When the whole incident of uncovering Zam Zam happened, Abdul Muthalib felt the pressure of Quraish. He felt he was weak as he had only one son to defend him. In the tribal societies, your strength is based on how many men are on your side and you can only count on your relatives – sons, uncles, brothers, etc.

So Abdul Muthalib felt weak and prayed, “Oh Allah, if you bestow me with ten sons, I will sacrifice one of them for your sake. And Allah (SWT) did bless him with ten sons. He had ten sons and six daughters. When he had the tenth son, it’s time to fulfill his promise of sacrifice to Allah.

In Mecca, during that time, they had some arrows next to a large idol called hubel. The arrows were considered divine. The people of Mecca would cast lots with these arrows and leave their choices to this random way.

Abdul Muthalib had the name of all of his sons, including Abdullah, on these arrows and casted lot. The lot came on Abdullah. He tried it again, it came on Abdullah again. He tried the third time and the lot picked Abdullah.

So Abdullah took his son Abdullah next to Kaaba and was ready with a knife to slaughter him when Abu Talib, one of Abdul Muthalib’s elder sons said, “We cannot allow you to kill your son”. The maternal relatives of Abdullah joined Abu Talib and said, “We are not going to kill our son”.  

People around started telling Abdul Muthalib, “If you do it, then it will become sunnah (tradition) for the Arabs after you”. Because Abdul Muthalib was one of the leaders of Quraish, if he did something, it would be a trend after that to sacrifice a son for every ten sons they had. They were already killing their daughters.

Abdul Muthalib replied to everyone around him, “This is a pledge I did to Allah. I cannot give it up and I cannot break my promise.” It became a dispute and finally resorted to the same witch that they sought to resolve the issue on Zam Zam, “Let’s go to the witch”.

The witch told them, “Go and come back tomorrow so that I can consult my spirits this evening. Tonight I will speak to the Jinn”. They returned the next day to her and she asked them, “What is the retribution that you pay to a person that was killed, the diya (blood money)?”

“Ten camels”, they replied.

She said, “Put ten camels on one side and put Abdullah on the other. Cast a lot. If it points towards the camel, then slaughter the camel otherwise if it points to Abdullah then add ten more camels”

They agreed and returned. Abdul Muthalib with all the people of Quraish came together and put Abdullah on side and ten camels on the other.  They threw an arrow and it pointed to Abdullah. They added 10 more camels and threw arrow again. The second arrow pointed again to Abdullah. They added 10 more camels and continued throwing arrows until the number of camels became hundred – 20, 30, 40, 50… 100. The ninth arrow pointed to the 100 camels.

The people of Quraish said, “Now we can release your son”. Abdullah wasn’t convinced, “Not yet, we will have to do it again”. He casted the tenth and eleventh lot to find the arrow pointing to the camels. The arrow was consistently pointing to the hundred camels for three times.  

So he slaughtered the hundred camels and he had to pay for them all. Abdul Muthalib was a generous man and refused to take any of that meat. He gave it out. There was so much of meat that it was enough to serve people, birds and beast. Later on, Abdul Muthalib was known among the Arabs as the one who fed humans, animals and birds in the sky.

After this incident, the value of blood money is raised from 10 camels to 100 camels among the Arabs. This tradition was kept and preserved by Islam. However, now a days, diya is calculated in terms of currency that is based on the same concept.

Abdullah married Amina, daughter of Wahab. They are the parents of Rasoolullah (SAW). Later on Rasoolullah was told that he was the son of two sacrificed ones (Ismail (A) and Abdullah).

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