Story of Cain and Abel, two sons of Adam

Posted by: Maryam on: Tuesday, January 3, 2012

• In: Islam | Stories of Our Prophets
• 5 Comments

Allah reveals the story of the two sons of Adam, Abel and Cain in various verses throughout the Quran. In Chapter 5, verses from 27-31 talk about their story, but the experts/scholars opinion and more commentary on the same subject is being printed below as complied by the Darussalam publication in their book ‘ Stories of the Prophets’. It is mentioned by exegete’s that Adam and Hawwa had in every birth one male child and one female child. They were commanded that every son of them would marry the sister of his brother with whom she was born. No one was allowed to get married with his sister with whom he was born

Abel wanted to get married with the twin sister of his elder brother Cain. But since his twin sister was more beautiful, Cain wanted to keep his twin sister for himself. Adam asked Cain to her with Abel but he refused to do so. Then he ordered them both to offer a sacrifice and left for Makkah to perform Hajj. After Adam had left, both offered their scarifies. Abel  offered a fat lamb since he was a Sheppard. While Cain offered a bundle of worst crops he had grown. A fire came down and devoured the sacrifice of Abel, leaving the sacrifice of Cain untouched. He became angry and started threatening Abel, ‘I will kill you so that you may not marry my sister’. Abel replied, ‘Allah accepts only from those who fear Him’.

One night, Abel did not return from tending his flock. So Adam sent Cain to see what happened to him. When Cain went looking for him, he found him and he complained, ‘Your offering was accepted, but mine was not’. Cain becomes angry in the argument and hits his brother with an iron he holds in his hand thereby killing his brother. The response which Abel showed after he was threatened by his brother is a sign of his noble character and piety. He avoided himself to respond with the same threat which his brother made towards him, as is clear from this verse: ‘Yet if you stretch out your hand against me to kill me, I shall not stretch out my hand to kill you, for I fear Allah, the Lord of the worlds‘. (5: 28)

Narrates Imam Ahmad from Abdullah bin Masud R.A.A who said that prophet S.A.S said, ‘No soul is killed unjustly but the first son of Adam bears a part of that sin. Because he was the first to initiate this tradition of killing‘ (Sahih Al-Bukhari).

As seen at ‘Stories of the Prophets’ by Ibn Kathir.

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Tags: Abel, Adam, Cain, creation, Hadith, Islam, Quran