's sister. Arwa is usually remembered for opposing Islam and the prophet, and also for a poem.
Family
She was the daughter of Harb ibn
Abu Sufyan and one of the leading women of the Quraysh.[2][3]
She married
Utaybah,[6][7] Muattab,[6] Durrah (Fakhita), 'Uzzā and Khālida.[8] It is not clear whether she was also the mother of Abu Lahab's son Durrah.[citation needed
]
Opposition to Muhammad
Quran 111
Umm Jamil supported her husband in his opposition to Muhammad's preaching.[3] When Muhammad promised Paradise to the believers, Abu Lahab blew on his hands and said, "May you perish. I can see nothing in you of the things that Muhammad says." Muhammad therefore declared a revelation from God about them.[9]
Destroyed were the hands of Abu Lahab,and he lay utterly doomed. His wealth did not avail him nor his acquisitions. Surely, He will be cast into a flaming fire Along with his wife , that carrier of slanderous tales. upon her neck shall be a rope of palm-fibre.[10]
The occasion for this revelation is disputed.
Mount Safa for his first public warning that they must heed God's message. Abu Lahab interrupted: "May you perish! Did you assemble us for this? You should die!" and Muhammad responded with the prophecy.[11][12][3]
Ibn Ishaq implies that it occurred in 616, when Abu Lahab left the Hashim clan and refused to protect Muhammad.[13][14]
Ibn Ishaq says that Umm Jamil was called "the carrier of firewood" because she carried thorns and cast them in Muhammad's way where he would be passing;[15] however, he also states that the Quraysh did not resort to this form of harassment until after the death of Abu Talib in 620.[16] Ibn Kathir also offers the alternative theory that "carrier of firewood" does not refer to a past event but to Umm Jamil's future destiny of willingly stoking the fires that would punish her husband in Hell.[3]
Counterblast
When Umm Jamil bint Harb heard that Muhammad had been prophesying about her and her husband, she went to the
pestle
. She did not notice Muhammad, so she asked Abu Bakr after him, "for I have been told that he is satirising me. If I had found him, I would have smashed his mouth with this stone." Then she produced a poem of her own:
We reject the reprobate, His words we repudiate, His religion we loathe and hate.
She departed, still not having noticed Muhammad.[17]
^Muhammad ibn Ishmail ibn Kathir. Al-Sira al-Nabawiyya. Translated by Le Gassick, T. (1998). The Life of the Prophet Muhammad, vol. 1 p. 334. Reading, U.K.: Garnet Publishing Ltd.
^Muhammad ibn Sa'd. Kitab al-Tabaqat al-Kabir. Translated by Haq, S. M. (1967). Ibn Sa'd's Kitab al-Tabaqat al-Kabir Volume I Parts I & II, p. 100. Delhi: Kitab Bhavan.
^Muhammad ibn Sa'd. Kitab al-Tabaqat al-Kabir vol. 8. Translated by Bewley, A. (1995). The Women of Madina, p. 24. London: Ta-Ha Publishers.
