‘ABDU ‘LLAH عبد الله. The father of Muhammad. He was the youngest son of ‘Abdul’l-Mattalib. During the pregnancy of his wife Aminah, he set out on a mercantile expedition to Gaza in the south of Palestine, and on his way back he sickened and died at al-Madinah, before the birth of his son Muhammad. Both of Muhammad’s parents died in the state of jāhiliyya, or pre-Islamic enlightenment and are considered ahl al-fatra , meaning “people of interval”. The interval being the time between the two prophets of Jesus and Muhammad. Modern Muslim writers have concluded that people living in such a time at their death were tested and not necessarily destined for hell. (Katibu’l-Wackidi, p. 18; Muir’s Life of Mahomet, vol. i. p.l1.)
Based on Hughes, Dictionary of Islam Ecyclopaedia of Islam, Three
