Abu Talib could clearly see that a storm system was...

Abu Talib could clearly see that a storm system was converging upon the Banu Hashim. The atmosphere in Makkah had become so explosive that Banu Hashim found itself in great peril. Abu Talib realized that it would not be prudent to live in the city where any moment, the enemy could set fire to their houses. In the interests of the security of the clan, he, therefore, decided to leave Makkah, and to seek safety for it in a ravine near Makkah which later came to be known as Sh'ib Abu Talib.

The ravine had some natural defenses, and it was in any case safer to live in it than to live in their houses in the city which were highly vulnerable to attack. On the first day of the year 7 of the Proclamation, therefore, the two clans of Banu Hashim and Banu al-Muttalib moved out of Makkah and took abode in a ravine. The clans were in a state of siege. It was going to be a long siege!

Muhammad Husayn Haykal The pact into which the clans of Quraysh had entered for boycotting Muhammad and blockading the Muslims continued to be observed for three consecutive years. (The Life of Muhammad, Cairo, 1935) Marmaduke Pickthall For three years, the Prophet was shut up with all his kinsfolk in their stronghold which was situated in one of the gorges which run down to Mecca.

(Introduction to the Translation of Holy Qur’an, 1975) The story of the siege of Banu Hashim is a stirring chapter in the epic of Islam, and has been told by every historian of the subject, among them: Sir William Muir .....the Coreish entered into a confederacy against the Hashimites – that they would not marry their women, nor give their own in marriage to them; that they would sell nothing to them, nor buy aught from them; and that dealings with them of every kind should cease.

The ban was carefully committed to writing, and sealed with three seals. When all had bound themselves by it, the record was hung up in the Kaaba, and religious sanction thus given to its provisions.

The Hashimites were unable to withstand the tide of public opinion which set in thus violently against them, and apprehensive perhaps that it might be only the prelude of open attack, or of blows in the dark still more fatal, they retired into the secluded quarter of the city known as Sheb of Abu Talib. It was formed by one of the defiles or indentations of the mountains, where the projecting rocks of Abu Cobeis pressed upon the eastern outskirts of Mecca.