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MUHAMMAD'S BIRTH AND FORTY YEARS PRIOR TO PROPHETHOOD
HIS BIRTH:
Muhammad (Peace be upon him), 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, and the astrologer Mahmûd
Pasha.
Ibn Sa‘d reported that Muhammad’s mother said: “When he was born, there was a light that issued
out of my pudendum and lit the palaces of Syria.” Ahmad reported on the authority of ‘Arbadh bin
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 Allâh and thanked Him. ‘Abdul-Muttalib
called the baby Muhammad, a name not then common among the Arabs. He circumcised him on his
seventh day as was the custom of the Arabs.
The first woman who suckled him after his mother was Thuyebah, the concubine of Abu Lahab, with
her son, Masrouh. She had suckled Hamzah bin ‘Abdul-Muttalib before and later Abu Salamah bin
‘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 chastity of their language and for being free from those vices which usually develop
in sedentary societies.
The Prophet (Peace be upon him) was later entrusted to Haleemah bint Abi Dhuaib from Bani Sa‘d
bin Bakr. Her husband was Al-Harith bin ‘Abdul ‘Uzza called Abi Kabshah, from the same tribe.
Muhammad (Peace be upon him) had several foster brothers and sisters, ‘Abdullah bin Al-Harith,
Aneesah bint Al-Harith, Hudhafah or Judhamah bint Al-Harith (known as Ash-Shayma’), and she
used to nurse the Prophet (Peace be upon him) and Abu Sufyan bin Al-Harith bin ‘Abdul-Muttalib,
the Prophet’s cousin. Hamzah bin ‘Abdul-Muttalib, the Prophet’s uncle, was suckled by the same two
wet nurses, Thuyeba and Haleemah As-Sa‘diyah, who suckled the Prophet (Peace be upon him).
Traditions delightfully relate how Haleemah and the whole of her household were favoured by
successive strokes of good fortune while the baby Muhammad (Peace be upon him) 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 Allâh 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 (Peace be upon him) 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
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