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The death of Abu Talib: Quraysh’s final delegation and the one word, “upon the religion of Abd al-Muttalib,” the shallow place of the Fire, Ali’s burial of him, his knowledge without faith and the refutation of those claiming him Muslim, from al-Boukhari, Mouslim, Ahmad and Ibn Ishaq.
Updated on 07 September 2026 at 11:07 PM
The chapter of the death of Abu Talib, uncle of the Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings of Allah be upon him), then, after him, of Khadija bint Khuwaylid, wife of the Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings of Allah be upon him), whom Allah was pleased with. It is said: rather she died before him; and the first relation is the famous one. The two were grieved: he outwardly, she inwardly: he a disbeliever, she a believing, truthful one (peace and blessings of Allah be upon him), and He was pleased with her.
Ibn Ishaq said: Khadija and Abu Talib died in the same year: the calamities succeeded one another upon the Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings of Allah be upon him): the death of Khadija, who was for him the truthful minister of Islam, with whom he found repose; and the death of his uncle Abu Talib, who was for him the arm and the shield in his affair, the protection and defender against his people. That was three years before his emigration to Medina. When Abu Talib died, Quraysh inflicted upon the Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings of Allah be upon him) harms it would not have hoped during Abu Talib’s life, to the point a fool of Qurayz assailed him and threw dust upon his head. Hisham ibn Urwa related to me, from his father: the Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings of Allah be upon him) entered his house, the dust upon his head; one of his daughters rose to him, washing him and weeping, while the Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings of Allah be upon him) said: “Weep not, O my little daughter: Allah protects your father.” And he said meanwhile: “Quraysh inflicted nothing upon me that I hate until Abu Talib died.” Ibn Ishaq mentioned before that one of them sometimes threw the filth into his pot (peace and blessings of Allah be upon him) when it was set before him; when they did that : as Omar ibn Abdallah related to me from Urwa : he would go out with that thing upon a stick, stand at his door and say: “O sons of Abd Manaf, what neighborliness is this?”, then cast it into the road.
Ibn Ishaq said: when Abu Talib fell ill and his heaviness reached Quraysh, they said to one another: Hamza and Omar have embraced Islam, and Muhammad’s affair has spread through all the clans of Quraysh: let us go to Abu Talib that he take for us a covenant from his nephew and give him from us, for by Allah we hold not secure that they snatch our order from us. Ibn Ishaq said: related to me al-Abbas ibn Abdallah ibn Ma’bad, from some of his people, from Ibn Abbas: when they walked to Abu Talib and spoke to him : his nobles: Utba ibn Rabia, Shayba ibn Rabia, Abu Jahl ibn Hisham, Umayya ibn Khalaf, Abu Soufyan ibn Harb, among men of their notables : they said: “O Abu Talib, you are of us as you know; there has come to you what you see, and we feared for you; you know what stands between us and your nephew: call him, take from him for us and take from us for him: let him cease from us,
and we cease from him, let him leave us and our religion, and we leave him and his religion.” Abu Talib sent for him: he came, and he said: “O son of my brother, these are your people’s notables gathered for you: that they give you and receive from you.” The Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings of Allah be upon him) said: “Yes: one word they shall give you: by it the Arabs serve you, and the Persians pay you tribute.” Abu Jahl said: “Yes, by your father, and ten words with it.” He said: “You shall say: there is no deity but Allah, and you shall forsake what you worship besides Him.” They clapped their hands, then said: “O Muhammad, would you make the deities one god? Your affair is astonishing!” Then some said to others: “By Allah, this man will give you nothing of what you want: depart, and walk upon your fathers’ religion, until Allah judges between you and him.” And they dispersed.
Abu Talib said: “By Allah, O son of my brother, I never saw you ask them excess.” The Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings of Allah be upon him) hoped for it, and kept saying to him: “O my uncle, you then say it: I shall invoke it for you as intercession on the Day of Resurrection.” Seeing the Messenger of Allah’s (peace and blessings of Allah be upon him) earnestness, Abu Talib said: “O son of my brother, by Allah, were there not the fear of blame upon you, and upon the sons of your father after me, and that Quraysh think I said it only from the death’s agony, I would have said it: I say it only to gladden you with it.” When death drew near Abu Talib, al-Abbas looked at him moving his two lips and inclined his ear toward him. He said: “O son of my brother, by Allah, my brother has said the word you ordered him to say.” The Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings of Allah be upon him) said: “I heard not.” Allah then sent down concerning that group: “Sad. By the Quran bearing the reminder. Those who disbelieved are in pride and dissension” : the verses : and we treated that in our Tafsir. To Allah the praise and the grace.
Certain people, among the Shiites and the exaggerators, relied upon al-Abbas’s word in this hadith : “O son of my brother, he has said the word you ordered him to say,” meaning: there is no deity but Allah : to claim Abu Talib died a Muslim. The answer holds in several points: first, the chain contains an unnamed narrator whose state is unknown : “from some of his people”: uncertainty in name and state, and such a relation is suspensive even were it unique. Then, Imam Ahmad, an-Nasaï and Ibn Jarir related a text like this wording, through the chain of Abu Uthmana, from al-A’mash, from Ibbad, from Said ibn Jubayr, from Ibn Abbas, mentioning it without al-Abbas’s word; ath-Thawri related it likewise, from al-A’mash, from Yahya ibn Umara al-Kufi, from Said ibn Jubayr, from Ibn Abbas, without the addition of al-Abbas’s word. And at-Tirmidhi related it and deemed it good, an-Nasaï and Ibn Jarir likewise.
What is sounder than Ibn Ishaq’s text contradicts it: what al-Boukhari (peace and blessings of Allah be upon him) related, from Mahmoud, from Abd ar-Razzak, from Ma’mar, from az-Zuhri, from Ibn al-Moussayyab, from his father: when death approached Abu Talib, the Prophet (peace and blessings of Allah be upon him) entered upon him, and present there was Abu Jahl, who said: “O uncle, say: there is no deity but Allah: a word by which I shall plead for you before Allah.” Abu Jahl and Abdallah ibn Abi Umayya said: “O Abu Talib, do you forsake Abd al-Muttalib’s religion?” They kept speaking to him until he said last: “Upon the religion of Abd al-Muttalib.” The Prophet (peace and blessings of Allah be upon him) said: “I shall seek forgiveness for you so long as I am not forbidden.” There then descended: “It is not for the Prophet and those who believe to seek forgiveness for the polytheists,
even though they be of kin, after it became clear to them that they are the companions of the Blaze”; and descended: “You guide not whom you love: but Allah guides whom He wills, and He knows best the guided.” Mouslim related it, from Ishaq ibn Ibrahim and Abd, from Abd ar-Razzak. The two related it likewise from az-Zuhri, from Said ibn al-Moussayyab, from his father, similarly, and he said therein: the Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings of Allah be upon him) kept presenting it to him, and the two kept retorting him that word, until he said last: “Upon the religion of Abd al-Muttalib,” and refused to say: “There is no deity but Allah.” The Prophet (peace and blessings of Allah be upon him) said: “Indeed, I shall seek forgiveness for you so long as I am not forbidden it.” Allah then sent down, after that: “It is not for the Prophet...”, and descended concerning Abu Talib: “You guide not whom you love.”
Thus related Imam Ahmad, Mouslim and at-Tirmidhi, from Yazid ibn Kaysan, from Abu Hazim, from Abu Hurayra: when Abu Talib’s death approached, the Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings of Allah be upon him) came to him and said: “O my uncle, say: there is no deity but Allah: I shall testify for you of it on the Day of Resurrection.” He said: “Were Quraysh not to reproach me : saying: nothing carried him to it but death’s agony : I would attest it before your eye.” Allah then sent down: “You guide not whom you love, but Allah guides whom He wills, and He knows best the guided.” And so said Abdallah ibn Abbas, Ibn Omar, Mujahid, ach-Cha’bi and Qatada: it descended concerning Abu Talib when the Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings of Allah be upon him) offered him to say: there is no deity but Allah, and he refused, saying: “Upon the religion of the ancients.” And his last words were: “Upon the religion of Abd al-Muttalib.”
All that is confirmed by what al-Boukhari related, from Mussaddad, from Yahya, from Soufyan, from Abd al-Malik ibn Umayr, that Abdallah ibn al-Harith narrated to him, from al-Abbas ibn Abd al-Muttalib: I said to the Prophet (peace and blessings of Allah be upon him): “You brought nothing to your uncle: he protected you and was wroth for you.” He said: “He is in a shallow place of the Fire; and were it not for me, he would have been in the deepest depth of the Fire.” Mouslim related it in his Sahih, through chains, from Abd al-Malik ibn Umayr. The two related it likewise in the two Sahihs, from al-Layth, from Ibn al-Hadi, from Abdallah ibn Khabbab, from Abu Sa’id, that he heard the Prophet (peace and blessings of Allah be upon him): his uncle was mentioned before him, and he said: “Perhaps my intercession will profit him on the Day of Resurrection: he shall be placed in a shallow place of the Fire reaching his ankles,
boiling his brain matter.” al-Boukhari’s wording; in a version: “boiling the matter of his brain.” And Mouslim related, from Abu Bakr ibn Abi Shayba, from Affan, from Hammad ibn Salama, from Thabit, from Abu Uthman, from Ibn Abbas: the Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings of Allah be upon him) said: “The lightest punished of the people of the Fire is Abu Talib: shod with two sandals of Fire whose heat boils his brain.” And in the Maghazi of Younous ibn Boukayr: “...making his brain flow to his two feet,” cited by as-Souhayli. The hafiz Abu Bakr al-Bazzar related in his Musnad, from Mujalid, from ach-Cha’bi, from Jabir: the Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings of Allah be upon him) was asked : or it was said to him: have you profited Abu Talib? He said: “I brought him out of the Fire into a shallow place of it.” al-Bazzar alone relates it.
as-Souhayli says: if the Prophet (peace and blessings of Allah be upon him) accepted not al-Abbas’s testimony in favor of his brother : that he had said the word : and said: “I heard not,” it is because al-Abbas was then a disbeliever, his testimony not accepted. Ibn Kathir says: that report did not prove authentic, for the weakness of its chain, as has preceded; and what indicates it is that he asked the Prophet (peace and blessings of Allah be upon him) thereafter about Abu Talib, who mentioned to him what has preceded. And were its authenticity admitted, perhaps he said it at the sight of the angel after the death rattle, when a soul’s faith profits nothing. Allah is most knowing.
Abu Dawud at-Tayalisi related, from Shu’ba, from Abu Ishaq: I heard Najiya ibn Ka’b say: I heard Ali say: when my father died : meaning his uncle :, I came to the Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings of Allah be upon him) and said: your uncle has died. He said: “Go then and enshroud him.” I said: he died a polytheist. He said: “Go and enshroud him, and relate nothing until you come to me.” I did that, then came to him, and he ordered me to wash. And an-Nasaï related it, from Muhammad ibn al-Muthanna, from Ghundar, from Shu’ba. Abu Dawud and an-Nasaï related it likewise, from Soufyan, from Abu Ishaq, from Najiya, from Ali: when Abu Talib died, I said: “O Messenger of Allah, your uncle the old erring one has died: who shall enshroud him?” He said: “Go and enshroud your father, and relate nothing until you come to me.” I came to him, and he ordered me: I washed; then he invoked for me invocations such that I would not care to own aught on earth in exchange for them.
The hafiz al-Bayhaqi related, from Abu Sa’d al-Malini, a chain going back to Ibn Jurayj, from Ata, from Ibn Abbas: the Prophet (peace and blessings of Allah be upon him) offered the funeral prayer of Abu Talib and said: “And thy prayer is kinship, and thou hast been well recompensed, O my uncle.” He said: it was related from Abu al-Yaman al-Hawzani, from the Prophet (peace and blessings of Allah be upon him), in suspended form, with the addition: “and he stood not upon his grave.” He said: this Ibrahim ibn Abd ar-Rahman is the Khwarizmi, concerning whom criticism was made. Ibn Kathir says: more than one related from him: among them al-Fadl ibn Moussa as-Sinani and Muhammad ibn Sallam al-Bikandi; and Ibn Adi said: he is not known, and his hadiths from every relator are not straight.
What has preceded shows what Abu Talib practiced of the protection, the pleading and the dissuasion in favor of the Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings of Allah be upon him) and the defense of him and his Companions; and what he said of praise and laudation, and the sympathy, affection and care he manifested for him and his Companions in his poems already cited, with the blame and denigration of whoever contradicted him and called him liar, in that eloquent, cogent, Hashimite, Muttalibite expression which cannot be approached nor equaled by any Arab. And in all that he knew the Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings of Allah be upon him) was truthful, righteous, right-guided; but his heart believed not: a difference between the heart’s knowledge and its confirmation, as we established in the commentary of the book of faith of the Sahih of al-Boukhari. Witness the Most High’s word: “Those to whom We gave the Book recognize it as they recognize their own children;
yet a party of them conceals the truth while they know it”; and He said of Pharaoh’s people: “And they denied them by injustice and pride, though their souls were convinced of them”; and Moussa said to Pharaoh: “You know well that none sent down these but the Lord of the heavens and the earth”; and some of the salaf’s word upon His word: “and they forbid it and depart far from it”: it descended concerning Abu Talib, who forbade people harming the Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings of Allah be upon him), while he himself shunned what the Messenger brought of guidance and the religion of truth. That was related from Ibn Abbas, al-Qasim ibn Mukhaymira, Habib ibn Abi Thabit, Ata ibn Dinar, Muhammad ibn Ka’b and others: the matter calls for reflection. Allah is most knowing. And what is more apparent : and Allah is most knowing : is the other relation from Ibn Abbas: “and they forbid it.”