The Prophets Of Allah

Early Childhood of Prophet Mohammed PBUH

We now move onto the period of his life that is his early childhood. Him growing up as a young child. The fact is we have little information with regards to his first 30, 40 years of his life. As we mentioned before if we were to gather the first 53 years of his life compared to the last 10, it would be less than half. Of these 53 years most of the information begins after 40 years i.e. when he became a prophet. And indeed this is logical - but one thing we believe as muslims, anything that we need to know Allah must have preseved it.

So the first thing we know of his life after his birth is that his mother gave him to be raised away from the house in the desert. This seems strange to us but it was a custom of the elite of the Quraysh. The custom of the nobility of the Quraysh. It was a status symbol done for a number of reasons:

1. They wanted the child to be raised in a pure and healthy environment. The infant mortality was very high back then (and even recently i.e. up to 100 years ago) so to preserve and protect the child, they removed him from congregation and civilisation so that there is only a few people interacting with the child. This increases the chances of its survival.

2. They wanted to build stamina in the child and make them adjusted to a rough life. Even though life in Mecca was very tough, they wanted to raise their child in a harder environment so they become accustomed and can adapt easy to the difficulties of Mecca. Certainly children adapt much more easily than adults - Allah has made us like this. When we are adults, if we are used to a standard and are diminished to a lower standard life would be very difficult to bear, even though this lower standard is the standard of many people. So it's human nature children adapt to circumstances - and this shows the Quraysh had clever long term planning. They wanted their children to live under difficulty at a young age so Mecca appears like luxury.

3. Growing up in a desert will avoid the pampering relatives to. Every parent knows no matter how strict you are with your children, uncles aunts and grandparents will pamper your child and are much more leinient. So this was done to raise the child in a disciplined environment.

4. The child being raised in the desert amongst certain tribes - these tribes were known for fluency in Arabic. The city language was viewed as corrupted and changed. There were word loans from other cultures. An example is that modern arabic newspapers have 30% english content. This dosen't occur in the deserts or cities. So the arabs are thinking long term again - they send their children to the pure areas to tribes known for speaking the pure arabic. And the most famous tribe was the Banu Sa'ad ibn Bukr and it was this tribe that took care of the prohpet PBUH.

In one authentic hadith the prophet PBUH was asked "tell us about yourself". He said "I am the dawah of Ibrahim AS, and I am the glad news of Isa/Jesus AS". Some muslims theoligians say the references to the 'good news' Jesus pbuh makes is as Allah and the prophet PBUH says is the prophet himself. And then the prophet PBUH said "And I was foster cared by the Bani Sa'ad ibn Bukr.

We know the story of Halimah bint Sa'adiya. She said that she and her husband were suffering from poverty so they wanted money and took a child. Of course desert dwellers do not get income - so they went to Mecca and adopted children from the noble and rich Quraysh for money. And this custom was only for the elite i.e. the Quraysh. So Halima explains why she took the prophet PBUH. She said she convinced her husband to go to Mecca to obtain a newly born child who was willing to be fostered for 2/3 years. This was an annual event where the mothers choose the best people to take care of the child. Halima said she just had a child and already had a daughter around 7/8 years old called Shayma - the new born caused her milk to flow so she is able to foster care her child. So she goes with a group of women from her clan to Mecca to find babies to adopt. There was a child known as the 'orphan child'. Some women didn't even go to the house of Aminah as they felt they wouldn't get enough money as the father was dead even though this child was from the tribe of Abdul Muttalib. Halima also visited the 'orphan child' but she moved on to find another child. When the week finished every one of her friends had found a new born baby except for her. And the only one left was the prophet PBUH. She told her husband 'I feel embarrased, it's shameful my friends are going back with a child and I don't have one'. So her husband said 'why don't you take the orphan child? Perhaps Allah will bless us through him'. This shows they had good manners and good hearts. So they agreed to take care of the prophet PBUH. As soon as they took him, the miracles began right then and there - there was one old goat that stopped producing milk but as soon as the prophet PBUH came into the tent it produced milk. And she had an old mount they were riding and when they put the prophet PBUH on the mount, it became the fastest animal of all.