Year of Sorrow

The Year of Sorrow (Aam-ul-Huzn) is an Islamic term for a Hijri year that coincided with 619 or 623 CE. It is called so since both Abu Talib and Khadijah—the Islamic prophet Muhammad's uncle and first wife, respectively—died that year.

In Nur-ul-Absar, the author mentions the date of demise of Abu Talib to be the first of Zilqada after the removal of economic sanctions which lasted for 8 months and 21 days.

The privations and hardships endured by the Muslims during the Meccan boycott of the Hashemites had gravely affected the health of both Khadija and Abu Talib. Khadija died within a few days, and Abu Talib's end came a month thereafter.

Famous quotes containing the words year of, year and/or sorrow:

    “We have good reason to believe that memories of early childhood do not persist in consciousness because of the absence or fragmentary character of language covering this period. Words serve as fixatives for mental images. . . . Even at the end of the second year of life when word tags exist for a number of objects in the child’s life, these words are discrete and do not yet bind together the parts of an experience or organize them in a way that can produce a coherent memory.”
    —Selma H. Fraiberg (20th century)

    “You must not pity me because my sixtieth year finds me still astonished. To be astonished is one of the surest ways of not growing old too quickly.”
    —Colette [Sidonie Gabrielle Colette] (1873–1954)

    “I am haunted by numberless islands, many a Danaan shore,
    Where Time would surely forget us, and Sorrow come near us no more;
    Soon far from the rose and the lily and fret of the flames would we be,
    Were we only white birds, my beloved, buoyed out on the foam of the sea!”
    —William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)