Abd al-Muttalib

Chief of the Quraysh and custodian of Zamzam. Born at Yathrib as Shayba, he redug the lost well, ransomed his son Abdullah with a hundred camels after a vow of sacrifice, faced Abraha before the Year of the Elephant, and raised his orphaned grandson Muhammad.

The father of Prophet Muhammad and the youngest, best-loved son of Abd al-Muttalib. When his father's vow of sacrifice fell on him by lot he was ransomed with a hundred camels, raising the blood-price among the Arabs. He married Amina bint Wahb and died at Medina aged about twenty-five.

A paternal aunt of Prophet Muhammad and full sister of his father Abdullah. The sira names her among the daughters who elegised Abd al-Muttalib, as mother of Zuhayr ibn Abi Umayya, whose kinship to Banu Hashim helped break the Meccan boycott, and as the woman whose vision preceded Badr.

Zamzam is the sacred well within the precincts of Masjid al-Haram in Mecca, believed to have been miraculously revealed by God to Hagar for her son Ishmael. Its water has been provided to pilgrims for millennia and holds profound spiritual significance in Islam.