Mut'im ibn Adi

Mut'im ibn Adi was a chief of Banu Nawfal who never embraced Islam. Yet he protected the Prophet at his most exposed moment, bringing him back into Mecca under his protection when no Muslim could show himself there.

When the Prophet returned from Ta'if, repulsed and stoned, with no clan to shelter him, he sent to ask for Mut'im's protection. Mut'im met him armed, with his sons, and from the Ka'ba proclaimed his protection (jiwar): Muhammad is under his safeguard, and Mecca must accept this ¹.

In the same period he was among the Qurashi notables who moved to tear up the document of the boycott of Banu Hashim ¹. He died around 619 CE, before the Hijra, still upon the religion of his people ².

The tradition remembers him without claiming him. It is reported that the Prophet said that had Mut'im lived and spoken to him about the prisoners of Badr, he would have given them to him. He is honoured for being a protector, neither more nor less.

Mut'im ibn Adi ibn Nawfal ibn Abd Manaf was the chief and elder of Banu Nawfal in the pre-Islamic period. He was one of the five men who rose to annul the document of the boycott of Banu Hashim. He went to the document to tear it up in the Ka'ba, and found that termites had eaten all of it except the name of God ³.

He also has a second famous stand in the biography. After the Prophet returned from Ta'if, the leaders of Quraysh refused to let him enter Mecca, and it was he who granted him protection. Mut'im and his sons went out armed, until the Prophet entered the Ka'ba, circled it and prayed, and then went to his home under Mut'im's protection ³.

Mut'im spoke to those who had summoned him, blaming them for agreeing with Quraysh in this injustice, and reminded them of the ties of kinship with Banu Hashim and Banu al-Muttalib. He then joined Zuhayr, and on the day of the annulment he declared that they disavowed to God the document and what had been written in it (the annulment of the document) ⁴.

After the Prophet's return from Ta'if, he entered Mecca under Mut'im's protection. Mut'im said, "Yes, I am a protector," and ordered his sons and his people to put on their arms at the corners of the House. The Prophet entered, touched the corner, prayed two units of prayer, and departed ^{5 6}. The Prophet remembered this conduct. He said of the prisoners of Badr: "If Mut'im were alive and had spoken to me about these foul ones, I would have left them to him" ⁶.

In the account of the Prophet's proposal for Aisha, Sheikh Omar Abdelkafy says that the son of Mut'im ibn Adi had earlier made a proposal for her, which received no answer ⁷.

He recounts that after the Prophet's proposal, Abu Bakr went to Mut'im ibn Adi, who said that Abu Bakr had come three months earlier to propose Aisha for his son, and that he had given no reply ⁸.

He says Mut'im's wife feared that a marriage of their son to Abu Bakr's daughter would lead him to convert to Muhammad's religion ⁹.