The birth of the Prophet Muhammad

[center]Muhammad

the Master of Prophets, was born in Bani Hashim lane
in Makkah on Monday morning, the ninth of Rabi‘ Al-Awwal, the same year of the
Elephant Event, and forty years of the reign of Kisra (Khosru Nushirwan), i.e.
the twentieth or twenty-second of April, 571 A.D., according to the scholar
Muhammad Sulaimân Al-Mansourpuri.

Ibn Sa‘d reported that Muhammad’s
mother said: "When he was born, there was a light that issued out of my pudendum
(genital organs) and lit the palaces of Syria." Ahmad reported on the authority
of ‘Arbadh Ibn Sariya something similar to this.

It was but
controversially reported that significant precursors accompanied his birth:
fourteen galleries of Kisra’s palace cracked and rolled down, the Magians’
sacred fire died down and some churches on Lake Sawa sank down and
collapsed.

His mother immediately sent someone to inform his grandfather
‘Abdul-Muttalib of the happy event. Happily he came to her, carried him to
Al-Ka‘bah, prayed to Allaah and thanked Him. ‘Abdul-Muttalib called the baby
Muhammad, a name not then common among the Arabs.

The first woman who
suckled him after his mother was Thuyebah, the freed slave of Abu Lahab, with
her son, Masrouh. She had suckled Hamzah Ibn ‘Abdul-Muttalib before, and later
Abu Salamah Ibn ‘Abd Al-Asad Al-Makhzumi.

Babyhood:

It was the
general custom of the Arabs living in towns to send their children away to
bedouin wet nurses so that they might grow up in the free and healthy
surroundings of the desert whereby they would develop a robust frame and acquire
the pure speech and manners of the bedouins, who were noted both for purity of
their language and for being free from those vices which usually develop in
sedentary societies.

The Prophet was later entrusted to Haleemah bint
Abi Dhuaib from Bani Sa‘d Ibn Bakr. Her husband was Al-Harith Ibn ‘Abdul ‘Uzza
called Abi Kabshah, from the same tribe.

Muhammad had several foster
brothers and sisters, ‘Abdullah Ibn Al-Harith, Aneesah bint Al-Haarith, Hudhafah
or Judhamah bint Al-Haarith (known as Ash-Shayma’), and she used to nurse the
Prophet and Abu Sufyan Ibn Al-Haarith Ibn ‘Abdul-Muttalib, the Prophet’s cousin.
Hamzah Ibn ‘Abdul-Muttalib, the Prophet’s uncle, was suckled by the same two wet
nurses, Thuyeba and Haleemah As-Sa‘diyah, who suckled the Prophet
.

Traditions relate how Haleemah and the whole of her household were
favoured by successive strokes of good fortune while the baby Muhammad lived
under her care. Ibn Ishaq states that Haleemah narrated that she, along with her
husband and a suckling babe, set out from her village in the company of some
women of her clan in quest of children to suckle. She said:

It was a
year of drought and famine and we had nothing to eat. I rode on a brown she-ass.
We also had with us an old she-camel. By Allaah we could not get even a drop of
milk. We could not have a wink of sleep during the night for the child kept
crying on account of hunger. There was not enough milk in my breast and even the
she-camel had nothing to feed him. We used to constantly pray for rain and
immediate relief. At length we reached Makkah looking for children to suckle.
Not even a single woman amongst us accepted the Messenger of Allâh offered to
her. As soon as they were told that he was an orphan, they refused him. We had
fixed our eyes on the reward that we would get from the child’s father. An
orphan! What are his grandfather and mother likely to do? So we spurned him
because of that. Every woman who came with me got a suckling and when we were
about to depart, I said to my husband: "By Allâh, I do not like to go back along
with the other women without any baby. I should go to that orphan and I must
take him." He said, "There is no harm in doing so and perhaps Allaah might bless
us through him." So I went and took him because there was simply no other
alternative left for me but to take him. When I lifted him in my arms and
returned to my place I put him on my breast and to my great surprise, I found
enough milk in it. He drank to his heart’s content, and so did his foster
brother and then both of them went to sleep although my baby had not been able
to sleep the previous night. My husband then went to the she-camel to milk it
and, to his astonishment, he found plenty of milk in it. He milked it and we
drank to our fill, and enjoyed a sound sleep during the night. The next morning,
my husband said: "By Allaah Haleemah, you must understand that you have been
able to get a blessed child." And I replied: "By the grace of Allaah, I hope
so."

The tradition is explicit on the point that Haleemah’s return
journey and her subsequent life, as long as the Prophet stayed with her, was
encircled with a halo of good fortune. The donkey that she rode when she came to
Makkah was lean and almost foundered; it recovered speed much to the amazement
of Haleemah’s fellow travellers. By the time they reached the encampments in the
country of the clan of Sa‘d, they found the scales of fortune turned in their
favour. The barren land sprouted forth luxuriant grass and beasts came back to
them satisfied and full of milk. Muhammad stayed with Haleemah for two years
until he was weaned as Haleemah said:

We then took him back to his
mother requesting her earnestly to have him stay with us and benefit by the good
fortune and blessings he had brought us. We persisted in our request which we
substantiated by our anxiety over the child catching a certain infection
peculiar to Makkah. At last, we were granted our wish and the Prophet stayed
with us until he was four or five years of age.

When, as related by Anas
in Sahih Muslim, Gabriel came down and ripped his chest open and took out the
heart. He then extracted a blood-clot out of it and said: "That was the part of
Satan in thee." And then he washed it with the water of Zamzam in a gold basin.
After that the heart was joined together and restored to its place. The boys and
playmates came running to his mother, i.e. his nurse, and said: "Verily,
Muhammad has been murdered." They all rushed towards him and found him all right
only his face was white.

After this event, Haleemah was worried about
the boy and returned him to his mother with whom he stayed until he was six.

Summarized from: The
Sealed Nectar
islamweb

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