al-Ḥuwayrith, who said: “I heard Qubāth ibn Ashīm declare, ‘I am older than the Messenger of Allah ﷺ in years, yet he is greater than I. My mother once stood me by the dung of the Elephant when I was a small child able to understand, and the Messenger of Allah ﷺ was born in the Year of the Elephant.’” Yaḥyā here is Abū Zukayr, and his teacher is rejected in ḥadīth.

Mūsā ibn ʿUqbah reported from Ibn Shihāb: “Allah commissioned Muḥammad ﷺ fifteen years after the rebuilding of the Kaʿbah, and there were seventy years between his mission and the Companions of the Elephant.” Such were his words.

Ibrāhīm ibn al-Mundhir and others have said: “This is an error about which none of our scholars entertain any doubt. The Messenger of Allah ﷺ was born in the Year of the Elephant and was sent as a Prophet forty years after the Elephant.”

Yaʿqūb al-Qummī narrated, through Jaʿfar ibn Abī al-Mughīrah, from Ibn Abzā, that “there were ten years between the Elephant and the birth of the Messenger of Allah ﷺ.” This report is disconnected.

Even weaker is what Muḥammad ibn ʿUthmān ibn Abī Shaybah—himself unreliable—transmitted: “‘Uqbah ibn Makram narrated to us, saying: al-Siyb ibn Sharīk told us, from Shuʿayb ibn Shuʿayb, from his father, from his grandfather, who said: The pregnancy of the Messenger of Allah ﷺ began on the Day of ʿĀshūrāʾ in Muḥarram, and he was born on Monday, twelve nights into Ramaḍān, in the twenty-third year after the campaign of the Companions of the Elephant.’ This ḥadīth is, as you can see, worthless.

Flimsier still is what is reported from al-Kalbī—who is accused and discarded—through Abū Ṣāliḥ Bādhām, from Ibn ʿAbbās, claiming that the Messenger of Allah ﷺ was born fifteen years before the Year of the Elephant. Earlier we have given a sound chain that clearly exposes the falsehood of this attribution to Ibn ʿAbbās.

Khalīfah ibn Khayy