Eid al-Mab’ath and Mi’raj: Descent, Ascent and the Two Movements of Divine Guidance

The Year the Prophet (s) Lost His Shield

The 10th year of prophethood is known in Islamic history as Aam al-Huzn — the Year of Sorrows. Within its span, two of the people the Prophet Muhammad (s) had relied upon most completely left this world within weeks of each other: his wife Lady Khadijah al-Kubra (sa), who had been his first believer, his closest companion, and the sustaining support of twenty-five years; and his uncle Hazrat Abu Talib (as), who had raised him from childhood and shielded him from the violence of the Quraysh through every year of his mission.

The 26th of Rajab marks the passing of Hazrat Abu Talib (as). His death removed the most powerful political and personal protection the Prophet (s) had in Makkah. The months that followed were among the most dangerous of his life — the persecution intensified almost immediately, and the Hijrah to Madinah became necessary not long after. The man who had kept the Quraysh at bay through his own tribal authority and personal resolve was gone, and the difference was felt by every early Muslim in the city.

Who Was Hazrat Abu Talib (as)?

Abu Talib ibn Abd al-Muttalib was the son of the chief of the Banu Hashim clan and the head of the family that bore the Prophet (s). When the Prophet (s) was orphaned as a child — his father Abdullah having died before his birth and his mother Aminah when he was six — it was his grandfather Abd al-Muttalib who took him in. When Abd al-Muttalib died, the young Muhammad (s) was entrusted to Abu Talib, who was his father’s full brother and closest kin.

Abu Talib raised him as his own son. The classical biographies describe a man who loved the Prophet (s) with the same completeness with which he loved his own children — in some accounts, more. He took him on his trade journeys to Syria, watched over his reputation in the city, and when the mission of Islam began, chose to stand beside his nephew even as the most powerful clans in Arabia turned against him. He was the father of Imam Ali ibn Abi Talib (as), the first Imam of the Ahlul Bayt, which makes him a figure whose place in Islamic history is not incidental — he is the source of the line through which the Imamate descended.

The Protection That Preserved Islam in Makkah

When the Prophet (s) began calling openly to Islam and the Quraysh responded with hostility, it was Abu Talib who made the persecution costlier than its architects were prepared to bear. In the tribal society of Arabia, attacking a man under the protection of a chief of the Banu Hashim was an act of war. Abu Talib did not merely tolerate his nephew’s mission — he publicly proclaimed his protection and enforced it through the full weight of his personal and tribal authority.

When the Quraysh came to him with offers — take the wealth we have gathered for you, accept the most handsome young man of Arabia, give us Muhammad and we will give you what you want — Abu Talib refused. He is reported in classical seerah to have said to the Prophet (s) after one such delegation: “Go, my nephew, and say what you wish. By God, I will never hand you over to them for any reason.” (Sirat Ibn Hisham; Bihar al-Anwar, Allama Majlisi)

When the Quraysh organised a complete economic and social boycott of the Banu Hashim — sealing them in the mountain pass known as Shi’b Abi Talib and cutting off their trade, food supply, and social relations — Abu Talib led the family through three years of that confinement rather than surrender his nephew. The boycott broke the health of many who endured it. Abu Talib emerged from those years weakened, and he died not long after. The boycott that was designed to force a choice between the Prophet (s) and survival had not worked — but it cost Abu Talib the final years of his strength.

The Question of His Faith: The Shia Position

There is no topic connected to Abu Talib (as) that has generated more theological discussion than the question of his faith. The Shia position — grounded in classical Shia hadith literature and transmitted from the Imams — is clear and unambiguous: Hazrat Abu Talib (as) was a believer. He was a Muslim. His faith in Allah and in the prophethood of his nephew was real, sincere, and complete.

The question of why that faith was not declared openly is answered by the concept of taqiyyah — the practice of concealing one’s faith under conditions of genuine danger, which Islam permits when the alternative is death or destruction of the mission. Abu Talib’s open declaration of protection for the Prophet (s), his poetry celebrating his nephew’s divine mission, and his consistent conduct over decades all point to a man whose inner conviction was not in doubt. The political reality was that his protection of the Prophet (s) depended on his standing within Quraysh tribal structures — standing that would have been destroyed had he openly converted in the early years, when the Muslim community was too weak to survive without his political cover. His faith served the mission most effectively from inside the tribal structure that the mission had not yet transformed.

Imam Ja’far al-Sadiq (as) is reported to have said: “Abu Talib’s example is like the People of the Cave — they concealed their faith outwardly but Allah rewarded them greatly for it.” (Bihar al-Anwar, Allama Majlisi, vol. 35) The comparison is striking: the People of the Cave in the Quran are described as believers whose faith is honoured despite — and partly because of — the conditions under which they maintained it.

Abu Talib’s poetry, preserved in classical Arabic literature, contains verses that are among the most explicit affirmations of prophetic truth in pre-Hijri Arabic writing. He wrote of the Prophet (s) as the chosen one, the light, the one through whom Allah’s mercy descended. These are not the words of a man who died without faith.

His Poetry and His Legacy

Abu Talib (as) was one of the most respected poets of his generation in Arabia — a culture that valued eloquence above almost every other art. His Qasida Lamiyya — his great poem in defence of the Prophet (s) — is among the most significant documents from the period of early Islam. In it, he warned the Quraysh directly that they would not reach the Prophet (s) while a single one of the Banu Hashim still stood. He described the Prophet’s character, his spiritual station, and the protection he would be given. He called on the people of Makkah to reflect on what they were doing.

That a poem this direct — this explicit in its defence of the Prophet’s mission — was composed by a man who did not believe in that mission is an argument that does not hold. What the poem demonstrates is exactly what the Shia tradition maintains: Abu Talib (as) knew who his nephew was, believed in what he carried, and used every capacity he possessed — his tribal authority, his wealth, his poetic voice, and his life — to protect the mission he had been entrusted to shield.

Remembering Him on the 26th of Rajab

Hazrat Abu Talib (as) did not live to see the Hijrah, or the Battle of Badr, or the opening of Makkah, or the Prophet’s farewell pilgrimage. He died in the Year of Sorrows, when the community he had protected was still small and the outcome of its mission was far from certain. He gave what he had during the years it was hardest to give it, and he left before the harvest came.

The Prophet (s) is reported to have grieved for him deeply. There are narrations in which he stood at Abu Talib’s deathbed and spoke to him with the tenderness of a son to the father who had raised him — asking him to speak a word, to say aloud what both of them knew to be in his heart. Whatever passed between them in those final moments belongs to a closeness that no external account fully reaches.

What we have is the life itself: forty years of shielding, thirty-five years of guarding, three years of a mountain pass boycott, and a death that left the Prophet (s) in his most exposed position since the mission had begun. That is the inheritance of Hazrat Abu Talib (as) — and it is not a small one.

His son, Imam Ali (as), is buried in Najaf. His grandson, Imam Hussain (as), is buried in Karbala. The family he raised and protected is the family whose shrines the believers of the world visit today. Our 2026–2027 Iraq Ziyarat Packages bring you to those shrines — to Najaf, Karbala, Kadhimiya, and Samarra — to the household Abu Talib gave everything to preserve.

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