It helps to know a little bit of background on Muhammad’s clan and tribe, because the shape of these family structures were extremely important to the way Islam developed. In the entry on Mecca, you read that his tribe, the Quraysh (ku-rye-sh), ruled that city. They were a large clan with several historic offshoots created by some family divisions in the last 200 years.
Qusay, ruler of Mecca around 440, passed on authority to his oldest son, but half of the tribe preferred his grandson Hashim. These clans banded together; they were financially successful but did not have the formal leadership in Mecca. Hashim, a caravan trader, married a woman in the town of Yathrib, but she insisted on raising their son in Yathrib. Eventually this son came back to Mecca, but there remained a strong link between the Banu Hashim clan and the town of Yathrib (later called Medina). When there was trouble in Mecca, they could retreat to stay with their maternal-linked cousins in Yathrib.
There’s an interesting story about Muhammad’s grandfather, who had only one son. He made an offer to the gods that if he had ten sons, he would sacrifice one of them. Of course, more sons began to be born, and the tenth one was Abd Allah (servant of God), the doomed child. Instead of sacrificing the child (which would have caused scandal), he set up a formal bargaining session. Part of the worship of Hubal, warrior god of Mecca, was to cast arrows at his feet. Ten camels were placed on one side, and Abd Allah on the other. The arrow, cast on the ground, pointed to Abd Allah. So they doubled the camels and cast again. The arrow still chose the child, so they added camels. At one hundred camels, Hubal’s arrow finally pointed to the camels, and the son was saved.
Side note: why wasn’t the son named Abd Hubal? Who was “Allah”? The name “Allah” seems to have been a general name for God in the Mecca region. It was used by the Haneefs, the lone-wolf monotheists in Southern Arabia. It might be cognate with Hebrew “El,” meaning “the Highest.” Of course, this Meccan term for God was soon to become extremely well known.
When the grandfather chose a bride for Abd Allah, he made a point of going to a larger clan, the Banu Zuhrah, and asking for not just one (Aminah) but two brides (also Halah), one for himself. In this way, he hoped that the next generation would be able to count membership in more than one wing of the tribe. Father and son married their cousin brides on the same day. The children were Muhammad (born to Aminah and Abd Allah), and Safiyyah and Hamzah (born to her cousin Halah and the grandfather). Hamzah and Safiyyah were lifelong close friends with Muhammad, sharing the roles of cousin and uncle, depending which generation you looked at. This was not unusual in an Arab clan, where large age differences and intermarriages made some people have multiple family relationships to each other.
We don’t know what year these children were born, although tradition says that Muhammad was born in “the Year of the Elephant.” If that’s true, it pinpoints the date to the time when an Ethiopian general was ruling South Arabia, and before a Persian force deposed the Ethiopians. Abraha, a fervent Christian, led an attack on Mecca with one war elephant in the lead. The attack failed; the Quran says that an army of birds bombarded the men and the elephant with stones. It was approximately 570 by the Roman calendar, but outside sources, such as records in Abyssinia, can’t clarify this.
The “Year of the Elephant” story has Muhammad’s grandfather leading the defense of Mecca (by urging them to pray). Where did their family stand in the hierarchy of the town? It appears there was no official ruler among the Quraysh, but there was a pecking order based mainly on wealth. The grandfather may have been wealthy enough at the time of Abraha’s attack to own 200 camels—taken then returned by the southerners—but he was not the richest man, and his fortunes waned over time. It’s important to understand the social position of the family since this affected the city’s reception of Muhammad’s message.
Muhammad’s clan was the Banu Hashim, the sons (banu) of Hashim. (We now call descendants of this clan “Hashemites.”) They were closely related to the Banu Abd Shams, whose patriarch had been Hashim’s brother. One of the Meccan rulers of the time, Abu Sufyan, was from the Banu Abd Shams clan. Another Mecca ruler, commonly known as Abu Jahl, was from another clan among the Quraysh, related to Muhammad at another few generations earlier. (Aminah’s clan, the Banu Zuhrah, was also related at that more distant level.) These clans were larger and more important. Muhammad’s family should be considered middle class, belonging to society but not important. His lineage was counted only through his father, so although he could ask the Banu Zuhrah for help, he was not one of them.
When Muhammad began to rise in influence, the clans took into account how closely related they were when they chose how to react. Muhammad did not like the clan loyalty system. They also paid attention to wealth and influence, apart from personal holiness. Muhammad was of the middle class, respectable but not of the best families.
- Revelation: The Story of Muhammad, by Meraj Mohiuddin and Sherman Jackson.
- Muhammad: His Life Based on the Earliest Sources. Martin Lings. Rochester, VT: Inner Traditions, 1983.