AyaSeerah

Year 4 of prophethood · 10 BH (613 CE)

Going public

He warns his own clan first, then all of from Ṣafā — and Quraysh turn on him.

His age
43
Where
Makkah
Counted as
10 BH

The year

The command came to warn his nearest relatives, so he gathered the clans of Quraysh by name and told each one plainly that he could not save them from Allah — naming his own aunt and his own daughter. Family gave nobody an exemption. Then he climbed Ṣafā, called the clans as a man does when warning of a raiding army, and asked whether they would believe him if he said horsemen were behind the hill. They said: we have never known you to lie. He told them he was a warner before a severe punishment, and Abū Lahab answered with a curse.

From that day the city's attitude changed. He was the same man, with the same record, and the accusation of madness, poetry and sorcery began. The chiefs went to Abū Ṭālib and asked him to silence his nephew; when the demand turned into a threat, Abū Ṭālib put it to him, and the answer was that he would not leave this matter if they put the sun in his right hand and the moon in his left.

Learn this year as the hinge: everything before it is private, everything after it is contested in public.

What happened, event by event

Warn your nearest kin

c. 10 BH · Makkah

Then came the order to warn his own relatives first. He called the clans of Quraysh by name and told them plainly that he could not save them from Allah — naming even his aunt and his daughter. Family gave nobody an exemption.

Chapter: The Cave of Ḥirāʾ — the first revelation

The call at Mount Ṣafā

c. 10 BH · Makkah

He ﷺ climbed the hill of Ṣafā and called Makkah together. He asked whether they would believe him if he warned of an army behind the hill; they said they had never known him to lie. He told them he was a warner before a severe punishment — and his uncle Abū Lahab answered with a curse, which Sūrat al-Masad answered permanently.

Chapter: Going public — and the persecution

Quraysh go to Abū Ṭālib

c. 10–9 BH · Makkah

The chiefs demand that Abū Ṭālib silence his nephew; he ﷺ refuses to stop.

Chapter: Going public — and the persecution

The Qur'an alongside this year

People in this year

Answer from memory