The Son of the Two Sacrificed Ones

They went to her and told her the situation. She said: "All right, come back to me tomorrow, so that I can consult my spirits. This evening, tonight, I'll speak to the jinn." They came back the next day, and she had an answer for them. She told them: "What is the retribution that you pay for a person who was killed?" Death — the blood money. "How much is it?" They said: ten camels. She said: "Then put ten camels on one side and ʿAbdullāh on the other side, and cast a lot. If it points towards the camels, then slaughter the camels. If it points towards ʿAbdullāh, then add another ten camels." So they agreed, and went back.

So ʿAbd al-Muṭṭalib, with all of the people of Quraysh, came together — ʿAbdullāh on one side, the camels on the other side. They threw the lots. It pointed towards ʿAbdullāh. They added another ten camels. It pointed towards ʿAbdullāh. They added another ten. So now they were up to thirty, forty, fifty, sixty, and it kept pointing towards ʿAbdullāh, all the way until a hundred. They had a hundred camels on one side, ʿAbdullāh on the other side. Finally, it pointed towards the camels. The people of Quraysh said: "Finally, we can release your son." ʿAbd al-Muṭṭalib said: "Not yet — I'll have to do it again." The lot fell on the camels a second time, and a third time; it was consistently pointing towards the camels. So he slaughtered the hundred camels, and he had to pay for it all.

And ʿAbd al-Muṭṭalib was a very generous man. He refused to take any of that meat himself — he gave it out, and there was so much of it that the people took as much as they wanted, and there was still enough left to feed the birds and the beasts. So later on it became famous among the Arabs that ʿAbd al-Muṭṭalib was the one who fed the humans and the animals — Muṭʿim al-Ṭayr, the one who even fed the birds in the sky. An incident when this saying was brought up, in a conversation with Abū Bakr and one leader of a clan, is taken up later.

The people of Quraysh were right when they told ʿAbd al-Muṭṭalib that if he killed his son it would become a tradition among the Arabs after him — because when ʿAbd al-Muṭṭalib sacrificed a hundred camels to save his son, the blood money among them changed from ten camels to a hundred, because of what happened with ʿAbd al-Muṭṭalib. So the retribution that was paid became a hundred rather than ten. And by the way, this tradition was kept and preserved by Islam: the diyah is still a hundred camels today, though now it would be calculated in terms of currency, but it is still based on that same concept. This is the story of ʿAbdullāh.

Now, ʿAbdullāh and Āminah are the parents of the Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him). Later on, they would tell Muhammad (peace be upon him): you are the son of the two sacrificed ones. And who are they, the two sacrificed ones? Ismāʿīl and ʿAbdullāh. So the Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him) is the son of the two sacrificed ones: his father ʿAbdullāh was sacrificed, and his father Ismāʿīl (peace be upon him) was sacrificed. ʿAbdullāh married Āminah bint Wahb, and we're done with the ancestry of the Prophet (peace be upon him).