1 of 4 · The Makkan years · before the Hijrah · The Ka'bah, Makkah
Fatimah bint Muhammad رضي الله عنها
A Girl at the Ka'bah
In the hardest years in Makkah, the Prophet ﷺ was praying by the Ka'bah while a group of Quraysh chiefs sat nearby. One of them asked who would fetch the waste of a slaughtered camel and lay it on Muhammad's back when he bowed down. 'Uqbah ibn Abi Mu'ayt went and did it, and they laughed until they leaned on one another, while the Prophet ﷺ stayed in prostration, not raising his head.
Someone ran to tell Fatimah, who was then still a young girl. She came, lifted the filth off her father's back, and turned to the men and spoke against what they had done. Only then did the Prophet ﷺ raise his head and finish his prayer, and he called upon Allah against those chiefs by name (Sahih al-Bukhari 240).
She could not fight them, and she did not pretend to. She simply did the one thing in her power: she went to her father and cleaned him, in front of the most powerful men of her city.
Loyalty is often a small, brave act done in public when others are laughing.
When someone you love is mocked, what is the one thing in your power to do?
- Sahih al-Bukhari 240 Sahih · in the two Sahihs
- Sahih Muslim 1794 Sahih · in the two Sahihs
What the hadith grades mean
- Sahih (authentic): an unbroken chain of trustworthy, precise narrators, free of hidden flaws or contradiction. It is acted upon.
- Hasan (good): like sahih, but a narrator's precision is slightly lighter. It is also accepted and acted upon. "Hasan sahih" means it reaches sahih by its routes.
- Da'if (weak): a break in the chain or a narrator who is not reliable enough. It is not used to establish beliefs or rulings.
- Very weak (munkar, matruk): a seriously flawed chain or a narrator accused of lying. It is not relied on at all.
- Mawdu' (fabricated): falsely attributed to the Prophet ﷺ. It may not be narrated as his words except to warn against it.
- The two Sahihs: every hadith with a full chain in Sahih al-Bukhari and Sahih Muslim is accepted as sahih by the scholars of hadith.
- Historical report: biographies and histories (Ibn Ishaq, Ibn Sa'd, al-Tabari) record events with chains that are often incomplete. They are used for the story, not for rulings.
- Hadith scholars grade a narration; the four madhhabs do not. Where a hadith carries a ruling, the page shows which schools act on it.
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