Aminah bint Wahb

ProfileAminah bint Wahb

Aminah was the daughter of Wahb ibn Abd Manaf, a chief of the Banu Zuhrah, a noble clan of Quraysh. According to the early biographies, Abd al-Muttalib, the chief of the Banu Hashim, chose her as the wife of his son Abdullah, the son who had been spared from sacrifice, and the two chiefs married their young children to each other. Abdullah was a little over twenty, and Aminah was still in her teens.

According to the early biographies, a few weeks or months after the wedding Abdullah went out with a caravan of Quraysh to Ash-Sham, before he could know that his wife was expecting. On the way home he fell ill near Yathrib, the caravan went on to Makkah without him, and he died there. No one knows where his grave is. Aminah heard first that he was ill, and then that he was dead. According to the early biographies, she was left with a few camels and goats and one servant, Umm Ayman, and Abd al-Muttalib, by then very old, took the child under his protection and named him Muhammad ﷺ. So he was an orphan before he was born, and the Quran later reminds him of it, in Surah ad-Duha (93:6).

According to the early biographies, the women of the desert tribes came to Makkah to take babies to nurse, and none of them wanted a child with no father, because no one would pay them for him. Aminah held him out, and he was the last child left, until Halimah of the Banu Sa'd, who had come with no milk and no money, took him. He stayed in the desert for about four or five years. According to the early biographies, when Halimah brought him back early, frightened by what had happened to him, and said that something might have struck him, Aminah told her that he was blessed and not cursed. She said that she had not felt his weight when she carried him, and that when she gave birth she saw a light come out of her that lit the palaces of Ash-Sham.

According to the early biographies, when he was about six she took him with Umm Ayman to Yathrib, to visit his father's relatives of the Banu an-Najjar. On the way back she fell ill, and at al-Abwa, between Yathrib and Makkah, she died and was buried. Umm Ayman took the boy back to Makkah. A child who had never known his father had now watched his mother die, and his grandfather Abd al-Muttalib died about two years later.

Many years later, according to the early biographies, he went to her grave and stood there and wept until those with him wept too. They did not know whose it was, and when Umar asked, he told them it was his mother's. Abu Hurayrah told that the Messenger of Allah ﷺ visited the grave of his mother and wept, and moved those around him to tears. He said that he had asked his Lord for permission to ask forgiveness for her, and it was not granted, and that he had asked permission to visit her grave, and it was granted, so they should visit graves, for it reminds them of death (Sahih Muslim). The hadith says no more about her than this, and this page adds nothing to it.

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