The Dream of ʿĀtikah

But before what happens when the message is delivered to Quraysh, back in Makkah, ʿĀtikah bint ʿAbd al-Muṭṭalib, the aunt of the Prophet, saw a dream. She saw that a man was riding his camel, and he rushed into Makkah and screamed, gathering the people of Makkah around him, and then his camel stood on top of the Kaʿbah, and after that it stood on top of a mountain in Makkah. And he warned the people of Quraysh: "In three days, you will perish." And then he took a rock and threw it from on top of the mountain; it landed in the valley of Makkah and exploded, and every house in Makkah was hit by a fragment of this rock. So she said to her brother, al-ʿAbbās: "I am going to tell you this dream, which has worried me, but I do not want you to tell anybody about it." Al-ʿAbbās listened to her narrate her dream, and then he said, "That was some vision — keep quiet about it, do not tell anyone," because here you have this man saying, "Come forth to your deaths in three days, you people of perfidy."

However, the next day, al-ʿAbbās found his friend, al-Walīd ibn ʿUtbah, and told him about the dream, and told him not to tell anybody about it. And then al-Walīd ibn ʿUtbah went and told his father, and then the news was all over Makkah — if you are not able to protect the secret yourself, do not expect others to. Al-ʿAbbās said, "I arose early to make ṭawāf around the Kaʿbah, and there was Abū Jahl ibn Hishām sitting with a group of Quraysh leaders."