Al-Amin ﷺ
“Among his people he was called by no other name than al-Amin,” writes Ibn Ishaq (Ibn Hisham, I, 183; I, 198). Al-Bukhari preserves the testimony of his adversaries themselves. When, after the mission had begun, he ﷺ called Quraysh together at al-Safa, they answered him: “We have known nothing from you but the truth” (Bukhari 4770). And Heraclius, questioning Abu Sufyan, drew the conclusion: a man who did not lie to people would not lie about God (Bukhari 7).
In Khadija’s trade
Khadija bint Khuwaylid, of the Banu Asad, was a merchant. She sent him ﷺ to Syria with her goods and her servant Maysara. He was twenty-five; it was the year 25 of the Elephant according to Ibn Abd al-Barr, around 595 (calculated) (Ibn Hisham, I, 187-188; Ibn Sayyid al-Nas, I, 61-63; Ibn Kathir, al-Sira, I, 262).
Why him ﷺ? According to Ibn Ishaq, Khadija chose him for what she had heard of his truthfulness and trustworthiness (Ibn Hisham, I, 188); according to the account of Nafisa bint Munya, it was Abu Talib, a poor man, who put the idea to him (Ibn Sayyid al-Nas, I, 61-62). Al-Zuhri, for his part, speaks of his being hired for the market of Hubasha, in Tihama (Ibn Sayyid al-Nas, I, 64). She gave him double what she gave the others (Ibn Sayyid al-Nas, I, 62), and the journey brought back double, or nearly (Ibn Hisham, I, 188).
Ibn Ishaq adds that a monk recognised a prophet in him ﷺ and that Maysara, “so they claim”, used to see two angels shading him at midday (Ibn Hisham, I, 188-189). We leave this story with the reservation its author gave it.
The marriage
Khadija asked for his hand. According to Ibn Ishaq, she proposed to him ﷺ herself, “so they claim” (Ibn Hisham, I, 189); according to al-Waqidi, she sent Nafisa bint Munya to him in secret (Ibn Sayyid al-Nas, I, 63). His uncle Hamza went with him to Khadija’s guardian (Ibn Hisham, I, 189-190; Ibn Sayyid al-Nas, I, 63).
Who gave Khadija in marriage? Her father Khuwaylid, according to Ibn Ishaq. But for al-Waqidi, Khuwaylid had died before Fijar, and it was her uncle Amr ibn Asad who gave her in marriage: this is “the established, the preserved view” (Ibn Sayyid al-Nas, I, 64), and most biographers follow him (al-Salihi, II, 165). Elsewhere Ibn Ishaq names her brother, Amr ibn Khuwaylid (Ibn Kathir, al-Sira, I, 265-267).
He was twenty-five, according to Ibn Hisham and the majority, and she was forty. The author of al-Ghurar holds both ages to be correct; the other views on the age of the Prophet ﷺ are “weak, without proof” (al-Salihi, II, 166; Ibn Hisham, I, 187). For Khadija, others give thirty-five, according to al-Hakim, or anywhere from twenty-five to forty-five (Ibn Kathir, al-Sira, I, 265; al-Salihi, II, 166). The marriage took place, according to Ibn Abd al-Barr, at the end of Safar in the year 26 of the Elephant, around 595 (calculated) (Ibn Sayyid al-Nas, I, 61, 64).
He ﷺ gave her a dower of twenty young she-camels, and married no other woman as long as she lived (Ibn Hisham, I, 190). She had been married twice before him, to Atiq ibn A’idh, then to Abu Hala al-Tamimi (Ibn Sayyid al-Nas, I, 64-65).
The children
All his children were Khadija’s, except Ibrahim, son of Mariya (Ibn Hisham, I, 190-191; Ibn Kathir, al-Sira, I, 263-264). Their four daughters, Zaynab, Ruqayya, Umm Kulthum and Fatima, appear in every list; all of them lived to see Islam, embraced it and emigrated with him (Ibn Hisham, I, 191).
The sons died young. Ibn Ishaq names three: al-Qasim, from whom the Prophet ﷺ took the name Abu al-Qasim, then al-Tahir and al-Tayyib. Ibn Abbas counts only two, al-Qasim and Abd Allah; and for al-Zubayr ibn Bakkar, al-Tayyib and al-Tahir are epithets of Abd Allah (Ibn Hisham, I, 190; Ibn Kathir, al-Sira, I, 264). They died before the mission, according to Ibn Ishaq (Ibn Hisham, I, 190); al-Qasim after it, according to another view (Ibn Kathir, al-Sira, I, 264).
The rebuilding of the Ka’ba
Quraysh rebuilt the Ka’ba when he ﷺ was thirty-five, five years before the mission, according to Ibn Ishaq (Ibn Hisham, I, 192): around 605 (calculated). This is the “best-known” view, according to Ibn Hajar (al-Salihi, II, 173). Others place it fifteen years before the mission (Musa ibn Uqba, Mujahid, Urwa, Muhammad ibn Jubayr), or at the time he came of age (al-Zuhri), a detail Ibn Kathir finds strange (al-Salihi, II, 172-173; Ibn Kathir, al-Sira, I, 274).
The causes vary with the accounts: the theft of the Ka’ba’s treasure, a flash flood, a fire started by a woman burning incense. The timber came from a Greek ship wrecked at Jidda (Ibn Hisham, I, 193; Ibn Sayyid al-Nas, I, 66; Ibn Kathir, al-Sira, I, 274-275).
Before building, a man of Quraysh gave a warning: “Put nothing into it but lawful money: no harlot’s hire, no usury, no wealth taken unjustly.” Ibn Ishaq attributes the words to Abu Wahb ibn Amr, maternal uncle of the father of the Prophet ﷺ; others to al-Walid ibn al-Mughira (Ibn Hisham, I, 194) or to al-Mughira ibn Abd Allah (Ibn Kathir, al-Sira, I, 275).
Al-Walid ibn al-Mughira began the demolition (Ibn Hisham, I, 195). They demolished it down to the foundations of Abraham; for lack of means, the Hijr was left outside the building. According to Aisha, the Prophet ﷺ told her: “When your people built the Ka’ba, they stopped short of the foundations of Abraham” (Bukhari 1583). These foundations were seen again during the works of Ibn al-Zubayr: stones “like the humps of camels” (Bukhari 1586). While demolishing it, Quraysh had already come upon green stones (Ibn Hisham, I, 195). The rebuilt Ka’ba stood eighteen cubits high (Ibn Hisham, I, 198; Ibn Sayyid al-Nas, I, 67; Ibn Kathir, al-Sira, I, 281).
The Black Stone
When the Black Stone had to be set back in its place, the clans quarrelled over it, and some swore the oath of blood (la’qat al-dam). They agreed to leave the decision to the first man to come in; it was he ﷺ. “Here is al-Amin; we accept him.” He laid the Stone on a cloak, had the clans lift the cloak together, then set it in place with his own hand (Ibn Hisham, I, 196-197; Ibn Sayyid al-Nas, I, 66; Ibn Kathir, al-Sira, I, 273-274, 281).
The details vary: the proposal came from Abu Umayya ibn al-Mughira, “so some narrators claim” (Ibn Hisham, I, 197); he ﷺ came in by the gate of the Banu Shayba, according to Ali (Ibn Kathir, al-Sira, I, 274). But several independent routes report the same core, among them that of al-Sa’ib ibn Abd Allah, who worked on the building (Ibn Kathir, al-Sira, I, 281).
Toward the revelation
Aisha relates how it began: the first thing to come to the Prophet ﷺ was true dreams in his sleep, and each one came “like the break of dawn”; then solitude grew dear to him, and he would withdraw to Hira (Bukhari 3; Ibn Hisham, I, 234).
He also said: “I know a stone in Mecca that used to greet me before I was sent; I know it still” (Muslim 2277). Ibn Ishaq, on the authority of scholars, tells a longer story: stones and trees would greet him, “Peace be upon you, Messenger of God ﷺ” (Ibn Hisham, I, 234-235; al-Salihi, II, 228-229).
According to Ibn Abbas, he ﷺ spent fifteen years in Mecca, seven of them hearing a voice and seeing a light, and eight receiving revelation (Muslim 2353). This chronology is peculiar to Ibn Abbas, who, in the same chapter of Muslim, has him die at sixty-five, and other versions contradict it. Urwa reports, without naming a Companion, that he confided to Khadija: “I see a light, I hear a voice; I have feared that I might be a soothsayer” (al-Salihi, II, 229).
The retreat at Hira was a practice of Quraysh, the tahannuth: “an act of devotion”, explains Ubayd ibn Umayr, who told the story in the presence of Abd Allah ibn al-Zubayr; for Ibn Hisham, the Arabs say tahannuth or tahannuf with the hanifiyya in mind, the religion of Abraham (Ibn Hisham, I, 235). The retreat itself is in al-Bukhari (Bukhari 3); its length, one month a year, comes from the account of Ubayd (Ibn Hisham, I, 235).
He ﷺ was forty, according to Ibn Ishaq, around 610 (calculated), when the first revelation came down upon him, in Ramadan, at Hira (Ibn Hisham, I, 233, 235). The age and the month are discussed in the next part, which begins there.
How this page connects to the others
- What follows: the first revelation at Hira, and Waraqa ibn Nawfal: part 3, The revelation.
- A man who did not lie to people: The testimony of his person.
- The waist-wrap, at the rebuilding of the Ka’ba: page 4, Bahira and his youth.
- The foundations of the House, raised by Abraham and Ishmael: The prayer of Abraham.
Sources for this page
- The beginning of the revelation: Bukhari 3.
- Heraclius and Abu Sufyan: Bukhari 7.
- The foundations of Abraham: Bukhari 1583; Bukhari 1586.
- Al-Safa: Bukhari 4770.
- The stone that greeted him: Muslim 2277.
- The light and the voice: Muslim 2353.
- Ibn Hisham, al-Sira al-nabawiyya, ed. al-Saqqa, al-Abyari and Shalabi, al-Babi al-Halabi, 1955, vol. I, pp. 183, 187-198, 233-235.
- Ibn Sayyid al-Nas, Uyun al-athar, Dar al-Qalam, 1993, vol. I, pp. 61-67.
- Ibn Kathir, al-Sira al-nabawiyya, ed. Mustafa Abd al-Wahid, Dar al-Ma’rifa, 1976, vol. I, pp. 262-281.
- al-Salihi al-Shami, Subul al-huda wa-l-rashad, ed. Abd al-Mawjud and Mu’awwad, Dar al-Kutub al-Ilmiyya, 1993, vol. II, pp. 165-173, 228-229.
- Research file “His birth and life before the message”, v1.0, 2 November 2026, sections 11 to 13; research file “The Prophet ﷺ Foretold”, v1.0, part 4.