your companion, then keep adding camels until your Lord is satisfied; but if the lot falls upon the camels, slaughter them in his stead—for your Lord will have accepted the offering and your companion will be saved.

They set out and, on returning to Mecca, resolved to do exactly that. ʿAbd al-Muṭṭalib stood invoking Allah, after which they brought forward ʿAbd Allāh with ten camels and cast the lots. The arrow pointed to ʿAbd Allāh. They added ten more camels and cast again; again the arrow indicated ʿAbd Allāh. They kept increasing the camels by tens, yet every time the arrow fell upon ʿAbd Allāh, until the number of camels reached one hundred. They cast once more, and now the arrow came out for the camels.

Quraysh then said to ʿAbd al-Muṭṭalib, who was standing beside Hubal calling upon Allah, “It is finished; your Lord is pleased, O ʿAbd al-Muṭṭalib.” He replied—so they say—“Not until I have cast the lots over them three times.” They therefore cast three further times, and each time the arrow fell upon the camels. The animals were slaughtered and left, and no one—man or beast—was turned away from the meat. Ibn Hishām adds: “and not even a wild animal was driven off.”

Another report says that when the camels reached one hundred the lot still fell upon ʿAbd Allāh, so they added another hundred, making two hundred; the lot again fell upon ʿAbd Allāh, so they added yet another hundred, bringing the total to three hundred. Only then did the arrow fall upon the camels, whereupon ʿAbd al-Muṭṭalib sacrificed them. The first version, however, is the sound one, and Allah knows best.

Ibn Jarīr narrated—through Yūnus ibn ʿAbd al-Aʿlā, from Ibn Wahb, from Yūnus ibn Yazīd, from al-Zuhrī, from Qabīṣah ibn Dhuʾayb—that a woman once asked Ibn ʿAbbās about a vow she had made to sacrifice her child at the Kaʿbah. He instructed her to sacrifice one hundred camels instead and cited this story of ʿAbd al-Muṭṭalib. She then asked ʿAbd Allāh ibn ʿUmar, but he refrained from issuing a ruling. When this reached Marwān ibn al-Ḥakam, the governor of Madinah, he said, “Neither of them has given the correct fatwa.” He ordered the woman to do whatever good deeds she could, forbade her to kill her child, and did not require her to sacrifice camels. The people thereafter adopted Marwān’s opinion. And Allah knows best.

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The Marriage of ʿAbd al-Muṭṭalib’s Son ʿAbd Allāh to Āminah bint Wahb al-Zuhriyyah

Ibn Isḥāq relates: ʿAbd al-Muṭṭalib then departed, holding the hand of his son ʿAbd Allāh. As the story goes, they passed by a woman of Banū Asad ibn ʿAbd al-ʿUzzā ibn Quṣayy—she was Umm Qatāl, sister of Warqah ibn Nawfal—who was at the Kaʿbah. She looked at his face and said, “Where are you going, O ʿAbd Allāh?” He replied, “With my father.” She said, “You shall have the like—