mother of Abd al-Rahman ibn Awf, who attended the birth as midwife
• Al-Umawi, work on the maghazi, as reported by Ibn Kathir — the variant chronology of the fostering and of Amina's death

Academic and Scholarly Sources

• Haykal, Muhammad Husayn. The Life of Muhammad — for Wahb as eldest and noblest of the Zuhrah, the variant placing Amina under her uncle Uhayb's protection, Abdullah's age at marriage, the bearing of the double marriage on Hamza's age, and the naming of the infant in the Kaaba
• Najeebabadi, Akbar Shah. History of Islam, Volume 1 — for Barrah as Amina's mother, and for Hala as bint Wuhaib and a relative of Amina
• Al-Mubarakpuri, Safi-ur-Rahman. The Sealed Nectar (Ar-Raheeq Al-Makhtum). Riyadh: Darussalam — for Amina's standing among her people, her eulogy for Abdullah, and the expedition to al-Abwa

Further Reading

These works were not consulted for this article and are listed for readers who wish to pursue the subject further. Nothing in the body text rests on them.

• Guillaume, Alfred, trans. The Life of Muhammad: A Translation of Ibn Ishaq's Sirat Rasul Allah. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1955 — the standard English Ibn Ishaq, in which the marriage, the birth and Amina's death may be read in their original sequence
• Ibn Sa'd, Muhammad. Kitab al-Tabaqat al-Kabir, Volume 1, and Volume 8 in Aisha Bewley's translation as The Women of Madina — the classical biographical dictionary's treatment of the Prophet's mother, including the text of her eulogy for Abdullah
• Lings, Martin. Muhammad: His Life Based on the Earliest Sources. Cambridge: Islamic Texts Society, 1983