THE DEATH OF ABU LAHAB

[Laila Nasheeba]

 

 

The Death of Abu Lahab

 

 

 

As Salaamu Alaikoum,

 

So many of you were surprised from today's class to learn that Abu Lahab was killed by Umm Al Fadl and did not die during the battle of Badr.  The one who died during the Battle of Badr was Aby Jahl. 

 

Here is more information on the death of Abu Lahab as taken from Ibn Ishaq and Muhammad Ibn Saad:

 

When the rest of the Quraysh went to Badr to protect the merchant-caravan (belonging to the Muslims who left Mecca for Madinah) from an expected attack, Abu Lahab remained in Mecca, sending in his place Abu Jahl's brother al-‘Āṣ ibn Hishām ibn al-Mughīra who owed him four thousand dirhams that he could not pay. So he hired him with them on the condition that he should be cleared off his debt. 

 

The first people to reach Mecca with the news of the Quraysh defeat in the Battle of Badr were al-Haysuman and 'Abdullāh ibn al-Khuzā'ī, who bewailed the fact that so many of their chieftains had fallen on the battlefield. Abu Lahab went to the large tent of Zamzam, "his face as black as thunder". Before long, his nephew Abu Sufyan ibn al-Harith arrived, so he called him over for news. A small crowd gathered around the two as Abū Sufyān told his uncle, "The facts are the Quraysh met our enemy and turned their backs. They [the Muslims] put us to flight, taking prisoners as they pleased. I cannot blame our tribesmen because they faced not only them but men wearing white robes riding piebald horses, who were between heaven and earth. They spared nothing, and no one had a chance."

 

At the other end of the tent, a Muslim freedman named Abu Rafi' and Abbas's wife Lubaba Umm Fadhl sat sharpening arrows. When they heard the news of the men in white riding between heaven and earth, they could no longer contain their happiness, and Abu Rafi exclaimed: "They were angels!" Abu Lahab was so furious that he forced the frail Abu Rafi' to the ground and beat him up.

 

Lubaba grabbed a nearby tent pole and hit her brother-in-law over the head, crying: "Do you think that you can abuse him just because Abbas is away?"

 

Lubaba wounded Abu Lahab so severely that his head was split open, laying bare part of his skull. The wound turned septic, and his entire body erupted into open pustules. He died a week later. This would have been in late March 624.

 

The smell from Abu Lahab's wound was so repulsive that nobody could come near him. His family left his decaying body decomposing in his home for two or three nights until a neighbour rebuked them. "It is disgraceful. You should be ashamed of leaving your father to rot in his house and not bury him from the sight of men!" They then sent in slaves to remove his body. It was watered from a distance, then pushed with poles into a grave outside Mecca, and stones were thrown over it.

 

A Muslim narration says that after Abu Lahab's death, some of his relatives had a dream in which they saw him suffering in Hell. He told them that he had experienced no comfort in the Afterlife, but that his sufferings had been remitted "this much" (indicating the space between his thumb and index finger) because of his one virtuous deed of manumitting his slave Thuwayba, who had briefly suckled Muhammad.

 

 

AND ALLAH KNOWS BEST

 

 

Laila Nasheeba

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