A Critical Exposition of the Popular 'Jihád'/Appendix B/12

[Sidenote: Maria had no son.]

12. (4) Those who have converted Maria into a slave or a concubine-slave have furnished her&mdash;the creature of their own imagination&mdash;with a son. There are various traditions as to the number and names of the Prophet's sons, all of whom died in infancy. Some traditions give different names to one, and others give as many sons as the names are reported. There might have been a son of Mohammad by the name of Ibrahim, but that he was born of Maria the Coptic is a perfect myth. This piece of the story is the continuation of the traditions of Ibn Sád, which I have already criticized in paras. 9 and 11. Ibn Sád has related another tradition through Omar bin Asim and Katáda to the effect that Mohammad's son Ibrahim was born of a captive woman. Asim has been condemned by Abu Hatim, a doctor and critic in the Mohammadan traditional literature; and Katáda (died 117 A.H.) was not a contemporary witness of what he relates. Thus he fails in giving any authority to his narration. There are two more traditions in Ibn Sád from similar authorities like Katáda, namely, Zohri (died 124 A.H.) and Mak-hool (died 118 A.H.)&mdash;not contemporaries of Mohammad, but of the class of Tabaeen&mdash;to the effect that Mohammad had said, "Had Ibrahim lived, the capitation-tax would have been remitted to every Copt!" and that "Had Ibrahim lived, his maternal uncles would never have been enslaved!" They do not say who was Ibrahim!

Another and the last tradition in Ibn Sád through Yahia bin Hammád, Abu Avána, Soleiman-al-Aamash, Muslim, and Bara is to the effect that Ibrahim was born from a Coptic maid of the Prophet. The narrator Soleiman-al-Aamash was a "modallis" (Takrib in loco), or in other words, a liar. Besides the whole chain of the narration is Mo-an-an.

In none of the canonical collections of traditions like those of Bokhari, Muslim, and others Ibrahim is said to have been born of Maria. Therefore any of their traditions regarding Ibrahim is not against us.

It is also related in some genuine traditions that an eclipse of the sun took place on the day of Ibrahim's death. The historians have related only one eclipse, which occurred in the sixth year of the Hejira, when Mohammad was at Hodeibia. This shows that Ibrahim could not be Maria's son. She only could come to Arabia a year later, as the dispatches to several princes were sent only in the seventh year. Yáfaee, in his history Mirát-uz-Zamán, has noted that the sun was eclipsed in the sixth year of the Hejira. In the tenth year, he says,&mdash;"A genuine tradition has that the sun was eclipsed on the day of Ibrahim's death, and it has been stated above that it was eclipsed in the sixth year. There is some difficulty. It was noted once only during the time of the Prophet. If it occurred twice, there is no difficulty; and if not, one of these two events must be wrong, either the eclipse took place in the tenth year, or the Prophet's son died in the sixth year." But historically the eclipse was noticed only in the sixth year. There are different dates of Ibrahim's death reported by the biographers&mdash;the fourth, tenth, and fourteenth of lunar months, but in none of them can an eclipse take place.