Ibn Ishaq’s sirah seems to not realize that Wahb is dead. Ibn Ishaq even used editorial force to link two narratives in an incompatible way: the divination-averted sacrifice of his Abdullah and the marriage of Abdullah. In this telling, Abdul-Muttalib went from the kaaba after the pagan divination leading Abdullah by the hand to married him off at random minutes later. It is a very strange framing of these stories, especially since in the sacrifice narration, Abdullah is the youngest son, while Muhammad was older than every other grandchild of Abdul-Muttalib except perhaps those of his oldest son al-Harith whom he had gotten from a slave while he was still too poor to marry a free woman. This sequence would then have at least 9 adult sons hanging around without getting married until Abdullah got married, then still not marrying for about 4 years and 9 months following.
Of course, the divination-sacrifice narrative is an invention meant to establish Abdullah as special among Abdul-Muttalib’s sons, and it raided multiple Bible narratives and then threw in pagan practices to patch together an imitation to do so. Despite its plagiarized qualities, the sacrifice narration dates from the time when the Quraysh still accepted without question the identity between Hubal and Allah, and therefore it originated within the first 150 years AH.
Ibn Hisham, Ibn Ishaq’s later editor, knows Hamza’s lineage and also that Halah and Amina were married at the same time, and he rejects that ten sons were alive in the divination-sacrifice narrative, as he points out that Hamza was not yet alive. (Ibn Sa’d, p. 94; Ibn Hisham’s notes in Ibn Ishaq, p. 707)
This is Ibn Ishaq’s account, beginning with the tail end of the pagan divination account:
“This they did and each time the arrow fell against the camels. They were duly slaughtered and left there and no man was kept back or hindered (from eating them). Taking ‘Abdullah by the hand Abdul-Muttalib went away and they passed–so it is alleged–a woman. [The narrative of the sexual proposition is here. When Abdullah refutes her, it is by saying,] ‘I am with my father and I cannot act against his wishes and leave him’
[Immediately following is this:] Abdul-Muttalib brought him to Wahb b, ‘Abdu Manaf b. Zuhra … who was the leading man of B. Zuhra in birth and honour, and he married him to his daughter Amina, she being the most excellent woman among the Quraysh in birth and position at that time. [More of her lineage is given.] “It is alleged that ‘Abdullah consummated his marriage immediately and his wife conceived the apostle of God. Then he left her presence and met the woman who had proposed to him.”
This shows how Ibn Ishaq introduces peculiarities into his biography through his credulity combined with his attempt to connect every distinct anecdote together into a cohesive narrative.
Ibn Hisham is generally a better historian, but he also purges things that he is able to purge when they point to paganism where there should be none. Ibn Sa’d, though later than Ibn Ishaq, will give more variations of a narrative rather than trying to forcibly harmonize them into the most pleasant form, as Ibn Ishaq did. As a result, he sometimes gives narratives that reveal more clearly the syncretic pagan context of Mecca during Muhammad’s lifetime than Ibn Ishaq does,
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