958 – Abu Hurayrah reported: “A man once said, ‘Messenger of Allah, my wife has given birth to a black boy!’ He asked, ‘Do you own any camels?’ The man replied, ‘Yes.’ He asked, ‘What colors are they?’ He answered, ‘Reddish-brown.’ He asked, ‘Is there among them any that are dull-gray?’ He said, ‘Yes.’ The Prophet then asked, ‘How did that differing color appear among them?’ The man replied, ‘Perhaps some ancestral strain pulled it through.’ The Prophet said, ‘Then perhaps this son of yours has likewise been pulled by an ancestral strain.’” Agreed upon.
In another version related by Muslim: “The man was insinuating that he wished to deny the child, and at the end the Prophet said: ‘He was not granted a concession to repudiate him.’” (1)
Vocabulary of the hadith
– ḥumr: plural of aḥmar, reddish-brown.
– awraq: an animal whose coat contains a mixture of black or gray, not a pure color; from it a dove is called warqāʾ.
– nazʿahu ʿirq: nazʿahu means “he pulled/drew it”; the basic sense of nazʿ is pulling.
– ʿirq: lineage, stock—likened to the root of a tree.
Lessons drawn from the hadith
- A man from the Fazārah tribe had a son whose complexion differed from that of both his father and mother. Suspicion entered the father’s heart, so he went to the Prophet ﷺ, indirectly accusing his wife. He told him that a black boy had been born to him; the Prophet ﷺ understood the hint and sought to convince him and to remove