Sirah
The Boycott at Shi'b Abi Talib
The three-year confinement of Banu Hashim outside Makkah
c. 6-3 BH (c. 616-619 CE)
Educational historical reconstructionWhere
Shi'b Abi Talib, northeast of the Ka'ba, Makkah
21.4250, 39.8287 · View on OpenStreetMap
Background
Approximately seven years after the start of the Prophet Muhammad's (peace and blessings be upon him) mission and six years before the Hijrah, conventionally placed at around 616 CE / 6 BH, the leadership of the Quraysh in Makkah agreed a formal social and economic boycott against the two clans of Banu Hashim and Banu al-Muttalib, who under Abu Talib continued to protect the Prophet despite Quraysh demands that he be surrendered. The agreement (sahifa) was reportedly written and hung in the precinct of the Ka'ba: no marriage, no commerce, no contact. The two clans withdrew to a narrow ravine in the rocks immediately northeast of the Ka'ba traditionally called Shi'b Abi Talib, 'the ravine of Abu Talib', where, according to Ibn Ishaq and al-Tabari, they were confined for approximately three years. The sources record severe hardship: shortages of food and water, the audible cries of hungry children carrying out of the valley, and grain and dried meat smuggled in at personal risk by a handful of sympathetic Quraysh from outside the boycotted clans, named in some accounts as Hisham ibn 'Amr, Zuhayr ibn Abi Umayya, al-Mut'im ibn 'Adi, Abu al-Bukhtari, and Zam'a ibn al-Aswad. The boycott ended around 619 CE / 3 BH when five Quraysh tribesmen publicly repudiated the agreement; the literary tradition adds that on inspection the parchment of the sahifa was found to have been eaten away by termites, taken as a divine sign that broke the political will to maintain it. Within months of the lifting of the boycott Abu Talib died, followed shortly afterwards by the Prophet's wife Khadija (radiyallahu 'anha); the year is remembered in the Sirah tradition as the 'Year of Sorrow' (ʿAm al-Huzn). This scene depicts the ravine during the boycott, with a covered supply approaching the camp at dusk and the discovered sahifa pinned to the rock at the entrance.
What you see
A narrow, dry rocky ravine threaded between sheer dark basalt cliffs. The valley floor is sand and loose rubble; no perennial watercourse, no cultivated palm grove of any size, this is the harsh terrain of the Hijazi mountains around Makkah, not the green oasis of Madinah or Ta'if.
Where the ravine opens at one end, the rooftops and walls of an ancient unwalled town are visible in the middle distance, with a small dark cubic shrine in its central court, the Ka'ba and the buildings of pre-Hijra Makkah. The ravine sits very close to the city but is deliberately separated from it.
The shelters in the ravine are not houses: low goat-hair tents in dark woven panels, lean-tos against the rock face, and a few rough stone wind-breaks. There is no permanent construction, no minted hearth, no domestic permanence, the inhabitants are housed only well enough to survive being kept out of the city.
Water is being rationed from a small number of leather skins hung on a wooden frame in the shade. There is no well in the ravine; the skins must be filled outside. Bundled date stones at the edges of the camp suggest that even the date pits are being reused, not discarded, the food restriction the sources describe as severe.
Near the mouth of the ravine, at low light, a small figure under a robe is leading a laden camel inward against the wall, a covered load roped down, the unrecorded names in the Sirah of Quraysh sympathizers from outside the boycotted clans who carried in grain and dried meat at personal risk.
Pinned by a polished stone against the inner face of the rock at the entrance, where the document was traditionally said to be brought when read, lies a folded leather sahifah. Its edges are visibly chewed and pierced, the literary motif the sources record of the boycott document found to have been eaten by termites, taken as the sign that broke the boycott politically.
No banners, no command tents, no markers of military camp. The encampment is a confinement, not an army. The visible asymmetry between the small isolated cluster of shelters in the ravine and the dense settled city beyond the rocks is the entire point of the scene.
The sky over the ravine is washed by a hard Hijazi sun, with deep shadow along the cliff faces. The air is dry, the heat is heavy. Without external supply this place could not be lived in for long, the sources record a duration of roughly three years.
Primary sources
Ibn Ishaq / Ibn Hisham, Sirat Rasul Allah (compiled 8th-9th c.): Foundational biographical compilation. Source for the existence and terms of the Quraysh boycott document, the withdrawal of Banu Hashim and Banu al-Muttalib to the ravine, the duration of approximately three years, the named Quraysh sympathizers who broke the embargo, and the motif of the document found eaten by termites.
al-Tabari, Tarikh al-Rusul wa-al-Muluk (early 10th c.): Compiles and cross-references the earlier transmitted material. Used for the conventional dating of the boycott to approximately 616-619 CE and for the sequence linking the end of the boycott to the deaths of Abu Talib and Khadija (radiyallahu 'anha) and the 'Year of Sorrow'.
Ibn Sa'd, al-Tabaqat al-Kubra (9th c.): Used for the social and clan composition of the boycotted parties (Banu Hashim and Banu al-Muttalib together) and for the named external sympathizers.
Further reading & cross-references
W. Montgomery Watt, Muhammad at Mecca (Oxford, 1953): Classic mid-twentieth-century English academic treatment of the Makkan period. Used for the political reading of the boycott as a clan-level tactic that ultimately failed and for the chronological placement around year 7 of the mission.
Martin Lings, Muhammad: His Life Based on the Earliest Sources (1983): Accessible English narrative drawn directly from Ibn Ishaq and al-Tabari. Used for clean prose rendering of the source material on the boycott and the smuggled supplies.
Tariq Ramadan, In the Footsteps of the Prophet (Oxford, 2007): Modern English biography. Used as a contemporary moral reading of the episode, the deliberate restraint of the Banu Hashim under boycott, and the named Quraysh sympathizers who acted across clan lines.
Topography of Makkah (modern surveys): The traditional identification of Shi'b Abi Talib places the ravine immediately northeast of the Ka'ba, in the area today known as al-Shamiyya. Modern Makkah's urban development has built over most of the historic terrain; the coordinate used here is a defensible anchor at regional precision, not a forensic claim about the exact valley floor.
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