Muhammad's Birth and Forty Years prior to ProphethoodHis Birth

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Muhammad [pbuh], 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. [Muhadarat Tareekh Al-Umam Al-Islamiyah 1/62; Rahmat-ul-lil'alameen 1/38,39]

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. [Mukhtasar Seerat-ur-Rasool, p.12; Tabaqat Ibn Sa'd 1/63]

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. [Reported by Al-Baihaqi, but Al-Ghazali didn't approve it - see Fiqh-us-Seerah p.46]

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. [Ibn Hisham 1/159,160; Zad Al-Ma'ad 1/18; Muhadarat Tareekh Al-Umam Al-Islamiyah 1/62]

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. [Talqeeh Furoom Ahl-al-Athar p.4; Mukhtasar Seerat-ur-Rasool p.13]


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 [pbuh] 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 [pbuh] 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 [pbuh] 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 [pbuh]. [Za'd Al-Ma'ad 1/19]

Traditions delightfully relate how Haleemah and the whole of her household were favoured by successive strokes of good fortune while the baby Muhammad [pbuh] 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 [pbuh] 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 Allâh 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 Allâh Haleemah, you must understand that you have been able to get a blessed child." And I replied: "By the grace of Allâh, I hope so."

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