Muhammad’s illegitimacy proved through Islamic sources: Part I, the birth gap

Despite attempts at damage control, early Islamic sources clearly portray Muhammad as an illegitimate child with an unknown father. This illegitimacy disproves Islam in five distinct ways. This article will summarize the direct evidence and context of the age gap between Muhammad and his uncle Hamza that proves that Muhammad was illegitimate. This is a follow up to the article that showed how if Muhammad was illegitimate, Islam has to be false.

Islamic sources are usually read poorly, even by orientalists. This is especially true for the narratives of Muhammad’s early life that exist in the category of “proofs of prophethood.” These are narratives which serve to bolster Muhammad’s claim to be a prophet of Allah.

At some level, it is obvious why the boyhood narratives aren’t taken seriously. The most important and formative moment in the history of Islam is supposed to be while Muhammad is in the cave of Hira, where he is taken entirely by surprise by a supernatural presence. He is stunned and confused by this event and believes himself to be possessed. This does not fit with any of the miracle-laced narrations of his boyhood. In addition, some of them are clearly plagiarized from Biblical narratives. Therefore, the temptation is to just throw them out completely as stories tacked on to fill the void in people’s collective memory about what Muhammad’s early years were like.

Muhammad mythicists, meanwhile, like that the boyhood narratives are so fantastical and focus on the stories’ absurdity as a disproof of any historicity, while not bothering to explain the jarringly incongruous Hira cave narrative.

However, a good historian knows that even made up stories have a purpose. Not just a generic purpose (like being a proof of prophethood) but a specific reason for being in the form that they’re in, containing the events that they contain. In the “proofs of prophethood” appear many elements that are serving to patch over elements that were embarrassing for Muslims at the time of Muhammad. They serve to recontextualize well-known events that could appear discrediting. When events are well known, they are very difficult to deny. But events can be explained them in a way that would serve to discredit a critic rather than the subject of the narrative.

Therefore, when there is a narrative that has a clear, specific goal of making a particular event a proof of prophethood, it should invite the careful reader to examine whether there is something within the event that the early Islamic scholars want to recontextualize.

The birth gap that proves Muhammad’s illegitimacy

Arabs believed that women could be pregnant for far longer than nine months in certain situations. So the length of pregnancy of Muhammad’s mother Amina did not, by itself, cause the Quraysh to immediately disqualify Muhammad was the child of Amina’s husband, Abdullah. There was not, then, a concerted effort to recast Amina’s “long gestation” as something miraculous, because by itself, it did not show Muhammad to be illegitimate in the eyes of the uneducated desert tribesmen.

Here are the data points that together show that Muhammad was born 4.5 years after his father died:

1. Abdullah and his father Abdul-Muttalib married on the same day, at the same ceremony. Abdul-Muttalib married Halah while Abdullah married Halah’s orphan cousin, Amina.
2. Abdullah is reported to have impregnated Amina during the first three days they spent together. Even if the narratives that explicitly endorse immediate conception are nonsense, this indicates that the Quraysh believed that Amina because pregnant very soon after marriage.
3. Abdullah dies very soon after the wedding, while Amina is supposedly pregnant.
4. Halah gives birth to Hamza, who could have been conceived no earlier than Muhammad was, in the expected time. Hamza is partly nursed by a slave named Thuwaybah as well as by Hallah. Amina gives birth to Muhammad, and he was also nursed by Thuwaybah after she had nursed Hamza.
5. Reports claim that there are four years between the age of Hamza and Muhammad.

Giving a minimum of 6 more months to finish Hamza’s gestation, Abdullah died at least 4.5 years before Muhammad was born. One scholar’s reasoning shortened that to 2.5 years, but there is no legitimate basis for his argument, as we will see later. There are no attempts in any Islamic source reject the birth gap between Hamza and Muhammad that proves Muhammad illegitimate.

Here are a few sources for each point. These will mostly be drawn from the sirat literature, because this is where we find most narrations that don’t trace back to Muhammad himself.

Abdullah and his father Abdul-Muttalib married on the same day, at the same ceremony.

Ibn Sa’d (omitting genealogies for ease of reading): “Amina bint Wahb was under the guardianship of her paternal uncle Wuhayb. Abdul-Muttalib approached him along with his son Abdullah the Prophet’s father and proposed for Amina. In that very meeting, Abdul-Muttalib made a proposal for his own daughter, Halah bint Wuhayb, for himself, andd consequently he (Wuhayb) married her to him (Abdul-Muttalib). So Abdul-Muttalib and Abdullah were married in the same sitting. Hallah bore to Abdul-Muttalib Hamza, who was the Prophet’s paternal uncle in relation and also a foster brother.”

Wuhayb and Wahb did not calculate their ancestry from Qusayy, the founder of the Quraysh, like the most prominent clans did. These “cousin lines” that connect farther back have been convincingly argued to be retroactively adoptive, since even the name Quraysh (“gathered ones”) indicates that the tribe is synthetic, created by alliance. Only her maternal line, which Ibn Ishaq gives, is from Qusayy. This pushes against the idea that the marriage could have been very prominent. It also means that Muhammad’s mother was most likely not even genetically “Qurayshi” if that is supposed to mean descended from Fihr.

Orphans had low status in Arab society. The fact that Amina was married by her uncle because her father was dead points to this low status. Ibn Ishaq brushes over this in his own account, perhaps deliberately.

Amina’s conception of Muhammad is believed to be almost immediately after marriage

The immediacy of Amina’s conception of Muhammad is attested two in two main sources. One source is another of the “proofs of prophethood,” while the other is a small detail about Amina’s living situation.

While the “proof of prophethood” anecdote is transparently fabricated, the reason that it was invented is important. It was made to establish beyond any doubt to Muslims that Muhammad was conceived immediately after Amina’s marriage to Abdullah. Not weeks later. Not months later. And not by another man. It was made up to give external evidence for Amina’s narrative of Muhammad’s conception and birth.

There are a total of four versions of this anecdote, differing remarkably in their details. Ibn Sa’d gives two. Ibn Ishaq seems to have harmonized these two into the version he found most pleasing. And then Ibn Ishaq gives a fourth that may have been the closest to the original form of the made-up story before it was improved upon, and a fifth that shows an early elaboration of the original.

We will begin with the most likely original version , which doesn’t fit into the marriage narration as Ibn Ishaq gives it and also stands coherently on its own.

“It is alleged that [a] woman of [Abdullah’s] used to say that when he passed by her between his eyes there was a blaze like the blaze of a horse. She said: ‘I invited him hoping that that would be in me, but he refused me and went to Amina, and she conceived the apostle of God.'” (p. 69)

This has the possibility of dating to within or shortly after Muhammad’s lifetime. It involves an established prostitute or mistress of Abdullah lamenting over the fact that she didn’t get to become the mother of Muhammad because the “light” was deposited in Amina instead. It would serve her to tell this story because it is self-aggrandizing, placing her as a witness and in close association with the prophetic family. Of course, it is completely implausible as an accurate narrative, as the surprise of Muhammad at the “inspiration”/wahy and the astonishment of all the Quraysh is not compatible with Muhammad being recognized as super special by practically everyone since his conception. But this doesn’t mean Abdullah’s mistress did not make it up after the conquest of Mecca.

This narrative claims witnesses to the idea that the seed of prophethood went from Abdullah to Amina, which Muslims would be interested to promote. A slightly more developed form of this story is also recounted by Ibn Ishaq:

“My father Ishaq b. Yasar told me that he was told that ‘Abdullah went to a woman that he had beside Amina d. Wahb when he had been working in clay and the marks of the clay were on him. She put him off when he made a suggestion to her because of the dirt that was on him. He then left her and washed and bathed himself, and as he made his way to Amina, he passed her and she invited him to come to her. He refused and went to Amina who conceived Muhammad. When he passed the woman again, he asked her if she wanted anything and she said ‘No! When you passed me there was a white blaze between your eyes, and when I invited you you refused me and went to Amina, and she has taken it away.” (p.69)

This story has a classical fairytale narrative of pride causing a missed opportunity, complete with a three-encounter structure. It also gives a situation in which this woman supposedly told this story decades before the conquest of Mecca, making it seem less made up (though of course it would still have no witnesses to it except her and the dead Abdullah). Yet it also doesn’t make sense any longer. This woman is Abdullah’s mistress. Her claim that she rejected him after Muhammad’s seed was deposited in Amina strengthens the significance of the claim that she really saw a blaze of light, but it makes no sense in the context of an established sexual relationship.

Muslims would have still disliked this form of the narration for several reasons. This is a kept woman or a prostitute of Abdullah, aside from Amina. It hardly seems befitting that Muhammad’s birth to a Qurayshi woman rather than some random slave or prostitute was a matter of mere chance. The story simply not making sense may have also occurred to them.

The next most developed version of the story replaces the anonymous mistress with a Qurayshi woman with a well-established reputation, and it avoids making her a prostitute. Ibn Sa’d gives it here:

“[The woman who offered herself to Abdullah] was Qutaylah Bint Nawfal, sister of Waraqah Ibn Nawfal; she was well versed in divination. Abdullah Ibn Abdul-Muttalib happened to pass by her, so she invited him to have sexual intercourse with her and seized his sheet from one side, but he declined and said: ‘(Wait) till I return.’ Then he went hastily and had intercourse with Aminah Bint Wahb who became pregnant with the Prophet. Then Abdullah Ibn Abdul-Muttalib returned to the woman who was waiting for him and said to her: ‘What do you say now for what you had suggested to me?’ She said: ‘No, when you went from here there was brightness in your face, now on your return, it has vanished.’ Some (narrators) said: She said: ‘When you went there was a light between your eyes like that of a horse and when you returned, it had disappeared.'”

Now we have a woman spontaneously propositioning Abdullah with sex and then is denied. This gets rid of the nonsensical detail of an existing sexual relationship between them. The narrative is also moved from being given by a woman with the status of a mistress or prostitute to a woman of a recognized Qurayshi family. She is also carefully selected to be the sister of Waraqa, who was the mystic who practiced automatic writing whom Muhammad claimed had secretly confirmed him as a prophet before he died. Her religious credentials are established here as being similar to what the narration of Waraqa reveals: she is a pagan practitioner of magic divination. Divination was, of course, especially associated with Hubal-Allah.

This narrative would have seemed like a major upgrade to Muslims in the middle of the 7th century, but it still has glaring problems to later Muslims. A pagan diviner is not the appropriate background for someone to uniquely perceive Muhammad, and she is still propositioning him for sex. There was no problem with unmarried Arab women prostituting themselves through various social provisions before Islam, but to a Muslim, this just looks like fornication. Abdullah’s willingness to have sex with her is also problematic.

An even more improved version is also given be Ibn Sa’d, which reassigns this event to a random Arab who did not even live belong to a family that in Mecca, but she known to be a Jew or Christian before Islam.

“Abdullah Ibn Abdul-Muttalib passed by a woman of the Khath‘am (tribe) whose name was Fatimah Bint Murr and who was the prettiest of all women, in the full bloom of her youth and the most pious and had studied the scriptures [Book]; she was the subject of talk among the youth of the Quraysh. She perceived the light of Prophethood in the face of Abdullah and inquired: ‘O young man! who art thou?’ He informed her. Then she proposed to him if he would have intercourse with her and said that she was ready to present one hundred camels to him. He looked at her and said: ‘What is forbidden (shall not be done), and death is preferable to it. And as regards the lawful, there is no way for it. So how can I do what you want’! Then he went to his wife Aminah Bint Wahb and was with her. Then he recollected the Khath‘ami woman and her exquisite beauty and what she had proposed. He returned to her and did not perceive the former warmth in her countenance; he said to her: ‘Do you still like to propose what you had done once’; she said: ‘It was only once and that opportunity is no more.'”

The story then adds her testimony about the light she saw on his face.

Al-Waqidi has a particularly amusing version in which his narrator seems to have realized that the Khath’ami woman was whoring herself and so attempts to fix this, while at the same time throwing Abdullah under the proverbial bus. Abdullah asks, “Would you like what you wanted before ?” She replies, “Young man, I am not, by God, a woman of questionable morals. I saw light in your face and wished it to be within me, but God willed that He should place it where He wished….”

In Abdullah’s reply, the three day figure of his time with Amina is given (more on that below.) (vol. 6 p. 108).

This one is particularly absurd and shows evidence of being considerably later, made by people who did not live in Mecca or Medina. Some problematic details: She is from a tribe that didn’t live in Mecca, yet the narrator feels the need to not only place her there as an unmarried virgin but make her well-known the Qurayshi to emphasize how desirable she is. Yet she has no idea who Abdullah is in a very small town at this time, in order to make her observation seem truly spontaneous. She then offers to pay for sex(!), which Abdullah rightly takes a form of fornication and then, uniquely, scorns on principle–yet he is no sooner done with Amina than he comes running back to her for the sex that he’d previously rejected as “forbidden” in order for the scene with her rejection of him post-coitus to still take place.

This is by far the silliest of the narratives, but Ibn Ishaq appears to raid details of this narrative to take out some of the pagan elements from the story of Waraqa’s sister and to also make the proposal seem more like a beena marriage proposal than regular fornication. Since it merely fuses the last two narratives, there is no purpose in quoting it in detail, except to emphasize that Abdullah intercourse with Amina is explicitly placed in the context of his wedding with her in this detail, and conception is immediate. This is implied by all the longer narratives–that when Muhammad has sex with Amina, she immediately conceives–but is only made explicit in the Ibn Ishaq version. He is met on his way to the wedding, rejects the woman, and then Ibn Ishaq says, “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” (p. 68-9). So when he left Amina’s uncle’s house after consummating their marriage, Amina was pregnant.

The second source that indicates that conception happened quickly is this one, from Hamza, Muhammad’s brother and the other product of the double marriage: After marrying Aminah Bint Wahb, Abdullah Ibn Abdul-Muttalib lived with her for three days. It was their custom that a man could live for three nights only with his wife in her father’s family.” (Source.)

This is a startling hadith, because it does not indicate merely that Abdullah spent three nights with her during the wedding celebration, but that he did not live with her after this point. Abdullah has not taken Amina to his house, which is what is required in mahr/bride price marriage, but is instead having sex with her in her uncle’s house. There is no indication that she ever leaves her uncle’s house, which strongly suggests that the narrative about the double marriage are upside down. It was Abdul-Muttalib who wanted to marry Halah, and Amina the orphan was tacked on as a kind of bonus to the transaction, but not as a mahr wife. Abdullah seems to have only paid for the three nights that were spent at her uncle’s house during the festivities and not contracted a mahr marriages with promises of support.

We find this order in al-Waqidi, quoted by al-Tabari: “Abdul-Muttalib came with his son
Abdallah, seeking a wife for himself and one for his son; they were married at the same time.”

The knowledge that the relationship was inherently short-term then provides the motivation for supporting the narrations that claim that Abdullah transferred the illuminated seed to Amina during their wedding nights. He did not spend any more nights with her than these. So early Muslims needed to establish that Amina got pregnant right away.

Abdullah dies very soon after the wedding

Ibn Ishaq says, “Shortly afterwards Abdullah the apostle’s father died while his mother was still pregnant” (p. 69). This is shortly after their wedding night, in context.

Ibn Sa’d explains that he became sick on the way back from Syria for trade and decided to stop in Medina, among his uncles (as his mother was a traveler’s wife of Medina, by all accounts). When he didn’t ever arrive in Mecca, his oldest brother went to check up on him and found that he had died. The narration concludes, “The Prophet was still in the womb of his mother at the time of his (father’s) death. Abdullah was 25 years of age (at the time of his death).” (Source.)

A footnote from a translation of Ibn Sa’d with information credited to Ibn Hisham’s redaction of the sirah of Ibn Ishaq states, “Hamzah was born after Abdullah’s demise. His mother Halah was married to Abdul-Muttalib when Aminah was married to Abdullah and only three months after that Abdullah passed away.” (Source.)

Al-Tabari similarly has a three-day time with Amina with conception followed immediately by a trip to Medina from which Abdullah does not return.

There was an attempt to move the time of Abdullah’s death far later. But this was a non-starter. Muhammad’s fatherlessness at birth was a fixed fact in the earliest narratives. It is reinforced across many different independent anecdotes. The very few sources that attempt to resurrect Muhammad’s father do this clumsily, without agreement with how long he survived and without giving any account of his actions when his son was born to back up an assertion that he is alive. Muhammad’s father’s striking absence can only be explained by a consensus on his death early on.

This is reinforced by Ibn Sa’d. He reports that one source claimed that Abdullah died when Muhammad was 28 months old, and another claimed he died when he was seven months old. But he emphasizes, “The first version, namely that he died when the Prophet was still in the womb of his mother, is established.” The statement of “established” is even stronger than the evaluation of “trustworthy,” and indeed, no school has ever taken any alternative seriously.

Muhammad and Hamza were nursed by Thuwayba, one after the other

To emphasize the timing of Hamza’s birth, let us look at the footnote again: “Hamzah was born after Abdullah’s demise. His mother Halah was married to Abdul-Muttalib when Aminah was married to Abdullah and only three months after that Abdullah passed away.” (Source.) This is so established that it is used to discredit reports that differ from it.

He was nursed by Abu Lahab’s slave named Thuwayba, which would later make Muhammad his foster brother via nursing:

Ibn Sa’d: “The first (woman) who suckled the Apostle of Allah, may Allah bless him, was Thuwaybah (who nursed him) with the milk of her son who was called Masruh, several days before the arrival of Halimah [Ed: his main foster mother]. She had suckled Hamzah Ibn Abdul-Muttalib before and Abi Salamah Ibn ‘Abd al-As‘ad al-Makhzimi after him (Prophet).” (Source.)

Unlike other narrations, this is a linear account of her sucklings. First Hamzah. Second Muhammad. Third Abu Salama. These happened at discrete moments in time, not all at once. Abu Salama is also significantly younger than Muhammad, based on when he first married and had children, as his oldest child was younger than Muhammad’s youngest.

We also have this statement, given in Ibn Sa’d as well, that Muhammad said, “Hamzah Ibn ‘Abd al-Muttalib is my foster-brother.” (Source.) This was in reference to why Muhammad did not seek to marry Hamza’s daughter.

There are a number of ahadith about Thuwayba nursing Muhammad that indicate that Muhammad was not considered legitimate. This will be detailed in Part II.

But already, if Hamza had ceased to nurse by the time Muhammad was born, there is a serious problem for the claim that Muhammad was Abdullah’s son. To be legitimate, Muhammad should be the same age or younger than Muhammad. It was customary at this time to nurse children for two years, and this would force Muhammad to be at least two years younger than Hamza, putting his birth 2.5 years after the time of his reported conception.

The explicit statement that Hamza was years older than Muhammad

Ibn Sa’d reported that Hamza “was killed at the age of fifty-nine in the Battle of Uhud which took place thirty-two months after the Hijra. He was four years older than the Messenger of Allah.” (Source.) He cites al-Waqidi as his source. This places a minimum of 4.5 years between the death of Abdullah and Muhammad’s birth.

Ibn Sayyid al-Nas (d. 1334) asserted that this had to be a mistake because the slave Thuwayba nursed both Muhammad and Hamza. I believe his reasoning goes like this: Hamza had just finished nursing when Muhammad was born. If there had been a longer lapse of time, her milk would have dried up. But we only have information about her child who triggered the start of the lactation in which she nursed Muhammad. We do no have information whether this was the same lactation in which she nursed Hamza or anyone else, for that matter. We don’t know whether she nursed other children in between the two, as Muhammad only remarked on those whose relation through nursing blocked possible marriages. This late reworking of the sources can be handily dismissed. But even if it is accepted, that would still leave an impossible gap of 2.5 year between Abdullah’s death and Muhammad’s birth.

Conclusion

The mere statement of this age gap of years combined with Abdullah’s death soon after his marriage is very convincing evidence for most Muslims. It must be, because it combines some of the strongest traditions about Muhammad’s early life using the method of Islamic sciences. If a modern Muslim then accepts that a pregnancy of multiple years is not possible through natural means (and Muhammad’s mother’s pregnancy length had nothing supernatural in it in any Islamic source), then he must conclude that Muhammad was illegitimate. And if Muhammad was illegitimate, then Islam is false.

In contrast, these elements by themselves are not very credible evidence of Muhammad’s illegitimacy for an experienced non-Muslim historian. In a pre-literate society, there are tendencies to round ages that can create gaps where there are none, and people also often inflate their own ages once they reach forty or so. Ages of older adults are especially unreliable. People can also be reporting their guesses at other people’s ages rather than exact numbers.

However, there is copious other non-numerical pieces of evidence that point to this gap being an accurate rough memory from the people during Muhammad’s time, as well as unrelated details that all point toward contemporary doubts about paternity. It is the way the narrative pieces interlock, details of each reinforcing the others, that creates the clearest picture, and this picture is of an orphan who can scarcely lay claim to the name that he bears. The exploration of factors that paint a convincing picture for the non-Muslim researcher will be presented in the next article.