As for the seasons, this corresponded—according to the compilers of the astronomical tables—to the year eight hundred and eighty-two of Alexander the Two-Horned. They state that the ascendant was at the twentieth degree of Capricorn, while Jupiter and Saturn were conjoined at three degrees of Scorpio, the degree of the mid-heaven. The governing sign of the hour was Aries, and the event took place when the moon had just risen at the beginning of the night.

All of this was transmitted in full by Ibn Diḥyah, and Allah knows best.

Ibn Isḥāq (1) said: “His ﷺ birth fell in the Year of the Elephant,” and this is the view most widely held among the majority.

Ibrāhīm ibn al-Munḏir al-Ḥizāmī said: “None of our scholars entertain any doubt that he ﷺ was born in the Year of the Elephant and was commissioned as a prophet forty years after the Elephant.”

Al-Bayhaqī (2) reported—through Abū Isḥāq al-Sabiʿī, from Saʿīd ibn Jubayr, from Ibn ʿAbbās—who said: “The Messenger of Allah ﷺ was born in the Year of the Elephant.”

Muḥammad ibn Isḥāq (3) said: al-Muṭṭalib ibn ʿAbd Allāh ibn Qays ibn Makhrama related to me, from his father, from his grandfather Qays ibn Makhrama, who said: “The Messenger of Allah ﷺ and I were born in the Year of the Elephant; we are coevals.” (4)

He also recounted that ʿUthmān — may Allah be pleased with him — asked Qabāth ibn Ashyam, the ally of Banū Yaʿmar ibn Layth: “Are you older, or the Messenger of Allah ﷺ?” He replied, “The Messenger of Allah ﷺ is older than I am, though I came into the world before him. I still remember seeing the dung of the Elephant, green and putrid.” (5) Al-Tirmidhī (6) and al-Ḥākim (7) recorded this through the narration of Muḥammad ibn Isḥāq.

Ibn Isḥāq (8) stated: “In the year of ʿUkāẓ the Messenger of Allah ﷺ was twenty years old.”

He further said (9): “The Fijār engagement occurred twenty years after the Elephant; the rebuilding of the Kaʿbah fifteen years after Fijār; and the commissioning (mabʿath) five years after that rebuilding.”

Muḥammad ibn Jubayr ibn Muṭʿim added: “ʿUkāẓ took place fifteen years after the Elephant, the rebuilding of the Kaʿbah ten years after ʿUkāẓ, and the commissioning fifteen years after its rebuilding.”

Al-Ḥāfiẓ