Part 1 · Page 159
Hassan ibn Thabit’s Account of the Prophet’s Birth
English summary of the source section
Translated locally from the Arabic Seerah of Ibn Hisham. This is not an official published English translation. Numbered textual notes in the printed edition are not reproduced in this excerpt.
Only an English summary is currently available for this section; the full section has not been translated here. Consult the Arabic source for exact wording and context.
Read the corresponding Arabic sectionIbn Ishaq said: Salih ibn Ibrahim ibn Abd al-Rahman ibn Awf narrated to me, from Yahya ibn Abdullah ibn Abd al-Rahman ibn Sa‘d ibn Zurarah al-Ansari. Yahya said: A man from my people narrated to me from Hassan ibn Thabit. Hassan said: “By Allah, I was a young boy of seven or eight, able to remember all that I heard, when I heard a Jewish man calling from atop one of Yathrib’s fortresses: ‘O community of Jews!’ When they gathered around him, they asked, ‘Woe to you! What is the matter?’ He said, ‘Tonight the star under which Ahmad was born has risen.’” Ibn Ishaq later asked Sa‘id ibn Abd al-Rahman ibn Hassan how old Hassan was when the Messenger arrived in Medina. He replied that Hassan was sixty and the Messenger was fifty-three; Hassan had therefore been seven when he heard the announcement.